
Yesterday I received my non-shiny new PS3 Slim and I promptly began the process of transferring all games, game saves, videos, music, pictures, and accounts from my launch 60GB console to the new super quiet version. I decided to upgrade due to the Blu-Ray drive making nasty grinding noises on my older PS3. With it being out of warranty and backwards compatibility not meaning all that much me, I made the jump. While most of the transfer went smooth, there were a few bumps in the road.
Some of you may remember my PS3 hard drive kicking the bucket. Thanks to some friends who work in data recovery, I was able to fully recover the data on the drive and get it back in my PS3. All my Game Saves were intact and nothing major was lost, so I was free and clear to backup my system.
My first step was running the built in Backup Utility on my launch PS3. This took about 2 hours as it backed up everything I had on the system (including four PS1 classics and 18 PSN Games). Once that was all finished up, I powered down the console, unpacked the new Slim and hooked it up. After connecting to my wireless network and updating the firmware to version 3.0, I plugged in my external hard drive to begin the transfer of data. I was immediately greeted with a message that said not all data could be transferred, which I expected. I knew most PSN Games would not transfer over and had already planned to re-download all of those. After a quick 2 minute restore, I was prompted to reboot the console and everything was there… or so I thought.

Immediately I became aware that my PSN logins did not make the transfer. I have four local user accounts on my PS3, each with their own PSN login (one is my personal account, another is for review purposes, two others are from different regions to browse their PSN Stores). At press time, I still haven’t figured out one of the passwords to log back in, and for some reason I didn’t use my birth date to create the account, so I’m a bit stuck. All well and good, I’ll just create a new account. This was a minor inconvenience compared to what I found next.
After I got logged back in and the system synced my Trophy information (which took about 10 minutes, for some unknown reason), I went and checked my Game Saves. This is where I got sad. Quite a few of the games I’ve played are locked to that particular console, so the saves could not be transferred. Games include Crash Commando, Fat Princess, High Velocity Bowling, Killzone 2, Mortal Kombat 2, NCAA Football 10, Rock Band, Street Fighter IV, and The Godfather 2. Some of them didn’t bother me all that much, but losing Killzone 2, NCAA Football 10, and Street Fighter IV were big blows. I’ve been put in numerous hours with each game, leveling up, battling through franchises, and unlocking characters, all of which is gone from my new PS3. It’s most annoying for Street Fighter IV, which took me a very long time to unlock the characters (and I even bought the DLC costumes, which I won’t be able to use until I unlock everyone again).
While losing the Game Saves is a very frustrating ordeal, it’s in no means a deal breaker. My launch PS3 is on its final legs and has been retired. The PS3 Slim is smaller, sleeker, and immensely quiet. I’m very happy with the upgrade, even without my precious Game Saves. It’s nothing I can’t unlock again. I have a feeling a Fight Night is in order soon where BJ and I tag team the Career mode in SF4 to unlock everyone.






Matt - I feel for you man. I just migrated to the new PS3 Slim as well from my old PS3. Sony did NOT make it easy, I tell ya. At first, I tried to swap my old hard drive in my new PS3 Slim, that didn't work since I would need to re-format it and I would lose everything. So I backed up the Hard Drive on my old PS3 and restore on my new PS3 Slim. It took a few mins just like you did so I realize something wasn't right. After it was done, found out that only my Saved games, photos and music made it through. That sucked as I had a lot of PSN games and videos on my 200gb Hard Drive. I had to re-d/l my PSN games again and everything worked fine so far, used my old saved games and everything is still intact. Now for videos, I did a restore from my backup Hard Drive, this was a @#$ to deal with, I had thought deauthorizing my old PS3 and authorizing my new PS3 Slim should work just fine, I got this copyright error every time I would play a video I had bought. I called up Sony, talked to them for a hour and I had a hard time to get them to reset my video d/ls as you can only d/l it once and play it on that PS3. Sony was nice enough to reset it for me though they were stubborn at first, now I have to re d/l all my videos again. On the bright side, I am happy with my PS3 Slim and I upgraded to a 320gb Hard Drive. I have not come across any issues with my saved games but I haven't tried out those games you mention yet.
If Sony introduced a reliable harddrive transfer program whereby I could buy a Slim, register the serial number, and ring up Customer Support to ask for some kind of authorisation code to transfer the contents of my old harddrive in it's entirety, I would buy a Slim tomorrow. As it is I have too much stuff on my current PS3 that I wouldn't be willing to lose.
It can't be that hard to do - backup, change the encryption to the new serial, format source PS3 to ensure there is no duplicate.
i am keeping my 60gig ps3 it have everthing fuck the ps3 slim it ugly and wackand slow…i will say wit the old fuck the new sony so pitaful well i have both 360 and ps3
Like you, I made an upgrade to the PS3 slim due to my 60GB's GPU failing on me. I was very displeased to find that my Killzone 2 and Fat Princess saves were no longer available. More-so Fat Princess because the online stats are not linked to your PSN name but merely your save. I contacted Titan Studios about this issue in which they informed me that in a few months they plan on implementing a patch which will either take away the copy-protection and/or provide an online source for Fat Princess stats. I'll provide a link to my forum post:
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board...
Damn I didn't know the stats were stored locally. I've played a ton of Fat Princess and could care less about the single player portion, which is why I wasn't concerned with losing that save. Now I'm upset that it's gone.
Yeah screw Sony, the PS3 backup doesn't work nearly as well as the Xbox 360 backup utility.
Don't forget if you play re5 on ps3 thats gone too
ugh… Sony why? Is the because of trophy bs? Or actual copyright infringement? I mean obviously the video are for copyright but game saves?! Really? Oh I think another game to the list is Burnout Paradise, I don't have a slim ps3(Launch 60 is still kickin!) and I've never transferred anything, but I think that might be another game.
Can't you just put the saves onto a usb pen and move it across…unless i've missed something but i stored all my saves and extra data on my usb when i did a full system reset before on my 60gb model.
A lot of saves are tied to the console ID and cannot be copied, such as ones I listed above. You can't even copy them off to a flash drive.
gutted for you all. out of interest this isn't related to differing firmware revision is it?
i started off shocked of how quiet the slim was i could not hear it running.
than i played batman AA for 2 hours and thats when things changed, it makes more noise than my old console, and 20 minutes before i turned it off it started making a loud rattling noise. not a good start sony, after the BS i had to put up with my old system.
and to add icing to the cake, i reved up the patcience and guts to finally try and finish KZ2 on elite im up to the last battle just before the visari battle. i boot up the game, select load game and the thing tells me there are no saved files.
WTF?
i reboot the system and it happens again, so i ring sony and they tell me theres no way to get the file back because its locked.
thats when i lost it, i just bought a BRAND NEW! system and with in 3 hours it starts rattling like rotary engine out of oil and now i cant play my saved game?
needless to say after a hour of pointless arguing and venting of steam sonys sending me a free copy of infamous and i got a 50 dollar voucher to use on the PSN.
not bad but why the fuck are games locked to one console.
what if your console or HDD fucks itself?
seriously sony have to make simple things so difficult why?
they want you to change your HDD but in doing so they force you to loose half of your game saves?
im lost in the logic of that.
My first batch of 40gb caused a lot of pain, after 13 months the lens assembly failed and when I tried to back up my saved games most were lost, I paid $100 to just buy the lens and replace it myself. then I gave it away (although it was made in Japan! and it cost me $500) then bought a brand new 80gb MGS4 bundle unit for $625 (which is still new and won't use it till GT5 hits the shelves.
I am quite surprised of how the noise on the 40gb was very low compared to the 60gb, but for the new slim thing I guess that by radically reducing the vents and fan size the GPU and cell cpu will eventually overheat.
All in all, I end up spending over one grand on two consoles! what ever happened to the reliable PS and PS2 units I previously owned
Thanks for reading,
Matt - I had a similar problem when I transfered my back data up to my reconditioned unit after a YLOD. Before I sent in my original console I had just enough time to transfer just game saves to a USB stick and after finding some game saves missing (KZ2 elite complete!!) I stuck in the USB stick, tranfered the game saves over again and voila - it worked. I had to re-sync the trophies because some were missing - but after that, I was back in business baby! I hope you have the chance to try this and see if it works.
Good luck - I feel for you man.
Wow that Ps3 Slim looks nice! I've just purchased mine and its in the post. For PS3 Slim news, reviews and more visit PS3 Slim Hope this helps!
i just got my ps3 slim hook it up to my denon 4310ci switch it bitstream and the sound dip and the light comes on that says dts-master audio but when i switch it back to pcm the sound is better and louder of course i am using hdmi can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong please help me.
Apparently there is a glitch that allows you to restore protected save data. I haven't tried it myself but will be doing so soon:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=173560...
To cut it short, create a new account with your old ps3 - call it whatever you like. Then backup from this account. On your new ps3 make sure the account you create has a different name than ANY accounts on your old system (including the one you just created). When you restore you will apparently get all the saves back. Then delete the account you don't want on the new ps3.
Apparently this works because the backup process 'ignores' the copy protection for other accounts it is backing up, and only 'sees' the copy protection on the saves in the account that initiated the backup. So by creating a brand new account with no saves in, all your existing accounts should be backed-up and restored without any issues.
Very interesting. The only thing that sucks is I would have to re-download all of my PSN games and add-ons again. I might give it a shot anyway and see what happens.
It could be worse - you could be reinstalling Windows…
I'm gonna give it a shot now before football starts. Hoping it works, mainly for Killzone 2, SF4, and Fat Princess.
I'm in the process of backing up my ps3 now, with the intention of buying a slim tomorrow, so let me know how it goes.
No dice. None of my protected game saves came over. I made an account "test" on my old PS3 and an account "test22456" on the PS3 Slim. Also, almost all of my themes came through corrupted, so I'm going to have to redownload them.
Gutted. I can handle losing the save data for the games I have (although starting again with GTA4 is mildly annoying..) I've just thought though - we have spent a lot of money over the last two years on buying extra tracks for Singstar - will I loose all of them?
I don't have any SingStar tracks, so I can't comment on that.
I hate locked saves. I've complied a list of locked saves. Check it out http://www.ps3blog.net/2009/08/26/locked-game-sav...
I added the ones you mentioned.
Matt, First of all thanks for posting your experience. Secondly I'm humbly asking for your help.
Frankly stuck and worried. 2 days ago i bought a brand new ps3 slim to replace my old ps3. Like you I had several users in the system but i have a mainusername (the one i use for trophies and online gaming).
This is what I did:
1) Tried to sync the trophies from my mainusername but always stuck at 20% due to the common 80022A07 error. I gave up and leave it.
2) did the backup from the old one.
3) plugged the new one, make the usual adjustments (set the hour, country , etc)
4) I made my mainusername (exactly the same i used in the old ps3)
5) Connected to the psn network with my gamer tag and tried to sync the trophies but alas! couldn't do it.
6) Run the restore utility.
I started the system and everything went badly, in the main menu I had my new mainusername which had zero save games, trophy info andmy contacts,
Under my new mainusername i found all my old users (which all had a "*" before the name). The thing is my *mainusername had almost (save from the copy protected ones) all my game saves and NO trophies! it didn't even gave a choice to sync them. Also no contacts!
What was my mistake? should I have not made my mainusername at the beginning of the setup?
Thanks for your help!
[...] replace my launch console. If you haven’t read about how transferring all my data went down, go take a look in this direction. The big complaint I had surround protected game saves and the inability to transfer them to my new [...]
I know it's late, but better late than never. Kaboom:
http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/cu...
I'm trying to migrate my saved games onto a slim. They went over ok, but i cant play them because it comes up with an error when i load the game saying the save was created on a different user and i cant continue from the save. Can anybody help me be able to play from these saves on the new console?
Maybe too little too late.
You should have used the system transfer utility, not the backup utility. If you take a network cable and plug it into both machines you can transfer everything from one system to the other system. Just look at the instructions for migrating to a new PS3. It works and you lose nothing.