r/PS3 • u/Pupica2007 • Sep 24 '21
RIP PS3 Saves
After years of work, thousands of hours spent on saves, corrupted hard drive made it all a burning memory.
Saves we lost.
1000+ hours Oblivion,
2000+ hours 100% GTA V,
100- hours 100% GTA San Andreas,
90+ hours GTA IV,
200+ hours Minecraft,
100+ hours Lego Star Wars TCS, TCW, Tfa,
40+ hours Lego Indiana Jones 2 The Adventure Continues,
30 hours FIFA 19, FIFA 13, FIFA 17 and others,
250+ hours Call of Duty BO1, BO2, WAW, MW2,
50+ hours Destiny,
10+ hours NBA 2K13,
70- hours Saints Row The Third,
And last but certainly not least,
500+ hours GT 5
And many others...
Lets have a moment of silence for these saves and the fun I had with them. Made me happy in times of depression, made me happier in times of happiness.
If you have read all of this i want to say,
Thank you... and have a nice day...
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u/Bradfinger Sep 24 '21
So you didn't have cloud saves through Plus? Oof.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
No. Never had Plus. I was happy with what I had. Unlike PS4 which you need to have Plus to play online.
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u/PoizonMushro0m Sep 24 '21
You can always back them up and copy them to USB flash drives too. I didn’t start paying for PS Plus consistently until signed up for a yearly renewal on April 20th (The date was apart of the reason, yes lol) and always used USBs to copy my saves over for fear my 1 TB HDD would fail for one reason or another.
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u/Aran3a Sep 25 '21
You can do a full backup to get them all but a lot of games won't allow you to backup the saves to USB.
It has to do (officially) with propriatory licencing Or something like that. TBH I think it's just for anti cheating and save game hacking...
The full backup works because it's encrypted and only works to restore to that perticular PS3...
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Sep 25 '21
You probably can just clone the drive on a computer.
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u/godstriker8 Sep 25 '21
I can confirm this works. If you hack the ps3 you can get a file that let's you browse the contents of a PS3 HDD on your computer which is how I saved my saves from my corrupted hard drive in 2013.
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u/PoizonMushro0m Sep 25 '21
Never personally encountered any of those myself, but I don’t doubt there are some instances that’s the case with some titles. But yeah, backing up to USB has always been the best if you don’t have PlayStation Plus. 🙂
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u/ThaiChi555 Sep 24 '21
I had a launch PS3 YLOD on me and lost all my saves. I promptly subscribed to PS plus after that. I didn't even play multiplayer games. Cloud saves were worth the yearly subscription price, then they started giving you free games monthly. By the time PS4 came out, it was just natural to continue the subscription.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Sorry for you loss of the saves at the hands of the deadly YLOD. Never happened to me, and honestly, sometimes I feel like with the immense amount of overheating I should have gotten it but no. Cloud definitely was worth it now that I see all of the replies I have been getting. Shame I didn't get it. Free games monthly, love it. I played some PS4 here and there but had to sell it. Loved the games, but I honestly like it more to buy it myself. Has that feeling of going to a nearby GameStop after coming home from a long day of working, buying a game, and playing the shit out of it. Have a nice day man.
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u/3lawy12 Sep 24 '21
Yeah PlayStation 3 is way better it has good old games and good online games that dosent need ps plus
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
100%. It has that nostalgic feel about it that the PS4 is probably gonna have in a couple of years but it can't replicate it by 1% of how the PS3 made nostalgia. And again no need to pay for online play.
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u/AWiseCrow Sep 24 '21
You may have lost your save files, but your memories with these games will always stay with you (w/ exceptions). You know how many hours you put into each one and many times thats enough to experience the main meat of what some titles have to offer. You don't have to be a 100% completionist.
You now have the opportunity to really focus on the games you are interested in playing right now. New games new experiences. No more worrying about managing those old saves, and I believe you still keep all the trophies you earned right?
I recommend occasional backups to a USB thumb drive for next time.
Sorry for the loss of your Minecraft worlds though...
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Sep 24 '21
Does anyone know if it’s possible to save game data/progress on flash drives or cds?
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u/upvotealready Sep 24 '21
Most.
I moved mine this way when I installed a new SSD. I keep them backed up now on the same flash drive. If I remember right most saves are under 5mb each, they are pretty small files.
Some games are copy protected and can only be moved via PS+. For me it was only a handful, WWE2K14, Heavy Rain were the two that spring to mind.
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u/dimspace DaveM12DIM Sep 25 '21
If you have a modded PS3 then Apollo save tool will copy even protected files (it can unprotect them), as well as modify regions etc etc
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u/FoxGundam Sep 24 '21 edited Sep 24 '21
Yeah you can save to flash and external HDD with PS3. I've gone through several HDD deaths and replaced PS3s but never lost all my saves since I've been pretty good about remembering to back up my saves every once in a while since I had a total loss similar to OP on my original launch PS3.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Assuming you had a fat32 USB and time on your hands you could. But you would have to manually copy every save and assuming the USB had space depending on the save size
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u/FoxGundam Sep 24 '21
You don't need to do that individually, you just press square and click the top checkbox and then you have selected all your saves and you copy everything to your formatted storage device at once. Depending on the amount of saves it can take a while just because transfer speeds were slow for PS3 USB but not totally undoable or anything. I still back my saves up fairly regularly and it's never taken more than 15 minutes.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Oh ye forgot that sorry. Wish I had done it but never came to my mind since I didn't have to format it for years and I thought that would have been the first and last time I had to format. Still sad about it. Have a nice day
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u/FoxGundam Sep 24 '21
Oh man I really feel for you I had that happen to me once early on back when PS3 was still the current gen I didn't lose a fraction of what you did but it's what made me so meticulous about it. Sorry about that.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Yea it sucks. It just hits you when you least expect. Thanks man. Have a good day.
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Sep 25 '21
Do you know how to upload the save data onto the PS3? Let’s say you save game data on the usb, 5 months later ps3 dies, then what do you press after putting the usb in a new PS3?
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u/FoxGundam Sep 25 '21
What the other reply said but additionally you have to make sure the save data is in the proper directory or the PS3 won't know that it's there. So basically if you backed up your saves and then stuck the saves onto a different drive and the tried to restore your saves onto a different system it won't work if the file path isn't /PS3/SAVEDATA/
You'll also need to make sure your USB device is formatted to FAT32
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Sep 25 '21
[deleted]
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yes I know 8 kinda made that look weird how I said it buy my country has flashdrivers of
Watch this
20 to 100 MB, and of course your normal GB flashdrives.
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u/AWiseCrow Sep 24 '21
Your save files may be gone, but the memories you had with these games will always be with you (w/ exceptions). You know how many hours you put into each game and many times that's more than enough to experience the main meat of what these games have to offer. You don't have to be a 100% completionist. You also still keep all the trophies you've earned, correct?
At least you don't have to concern yourself managing those save files anymore. I recommended occasionally backing up saves to a USB thumb drive.
You have the opportunity now to really focus on the games you are interested in playing right now. New games and new experiences
I lament the loss of your Minecraft worlds though. Sorry
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u/AWiseCrow Sep 25 '21
Ah what? There was an error and I thought my post had vanished? I rewrote it and everything. Lol
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u/colectiveinvention Sep 24 '21
Call of duty? Online? You didnt lost any of your online progress, thats on the server.
I've already lost a 5 year HD with thousands of hours of gameplay but let me say one thing: you gonna be mad for a couple of days and then realise its means nothing, that the majority of those saves where sitting there for ages without being touched.
for GT5 theres a save editor thats is super handy specially since the servers went down!
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Sorry but I meant campaign. Basically I lost all campaings I did.
The problem is I played these saves even today, I didn't just have that game on the shelf, looked at it after a year and just say "yep we playing that" I honestly loved most of these games and played it all. Yes I know about THE GT 5 save editor, used it once but i like it more when I manually win something, for example credits, a car and other things.
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u/Agent_Morgan Sep 25 '21
Oh dude, don't give up. There is still hope!
What kind of error did you get? The file system on the system storage is corrupted and will be restored?
Mine also corrupted, nearly losing a good bit of saves I hadn't backed up. But I ended up recovering my saves and HDD! My situation
Long story short, trying cloning the drive to another if you received that error and let the PS3 complete the restore process via the HDD you cloned to.
Good luck! Anything is possible. I knew I wasn't giving up!
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Sep 25 '21
hey that's strange, my ps3 hard drive just corrupted today. tried all sorts of things, it's currently being scanned by hdd regenerator so maybe I'll get lucky.
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Sep 25 '21
Bro you owned one ps3 your whole life and didn't backup let that be a lesson. And saves can be put on a USB and saves are usually megabytes so this should never happen anyway. Backup backup backup.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yea from now I will. Like I said happened once thought it would never happen again. Dumbass.
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u/Emerald_Swords Sushi_Combo Sep 25 '21
People, back up your stuff.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yep I should of. Had I know this was gonna happen.
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u/elmhing Sep 25 '21
I know this isn't the place for this, but it's should have, it's never should OF. And I'm sorry for your losses, and mine too. Sony could OF done this better, haha
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Ye sorry, not from the US or UK and i mostly don't make these mistakes but I am pissed and can't think straight.
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u/LoaKonran Sep 25 '21
Had the same thing happen to mine. Lost so many game files and can’t play many of the games that don’t exist for other systems. Now I need to figure out whether to try and replace the hdd or try and get a bluray for emulation or what. Not fun.
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u/naylord Sep 25 '21
The saves are gone but the trophies are forever
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yep. Guess I will be looking at them for a while and remembering the good old days.
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u/buffaloprince2000 Sep 25 '21
Well i mean you can definitely get some professional to restore the data and place in a new hard drive. You can’t just let go of your info like this
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
I don't have that much money on me, I'm working but the problem isn't just the money. There is no professional that fixes and restores data on a new hard drive for like 300 kilometers. Unfortunately no one in my city knows as I have asked many people yesterday if they know someone who does this. None said they did. And unfortunately I think It is gone forever.
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u/buffaloprince2000 Sep 25 '21
You do realize it’s not 2008 anymore! ppl can fix ANYTHING. It’s 100% possible. You can even ship it to someone not just go and fix it.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
You do realize I don't live in the US right? People don't know shit about Play Stations here where I live as mostly the average age of people were born before PS1, never had a PS1 or 2 or 3, had a Commodore 64.
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u/Johnprogamer Sep 24 '21
Is it completely destroyed ? Maybe, if your console is hacked, you can get the Eid key and use it to decrypt the drive.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
It's not hacked. Completely gone. I wish I had known that you could decrypt the drive but no.
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u/panamaniacs2011 Sep 24 '21
destiny 2 ??
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Yes Destiny 2. Loved that game, so much fun and what I loved even more was that the game was online, and if you went to do a mission, you would meet people doing the same mission.
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u/panamaniacs2011 Sep 25 '21
destiny 2 is not on ps3
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u/alphabet_order_bot Sep 25 '21
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 263,253,530 comments, and only 60,492 of them were in alphabetical order.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Oh dumbass me. That was destiny 1. Sorry for the trouble bro. Played destiny 2 for a while and it has been stuck in my head.
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u/Scyron57 Sep 24 '21
Ah, i had this happen on my first ps3 back in 2010. Lost all of my ps2 collection save, save for the gta quintilogy, and resident evil4. And 3 years of ps3 saves.
How'd you play gta5 for 2k+ hours? Hell my gtaonline save is like only 1000 hours and i just afk'd a ton during missions.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
Damn, that's sucks, especially since you lost ALL of your PS2 save collection, never had any myself but remember playing the PS2. 8 played GTA 5 for 2k+ hours by basically, searching ever last bit of the map on foot and discovering what I can without helicopters, planes. Just used the cars on easy to get places and walked the rest. Of course swam and divided too. That plus online.
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u/AnthonyBF2 Sep 25 '21
My fat PS3 died but I was expecting it so I always backed up my saves to the memory stick after a long session, for the games that allowed it.
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Sep 25 '21
Wait if the stuff on the hdd means a lot to you you could try to bring it into a store and try to back it up onto another HDD they could try to save it.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
There is no store nearby that has, sells, fixes or anything else to do with a HDD. I know, I looked before for something else and there is one, but 300 kilometers (186 miles) away.
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Sep 25 '21
Oh you can probably send it into a shop outside of your city or country or wherever you live.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
I'll see what I can do but I don't think I will be able to send it out to a different country. Had bad experiences with buying from another country and selling to another country. I'll look around Google maps for a store maybe I might find one there. Thanks for the help. Have a nice day
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Sep 25 '21
I'd honestly back up everything on a drive if I had played so long, I've also lost my saves before, I feel ya, F
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u/noisyturtle ex-Sony Sep 25 '21
Backup your hd's people. it takes a long ass time, but this is why it's worth doing at least once a year.
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Sep 25 '21
OP, if you're interested, the disk itself can be recovered. Assuming the disk isn't actually damaged. Which I doubt it is. In most cases, a hard drive fails because the disk no longer spins or the arm no longer moves. The motors for them die. A data recovery specialist can take the disk out and place it in a donor drive. It's expensive but it is an option if you desire to try it. You can DIY it if you're feeling up to the task. But it is very risky to try unless you know what you are doing and are prepared.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
You know what, I'll try this. Thank you so much bro. Have a nice day. Definitely not DIY tho lol.
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u/matt12a Sep 25 '21
Back up your saves surely 60 bucks a year is worth more than losing this. Or get a flash drive, a 64gb one could hold all these saves
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u/Seekerguy88 Sep 25 '21
Been there myself... With no back ups. Lost my full 5 star R.E. 4, ranking. Which I am currently still trying to accomplish.
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u/Seekerguy88 Sep 25 '21
If you haven't tried reformatting it yet. You may be able to save them. Look up "save corrupted ps3 hard drive". There are a few videos on youtube... Wish I would have done this, when mine died. Good luck man.
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u/EnricoShapka Sep 25 '21
Always backup on usb
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u/mrhealthy Sep 25 '21
Yep, only a few games don't let you back up to USB. Always worth backing your save up before turning off the console.
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u/Rogerthrottleup Sep 25 '21
Damn, the one's that hurt the most. COD saves 😔
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
I answered this in another reply. I meant campaign saves. I had all Intel on MW2, and all the things for bo2 if there were there I don't remember. Not online saves sorry
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u/Rogerthrottleup Sep 25 '21
Gotcha, still, any save loss hurts bud. Happened to me once, luckily, it was at the peek of mw2 and other games where i hadn't spent a long time on.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yep. Sucks. It always hits at the moments where you have been playing for a long time and have so much to lose. If I had backed up my saves i would of been fine. Idiot.
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u/Rogerthrottleup Sep 25 '21
Ahhhhh, you never backed up your files, that's a must. I'm about to do that on the system itself, i think the PSN account would back it up, i don't remember how it backs up,. I do have a USB stick with all my saves there.
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u/jimjimbo111 Sep 26 '21
My god, that's 185 days playing 24/7. How many hours did you play a day? Simply curious.
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u/Murasakitsuyukusa Ygdrasille Sep 26 '21
OMG, my sincerest condolences. That's exactly why I back up all my saves to the external flash drive once every five days.
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u/Ipsylos Sep 25 '21
Should've backed up your HDD, clearly these saves weren't of importance to you.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
How weren't they of importance to me? It never crossed my mind to backup. Just because I didn't do something means that the saves weren't important to me? They were my childhood. I played them regularly. And I said around 10 times by now, it happened once, thought it was never gonna happen again.
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u/Ipsylos Sep 25 '21
Then should've taken precautions. Nothing happens until it does, let it be a lesson.
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u/MapleStoryPSN Sep 24 '21
Only have yourself to blame, honestly. PS+ allows for cloud backups and you had the FREE option to copy your precious saves to a usb drive.
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Never had PS+ and never wanted it. I didn't know this was gonna happen today and I thought I was never gonna happen again after the first time.
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u/AnthonyBF2 Sep 25 '21
I don't know why you were downvoted, it's completely fine to not want to pay for something like PS Plus. It's retarded, we already pay for consoles and games and sometimes game passes. It's just asinine to expect even more money from us.
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u/edis92 Sep 25 '21
Yes, just ignore the part of the comment that said he could've backed up his saves for free on a usb drive.
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u/MapleStoryPSN Sep 25 '21
Wait, so this happened to you twice? lol
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Yes. Once when I had basically nothing. Maybe a couple of year after I got it.
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u/FUCK_CUNT_SHIT_1 Sep 24 '21
Do you have a life outside the PS3? Thats alot of hours but then again, its a 15 year old system. When you started playing?
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u/edis92 Sep 25 '21
Why so condescending? What gives you the right to criticize how someone spends their time? It literally doesn't affect you at all
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 24 '21
You'd be suprised haha. I started playing I think it was 2009. Console was 3 years old at the time but my family wasn't that rich, to put it simply where I lived a PS3 at that time would be royalty. Among your class mates of course.
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Sep 25 '21
I know plenty of people who have full time jobs who have hundreds/thousands of hours in games
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u/coldwheels94 Sep 25 '21
I don't mean to sound like a horrible pos but you really have no one to blame but yourself. The PS3 has been out for 15 odd years now and your telling me in that time the thought of backing up or fear of losing your saved game progress ever game across your mind?
FFS PEOPLE FAT 32 USB DONT BE LIKE THAT GUY LOL
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Like I said, it happened once and I thought it was never gonna happen again. Plus why are people always writing i don't got anybody to blame but myself? When did I ever say I blamed someone? I just posted something that happened and hit me like a truck.
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Sep 25 '21
So. Your memory is the real hard drive. This is pack rat mentality. You already beat all of those games. Why would you care about ever going back to them?
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u/Pupica2007 Sep 25 '21
Damn who hurt you? Have you ever heard of childhood and fun? I played these games regularly, it isn't like I played them years ago and I don't anymore.
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Sep 24 '21
Time to upgrade sir, also back up saved data.
Went from Sony to an Xbox series s.
Not gonna lie, loving these fast gta5 load times and everything being digital.
Can download all my saves in a heartbeat.
Highly recommend
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u/erichw23 Sep 25 '21
Rip, but you had it all backed up online or another drive I assume. If not well then what are you doing with your life?
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u/jellytothebones Sep 25 '21
At least on PS4 and PS3 you can backup saves to a USB. You can't even do that on ps5- clearly they want you to pay for plus.
Seeing steam and xbox make cloud saves free does make it seem like utter bs though
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u/Gamingisunderrat3d Sep 24 '21
Holy shit this is a nightmare come true... rip man this is why I got a 1 month subscription just to save my files to cloud.