The irony of wanting to backup a save file

[Calundanni]

Recently I've been having some issues with my PS3, the fat one, the disc drive couldn't always find the game disc, which resulted in that I had to spend 30 min. on inserting the disc and ejecting the disc, untill it wanted/decided to catch on and it usually worked.

So, this evening I decided to clean the lens, thinking that this might be the problem and found some tutorials on youtube to guide me through.
I opened it, cleaned it and put it all back together (had done this before on a different PS3 with great succes) and was ready to fire it up.
I put in a game (not GT5 just in case something would happen) and instead of starting the up, the drive went all crazy and it just kept spinning around, without catching on to the disc.

Well, I thought to myself, this would be a really really good time to backup my save game onto an external HD, but I had to reformat it to FAT32 before I could do it. So I started to copy files from it to my pc (it said that it would take 3 hours to copy) and I thought that I could play a game in the mean while, a game I had downloaded from PSN. Wrong!

I started the game and the screen went black. Before that I had acced to the XMB and could navigate through it all. I shut down the system and fired it up again, only to see a notice that said; The file system on the harddisk is corrupted and will be restored.

So much for wanting to backup the save data. Now it's stuck in a loop that keeps telling me, that the PS3 needs to be restored. So, all the different save games are lost and I had plenty.!!!!!!

I now have to wait for payday, to buy a new machine. Hm

So, the moral of the story..... Remember to backup onto a HD (everything, all of your game saves) and don't think that luck comes in 2's, I got screwed on my 2nd try.

What really bothers me now, is that I just golded some difficult events in the AMG driving school (spend +12 hours on one sector alone) and have to do it all over again, everything else I'm sort of ok with, Cars, money, XP and so on, I'll get that sooner or later. It's just that damn AMG event that annoys me + the fact that I can't play GT5 or any other PS3 game for 10 days.... But at least I get myself a new PS3 and dobbelt joy of having the UCD compulsive behavior (if there's anything good that has to come out of it).

Again, remember to backup 👍

 

[danjama]

You tried to run a game FROM THE HARD DISC, while you COPIED THE HARD DISC.

There.

 

[NOS Waster]

You tried to run a game FROM THE HARD DISC, while you COPIED THE HARD DISC.

There.

And? Hard disks are able to read and write simultaneously.

 

[Dennisch]

Darwin Award, anyone?

 

[tiger1john]

No - read the post guys. He was copying files off the external drive in preparation to format it so he could back up his PS3. You cant back up your PS3 and play a game at the same time. Darwin award for reading-failure.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Surely you had a USB memory stick handy somewhere. The game save is about 1MB depending on how far you got.

Anyway back to your corrupted hard drive, did you turn it off by the plug / switch at back or did you hold the off button for over 10 seconds until it turned off? Also have you reformatted the hard drive in the PS3? If you have not then you could still fix this issue by plugging in your hard drive to a PC and using a software to check for bad sectors and fix them. Make sure not to format anything.

 

[NOS Waster]

Then this is a problem with the PS3'.
Most computers in the world can simultaneously back up files while something is being run off of it.
Console design fail if ya ask me.

 

[Calundanni]

You tried to run a game FROM THE HARD DISC, while you COPIED THE HARD DISC.

There.

No. I was doing an copy of the files from my external harddrive (not the PS3 harddrive) to my pc, because I had to reformat it into FAT32, before I could backup the save file and plug it into the PS3. This proces would take 3 hours, because I have loads of music and movies. The external harddrive was plugged to my pc, not the PS3. I was just preparing it for the backup.

 

[Calundanni]

Surely you had a USB memory stick handy somewhere. The game save is about 1MB depending on how far you got.

Anyway back to your corrupted hard drive, did you turn it off by the plug / switch at back or did you hold the off button for over 10 seconds until it turned off? Also have you reformatted the hard drive in the PS3? If you have not then you could still fix this issue by plugging in your hard drive to a PC and using a software to check for bad sectors and fix them. Make sure not to format anything.

My friend just borrowed my USB mem. stick (even more irony for you) and the only thing I had was an external harddrive.

I've tried everything possible. And that wasn't a lot. Because, after it went black, the thing that was possible was to follow the instructions on the screen after it; The file system on the harddisk is corrupted and will be restored.

Not much I could do from there on.

But I was just thinking, would it be possible to take the harddrive out and connect it to a pc with some sort of an adpater perhaps? anyone now?

 

[Saidur_Ali]

My friend just borrowed my USB mem. stick (even more irony for you) and the only thing I had was an external harddrive.

I've tried everything possible. And that wasn't a lot. Because, after it went black, the thing that was possible was to follow the instructions on the screen after it; The file system on the harddisk is corrupted and will be restored.

Not much I could do from there on.

But I was just thinking, would it be possible to take the harddrive out and connect it to a pc with some sort of an adpater perhaps? anyone now?

You can connect to the PC without the use of any adapters as long as you have sata slots on your motherboard. It is the same as plugging in any sata hard drive, the same cables is needed if your desktop hard drive is Sata.

Once you connect it to the PC, run something like SeaTools. I think that is free and it works on this problem. I haven't used it personally but I did use a similar kind of software that fixed my issue. I only had one bad sector and it got fixed and restoring worked fine.

If you don't have spare sata cables then you can always download this and burn it to cd and boot it up. Make sure just to disconnect your normal desktop hard drive and connect the cables to your PS3 one. I think this will be much more convenient for you.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Do a long test, it will take quite along time to do, probably over 12hours or even a lot more depending on how large your PS3 HDD is. Hopefully it finds the bad sector and repairs it. If it doesn't repair it then make note of what sector it is and I'll let you know of some other software you can try repairing that bad sector with on that exact spot to save time rescanning.

Edit: I will mention this again if you are following these instructions, make sure not to format anything or initialize this drive. It will come up as blank if you plug it in and run windows as it uses a unique file system. I think it is best to use the Dos tools as the prompt for formatting the drive won't come up I believe.

 

[danjama]

Ah ok, sorry, I misread.

 

[sesselpupser]

But I was just thinking, would it be possible to take the harddrive out and connect it to a pc with some sort of an adpater perhaps? anyone now?

I'm no expert but the PS3's hard drive format is a Sony proprietary one, meaning it's not FAT32, NTFS or HFS, so you can't get files off it just by connecting it to your computer, if that's what you're thinking, I've tried that before... That said, maybe some kind software can access it? I don't know, as I said, I'm not an expert!

 

[CivicInLake]

Sony's PS3 HDD's are formatted in FAT32 neema_t

 

[ESCUDO 1800hp]

I'm no expert but the PS3's hard drive format is a Sony proprietary one, meaning it's not FAT32, NTFS or HFS, so you can't get files off it just by connecting it to your computer, if that's what you're thinking, I've tried that before... That said, maybe some kind software can access it? I don't know, as I said, I'm not an expert!

It's probably FAT32. I doubt Sony would make their own file system, and NTFS is really only common on Windows.

 

[Calundanni]

You can connect to the PC without the use of any adapters as long as you have sata slots on your motherboard. It is the same as plugging in any sata hard drive, the same cables is needed if your desktop hard drive is Sata.

Once you connect it to the PC, run something like SeaTools. I think that is free and it works on this problem. I haven't used it personally but I did use a similar kind of software that fixed my issue. I only had one bad sector and it got fixed and restoring worked fine.

If you don't have spare sata cables then you can always download this and burn it to cd and boot it up. Make sure just to disconnect your normal desktop hard drive and connect the cables to your PS3 one. I think this will be much more convenient for you.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Do a long test, it will take quite along time to do, probably over 12hours or even a lot more depending on how large your PS3 HDD is. Hopefully it finds the bad sector and repairs it. If it doesn't repair it then make note of what sector it is and I'll let you know of some other software you can try repairing that bad sector with on that exact spot to save time rescanning.

Edit: I will mention this again if you are following these instructions, make sure not to format anything or initialize this drive. It will come up as blank if you plug it in and run windows as it uses a unique file system. I think it is best to use the Dos tools as the prompt for formatting the drive won't come up I believe.

Cheers mate.... I hope it's possible... Think one of my friends has an extra desktop pc I test it on! Now there's a slight hope for some salvation of my different save games 👍

Oh and another thing - Since the PS3 are running in a recovery loop where it continously says; The file system on the harddisk is corrupted and will be restored. Can I conclude that it hasn't deleted the files on the drive, because of an bad sector, perhaps?

 

[Grimmeh]

The problem could have been that during the backup, files were locked for whatever reason, possibly game files, and the game froze when you tried to play it. Or, better yet, there wasn't enough bandwidth to read that much data at once (it's not an SSD&#8230. If you had waited, it could have very-well unfroze and continued on. The mistake was shutting it off.

Moral of the story, be patient when doing sensitive things. Couldn't just go play solitaire or go out to eat instead…

 

[Calundanni]

The problem could have been that during the backup, files were locked for whatever reason, possibly game files, and the game froze when you tried to play it. Or, better yet, there wasn't enough bandwidth to read that much data at once (it's not an SSD…). If you had waited, it could have very-well unfroze and continued on. The mistake was shutting it off.

The thing is, I didn't do a backup on the PS3, while I was playing.... I was trying to play a game, while I was backing up some files from an external harddrive onto my computer. Two separate instances.

I think it all boils down to the fact, that something must have happened to the disc drive, after I had "cleaned" it and the harddrive didn't like it.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Cheers mate.... I hope it's possible... Think one of my friends has an extra desktop pc I test it on! Now there's a slight hope for some salvation of my different save games 👍

Oh and another thing - Since the PS3 are running in a recovery loop where it continously says; The file system on the harddisk is corrupted and will be restored. Can I conclude that it hasn't deleted the files on the drive, because of an bad sector, perhaps?

It should still be possible as long as your hard drive is not on its way out completely. I nearly gave up 2 years ago with a similar scenario. My PS3 froze and I turned it off in the back. There was an endless loop of restoring and it never worked. I was very close to reformatting as I couldn't find any guide or help to fix this problem on the internet. I just set up Linux how I liked on the original 60GB PS3 and didn't want to set it all up again. So I plugged into the PC, did a full scan which might have taken overnight to complete as my 60GB PS3 had an upgraded hard drive to 320gb. I was thinking about cancelling it as it found nothing for many hours but it found only 1 in total and the software fixed it. I plugged it into my PS3 and hoped it would work. The restore prompt comes up and I press it and it works first time and I'm back into the XMB.

Hopefully for you the same thing happens for you. You haven't lost your data yet but many people do in your situation as they just reformat the hard drive to get it working again but losing all the data.

The problem could have been that during the backup, files were locked for whatever reason, possibly game files, and the game froze when you tried to play it. Or, better yet, there wasn't enough bandwidth to read that much data at once (it's not an SSD…). If you had waited, it could have very-well unfroze and continued on. The mistake was shutting it off.

Moral of the story, be patient when doing sensitive things. Couldn't just go play solitaire or go out to eat instead…

LOL, read the OP more carefully or the comments.

 

[Calundanni]

It should still be possible as long as your hard drive is not on its way out completely. I nearly gave up 2 years ago with a similar scenario. My PS3 froze and I turned it off in the back. There was an endless loop of restoring and it never worked. I was very close to reformatting as I couldn't find any guide or help to fix this problem on the internet. I just set up Linux how I liked on the original 60GB PS3 and didn't want to set it all up again. So I plugged into the PC, did a full scan which might have taken overnight to complete as my 60GB PS3 had an upgraded hard drive to 320gb. I was thinking about cancelling it as it found nothing for many hours but it found only 1 in total and the software fixed it. I plugged it into my PS3 and hoped it would work. The restore prompt comes up and I press it and it works first time and I'm back into the XMB.

Hopefully for you the same thing happens for you. You haven't lost your data yet but many people do in your situation as they just reformat the hard drive to get it working again but losing all the data.

Ok, appreciate your help on this..... 👍

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Ok, appreciate your help on this..... 👍

No problem as long as you don't blame me for wasting your time if it doesn't . It should work in theory and in practice in most situations.

Finally I will repeat this again, make sure you don't initialize or format the hard drive as that will make you lose all the data, I know you already know this but it can be easy to do this as Windows does not recognise the hard drive. No software does on PC but bad sectors are physical and can be scanned for as long as you assign a drive letter without formatting. It is easier using the bootable CD with the Dos version as you don't have to do this.

 

[Calundanni]

No problem as long as you don't blame me for wasting your time if it doesn't . It should work in theory and in practice in most situations.

I won't. The time I've spent on GT5 and my other love, FIFA11, is definitely worth the time trying to rescue the save datas.

 

[x3n0n1x]

The nice thing about hard drives is that as other have said, the disk is separated into different sectors. Because of this as long as the drive is mechanically fine you can usually recover your data or at least bypass the problem sectors. If there is a damaged sector or two then hope it is not your fat tables, as without them the entire drive is useless. These tables are recoverable as well, but usually require someone who knows what they are doing and a fair amount of time, data recovery is expensive for a reason.

So as others have said, use disk recovery software and hope for the best. What ever you do, do NOT try and put the drive in another ps3 as it will attempt to wipe it. If you do get your data back off of it, I also highly suggest getting a brand new drive, even though a bad sector does not necessarily mean the hard drive is going to fail again soon.

Good luck, I wish you the best.