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Can I Rely On PS4 Cloud Saves Backup?

DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
The other day while installing Destiny, I finally got the message I had run out of room on my PS4. It was time to upgrade my HDD to a 1TB Hybrid Drive (I just could not justify purchasing an SSD).

So the HDD will be waiting for me when I get home today, I already have the update file waiting on a USB stick.

I started backing up all of my games to a USB thumb drive, but damn what a tedious process it is. Am I missing an easy way to select all games at once? Or do I really have to do it one game at a time?

Which leads me to the point of this OP.
Can I rely on PS4 Cloud Save for my save backups?
I checked, and all of my backups are recent on the cloud, so instead of tediously backing up all of my game saves, I was just going to back up the ones I deem as very important, and go ahead and swap the HDD out.

Any other advice or words of wisdom?
I saw some people saying the thumb drive with the updated needs to be FAT 32. Sony does not say this in any of their instructions that I have seen, so can anyone confirm? I can easily do this on my Macbook if needed.

TIA for any suggestions or tips.
I am most interested in the reliability of the Cloud Saves.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
It will explicitly warn you when a cloud save has failed to sync to the server on PS4; there will be a notification and an option to re-sync. You might have gotten some of these after one of the updates temporarily broke cloud saves or if your console tried to sync cloud saves during the DDoS.

As far as thumb drives, yeah it has to be FAT 32, NTFS won't work. I doubt any of the Linux formats work either.
 
B

bombshell

Member
I have never heard of anyone having uploaded a save to the PS+ cloud and then not been able to successfully download it. So yes, it's reliable.
 
S

Seif

Neo Member
I've never had any issues with cloud saves. I've swapped my drive twice now (once when I got my HDD and once when I got a new system back from Sony after maintenance), and the save files themselves work perfectly.

Just make sure you go in and manually sync all of your saves if you get that notification that there was an error in the auto-sync.
 
S

swazzyswess

Member
Once you've confirmed what you need is uploaded, you won't have any problems.

Getting stuff to automatically upload on a regular basis is another story.
 
K

Kiyo

Member
The only time I've ever had an issue with cloud saving was when I ran out of space (stupid NBA 2k14 uploading 500MB of saves). Went and freed some space and it was back to working again in no time. It's great for when I go visit my dad and can instantly use my saves at his place, or when I had Madden 25 corrupt a save and was able to get a backup from the cloud.
 
S

Slixshot

Banned
Only problem I had was that I ran a game (Towerfall) on my new hard drive before I unloaded the save and it overwrote the save file on the cloud. So, here's the process you should do:

INSTALL GAME ON NEW HARD DRIVE
DOWNLOAD SAVE FROM CLOUD
PLAY GAME

do not

Install game on new hard drive
play game
download save from cloud

^^^ bad news bears right here.
 
I

icespide

Banned
ever since I got my replacement PS4 from sony, none of my saves auto-upload anymore and I've just been too lazy to figure out why. I can upload manually fine
 
Z

ZeroX03

Banned
My cloud save for Resogun corrupted on me. Had to start from scratch after redownloading.

All of my other cloud saves have worked perfectly.
 
M

malingenie

Member
For some reason it failed me with Tomb Raider (didnt upload a single save in a whole week of playing) but it works most of the time.
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
Thanks for the fast replies.
I did confirm my cloud saves were all up to date and have been uploading last night.
I have seen the error message about them not uploading the few times there have ben issues with the PSN, but overall it has been pretty steady.
Just wanted to be super sure, which is why I will manually also backup to USB the very important ones. Just in case.

Really interesting about the FAT 32 format of the USB thumb though.
Sony literally does not mention it once on their official support page.

Here is the first page I am using on how to install the new HDD on the PS4, direct from Sony.
Here is the "second" page that first page links to about installing the OS update.

Unless my Find command is not working on either page, not a single mention about the USB Thumb Drive being Fat 32. Again, not the end of the world, I can do that very quick, but they should probably make that a bit more clear.
 
S

SteHitch

Neo Member
Slixshot said:
Only problem I had was that I ran a game (Towerfall) on my new hard drive before I unloaded the save and it overwrote the save file on the cloud. So, here's the process you should do:

INSTALL GAME ON NEW HARD DRIVE
DOWNLOAD SAVE FROM CLOUD
PLAY GAME

do not

Install game on new hard drive
play game
download save from cloud

^^^ bad news bears right here.
Click to expand...

I did exactly this with my 45 hour Demon's Souls save. I went back to attempt to go for the Platinum and nearly shed a tear. I can't bring myself to start again, a harsh lesson to learn.
 
D

doniewhalberg

Member
The cloud save functionality is great. I had to get rid of a PS4 in MAy. Deactivated the device and didn't use my psn account between then and now in August when I got a new one. Was able to retrieve all my saves and pick up all my games exactly where I left off. Very cool they were there 3-4 months later. I have on occasion spotted a "couldn't upload to the cloud" during down time etc. but if you know it's up there, it'll come back down.
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
Just to report since a lot of people never bother, DAMN, what a truly smooth process. Had the drive itself replaced within 5 minutes. No exaggeration. Took about 10 minutes or so for the OS install to do everything it needed to do.
I went to just download all of my saves right away, but the system does not let you if it does not detect the game is installed, so I put in all of my game disks and downloaded the respective game saves from the cloud for about 15 minutes. That was 7 games total.

So whole process, from start to finish, meaning replacing the HDD, installing the OSS, reinstalling my games and downloading their respective save files from the Cloud, took about 40 minutes total.

I still need to download any digital games I have, and also need to get the updates for all titles, but I will do that as I go. The main thing was to get back up and running to check out Infamous First Light later on tonight, and that is already installed along with Second Son and it's save files.

For some of the smaller things Sony may catch heat for, they do some things incredibly well. Installing a new HDD is one of those things.
 
B

bananafactory

Banned
DirtyLarry said:
Just to report since a lot of people never bother, DAMN, what a truly smooth process. Had the drive itself replaced within 5 minutes. No exaggeration. Took about 10 minutes or so for the OS install to do everything it needed to do.
I went to just download all of my saves right away, but the system does not let you if it does not detect the game is installed, so I put in all of my game disks and downloaded the respective game saves from the cloud for about 15 minutes. That was 7 games total.

So whole process, from start to finish, meaning replacing the HDD, installing the OSS, reinstalling my games and downloading their respective save files from the Cloud, took about 40 minutes total.

I still need to download any digital games I have, and also need to get the updates for all titles, but I will do that as I go. The main thing was to get back up and running to check out Infamous First Light later on tonight, and that is already installed along with Second Son and it's save files.

For some of the smaller things Sony may catch heat for, they do some things incredibly well. Installing a new HDD is one of those things.
Click to expand...

Yup they really did well with this aspect of it. Even on PS3, swapping out the HDD was always pretty painless and they simply improved it with PS4 and the cloud saves that are offered now.
 
Jinfash

Jinfash

needs 2 extra inches
Slixshot said:
Only problem I had was that I ran a game (Towerfall) on my new hard drive before I unloaded the save and it overwrote the save file on the cloud. So, here's the process you should do:

INSTALL GAME ON NEW HARD DRIVE
DOWNLOAD SAVE FROM CLOUD
PLAY GAME

do not

Install game on new hard drive
play game
download save from cloud

^^^ bad news bears right here.
Click to expand...

I had this happen to me, also while playing Towerfall. I wish there was a way for the OS to crosscheck saves and progress. Something along the lines of "Warning: newer save has less % progress. Continue? (Y/N)"
 
DirtyLarry

DirtyLarry

Member
bananafactory said:
Yup they really did well with this aspect of it. Even on PS3, swapping out the HDD was always pretty painless and they simply improved it with PS4 and the cloud saves that are offered now.
Click to expand...
On the PS3 I upgraded the HDD Day 1, which was also a painless process but since I did it first thing I did not have to go through any saved games or anything along those lines, but I can definitely imagine how the process has gotten that much better.

And truly and sincerely, thanks to Slixshot for the heads up about grabbing the saved games from the cloud before starting to play the game. I can see how that could have gotten messy real quick and I do agree some kind of checking process or confirmation would be ideal that that situation.
 
Imagine Wagons

Imagine Wagons

Member
Did you end up backing up everything? I have a 1 TB SSHD coming in soon and I'm hoping I can just put in the new drive without backing anything up (other than what I have in the cloud) and moving on. I assume you will have to redownload games that were acquired digitally but that's not a big deal.
 
ethomaz

ethomaz

Banned
No.

Mine give me so much errors about not enough space... they need to increase that after up the save size of PS4 to > 20MB.
 
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