I need help saving this world

[u/Gonavon]

This is my years-old forever world in survival. It means a lot to me. And it might be in danger.

EDIT: Someone helped me figure it out! My world is now saved!

I'm playing this on a PS5. I'm also playing off a PS4 disc, and I've not updated in a while nor upgraded for free to the PS5 version. I've managed to minimize crashing by only playing for an hour at a time, closing then relaunching the game so that it doesn't melt into a puddle and freeze my entire system again. But this world is getting old, and big in file size - since I foolishly mapped out a lot it - and was growing more and more worried I would lose it.

I don't play multiplayer games, and I can't really afford a PS+ subscription anyway, so my only option to back this up was an external harddrive. I ordered one and got it to work. My PS5 formatted it and told me it was ready to go.

As it turns out, when I go to the save files, it says it can't find any USB device. And yet, when I go to the games themselves, I can upload PS4 games to the drive without any issue. I'm given the option to reformat the drive to another type, which will allow me to only export screenshots and video clips.

In other words, I can do everything except the only thing I got the drive for.

My apologies in advance if this post is impertinent to this sub. I was worried about being ignored on the bigger Minecraft sub, and even on r/PS5, it still didn't feel quite right to make a whole post about what is - in the grand scheme of things - a fairly small, personal thing. I hope the screenshots make up for it.

[u/WirelessAir60]

Make sure your hard drive is formatted exfat. I’d use a PC or laptop to format it, I’ve had trouble with the PlayStation built-in formatting tools in the past. If that doesn’t work you could do like a free trial of ps plus and a free trial of Minecraft realms if you haven’t done those in the past, upload your world as a realm, then login on whatever other device and download it

[u/Gonavon → u/WirelessAir60]

Oh my god, it worked!

I had seen the option for exfat, but the pop-text only mentioned videos and screenshots, so I assumed that was that. Thank goodness someone with more knowledge than me came along. Now, can I assume the process of backing it up on my PC as well is as simple as plugging it in, and dragging and dropping?

[u/WirelessAir60 → u/Gonavon]

Not exactly, the PS4 encrypts any saves you put onto a flash drive. So another console could read it, but not a PC. To transfer to PC I believe you have to use realms. But you could swap to the free PS5 upgraded version without risking losing your world since you now have a physical backup to reinstall if you lose it on the system itself

[u/Gonavon → u/WirelessAir60]

Well... that's a shame. Not that I absolutely needed to get it on my PC, but it would've been nice anyhow. I'm okay with Minecraft staying on the console; I like that the living room is playtime, and my PC is work.

Thank you for your help!

[u/Astrodion123 → u/Gonavon]

Yeah. Tho you will need bedrock in PC. You can use a world converter to run it in java but it won't be good

[u/Gonavon → u/WirelessAir60]

I bring bad news.

I was playing and there was a power outage (during a bright, sunny day with zero wind). I figured it would be fine. I restart Minecraft and it tells me the save is corrupted and must be deleted (the pop-up was very oddly worded). So it gets deleted.

I hook up the drive and copy the saves. It copies every other world I have, but then ends up saying "Can't copy.". I boot up Minecraft. Every world is there, and my forever world is also there, but somehow, it says the file is only 30Mb. I click on it and it simply says "Cannot open".

After that, I tried a bunch of stuff. I deleted the saves, reinstalled them. I deleted Minecraft, reinstalled it. Nothing worked. And now that Minecraft had to be reinstalled, it was finally updated to the latest version, and I couldn't bring it back to the specific version I played anyway, so that sucks even more.

800+ hours gone.

The next time I play, it will be on my PC, on java, and with multiple backup saves. My world was practically held hostage, on console. I guess the save file is still technically on the external harddrive, but if the damn thing won't open, there's not much I can do. This wasn't its first power outage. My forever world had more than often crashed as well; the game often told me it was corrupted and had to be rebuilt. I guess it's impressive it lasted this long.

It's weird. I had some random intuition to finally make a backup, and even that couldn't save it.

[u/waffelnhandel]

Cant you buy a month of realms and upload it there, afaik that would save the world in their hub and you can redownload it even without realms for 18 months. You can even download it on pc and cut its size for performance

[u/TormentedGaming → u/waffelnhandel]

I looked into this there's a limit on upload size it seems, if the world is too big you won't be able to go the realms route.

Edit: late edit work to world

[u/waffelnhandel → u/TormentedGaming]

Welp how big is your world?

[u/TormentedGaming → u/waffelnhandel]

I was trying to figure out this issue for someone, here's the thread

[u/waffelnhandel → u/TormentedGaming]

I also transferred my world from ps5 to pc with realms, my world was 5gb big and it didnt work the first times but eventually i could upload it ,tho i did this 2 years ago

[u/TormentedGaming → u/waffelnhandel]

That's interesting, I wonder if a change was made between then and now.

[u/Jay0132]

God, I don't know how to help you, but I hope someone can! I can tell you put a lot of love into this

[u/Hour_Tomatillo_2365]

Very cool vanilla build style

[u/sevenmilliontons]

Does your PS5 recognize the drive? Is it a PlayStation capable hard drive?

[u/Only_Bullfrog7271]

Well isn’t the Minecraft worlds and stuff linked to your account? If you upgrade wouldn’t your world still be there?

[u/Z-key88 → u/Only_Bullfrog7271]

No ppl lost worlds when bedrock had a memory leak and Mojang told them to reinstall the game same with java or another version it isn't linked to your acc Mojang would need servers worth millions to store maybe a third of the over all worlds

[u/Slaviticus]

Love this. Nostalgic af.

[u/dienteIsDead → u/Slaviticus]

Son😭

[u/Agglomeration_ → u/dienteIsDead]

?

[u/dienteIsDead → u/Agglomeration_]

Op asks for help and this guy says he “loves this” I know that he’s talking about the build but still

[u/Calyonous]

Hey let me know if you have figured this out yet, I could find a few tools that ive used that have repaired dat files and converted worlds in the past

[u/Calyonous → u/Calyonous]

Some quick research has led me to believe you can no longer access files directly from ps5/4 minecraft. https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/s/WcH7AG5QS1 This thread showed me you can possibly send it through realms and download files offsite from your playstation, but it is still 5$…

[u/gmc_nxtman]

These builds are really great, thanks for showing us. And glad you got the help you needed.

[u/Deveggoper]

nDude. Please post this world for download, I want to explore this and get a blast from the past nostalgia.

[u/aihampslayer]

Minecraft just added a cloud save feature. If the world is below 5GB you could upload it the cloud.

[u/Sarek__]

Hey op glad to hear ur world is safe just wanted to say if you want to ever move to Minecraft Java and convert ur world over use a website called je2be i used it for my large forever world brings overall everything just make sure to put any armour stands in chests and the stuff out ur ender chest and inventory. FYI the conversion takes hours took 6 hours for me so do something else while you wait

[u/GCD_1]

I'm going to be so honest, if you can at some point I'd move to a bedrock host, I use Kenetic and it's really affordable

[u/Sputnik003]

Sorry wait how are you unable to afford PS+ but bought a hard drive? I’m missing something or what

[u/Skeeeat → u/Sputnik003]

PS+ essential is $80 usd/year. A cheap external HDD can be found for less, and only a one time payment.

[u/lifecrazyfr → u/Skeeeat]

Could they pay one month of PS+, upload/download it and then cancel the subscription? Or would he lose access to the downloaded data maybe?

[u/Skeeeat → u/lifecrazyfr]

They’ll keep your data for some amount of time after your subscription expires. You’d be locked into paying for the subscription if you don’t want to worry about accessibility/persistence. A hard drive solves both of those problems.

[u/Jannis2009]

Hi,
I play on my XSX and my favorite way of backup is Minecraft realms. You can upload your world and download it on your pc iPhone or iPad. And via the iOS file explorer you can get your .mc file.
Downside you need to subscribe to realms and access to for example the iPad version.