Backup your PS2 saves

Posted by 7sins|Playstation|14 Comments

Having played for quite a long time on my PS2 i suddenly realized that i may be running out of space on my Memory Card. Hence the need arrived as to how to back up those damn save games that i had on my Memory Card.

But the question was how to??

It was not until when ifound a SMS Media Player CD image with uLaunchELF. Now i inserted my 2GB Toshiba Pen Drive into the USB slot and booted up my modded PS2 slim. uLaunchELF started and showed the following start-up screen

Then i started the FileBrowser by pressing the “O” key on the D-Pad.

uLaunchELF uses a Virtual File System (VFS) to allow both devices and internal procedures to be run. This file system is displayed when the user opens the file manager.

The structure of the virtual file system is as follows:

1. mc0:/ – Display contents of memory card in slot 1.
2. mc1:/ – Display contents of memory card in slot 2.
3. hdd0:/ – Display PFS partitions located in the PS2 HDD, and in turn, display the contents of the selected partition.
4. cdfs:/ – Display contents of current CD or DVD inside the PS2 CDVD-ROM.
5. mass:/ – Display contents of USB memory device.
6. host:/ – Display contents of the networked host volumes (available only in File Manager Mode).
7. MISC:/ – (available only in Button Mapping Mode).
   1. FileBrowser [Internal Function] – Display this screen.
   2. PS2Browser [Internal Function] – Execute Sony PS2 browser (rom0:OSDSYS) from ROM.
   3. PS2Disc [Internal Function] – Execute a Playstation 2 disc in the CDVD-ROM drive (parse SYSTEM.CNF, run target ELF).
   4. PS2Net [Internal Function] – Starts FTP server and PS2Net.

Navigating through the File Manager

1. If a folder, partition or device is selected, and Circle is pressed, uLaunchELF will descend into that item, and display its contents on screen.
2. If an .ELF file is selected, and Circle is pressed, uLaunchELF will:
   1. Map the ELF to the requested button, then return to the settings screen, if the user requested to do so, or;
   2. Execute the program, if the user came from the FileManager item.
3. If Triangle is pressed, the file browser will move up a level in the filesystem hierarchy, and ascend to the parent directory or device.
4. If Cross is pressed, the highlighted file or directory will be marked for manipulation with the operations menu (see 2c.i, The Operations Menu for details)
5. If Square is pressed, the file manager will:
   1. Mark all files in the current directory for manipulation with the operations menu (see 2c.i, The Operations Menu for details), or;
   2. only display files with the .ELF extension, if the user is mapping an ELF to a button. uLaunchELF makes it easier to browse memory card saves, as it reads the title of the save-game from its icon.sys file.
6. If L1 is pressed while browsing a memory card, the title of the save will be displayed in filename order.
7. If L2 is pressed while browsing a memory card, the title of the save will be displayed in title order.

The Operations Menu

All LaunchELF’s file manager functions are accessed through the operations menu.

To display the operations menu, select a file or directory in the file manager, then press R1.

uLaunchELF Operations Menu

1. Copy: Marks the selected file or directory to be copied.
2. Cut: Marks the selected file or directory to be moved.
3. Paste: Performs the copy or move operation on the item marked using Copy or Cut respectively to the current directory.
4. mcPaste:
   1. mcPaste is ONLY intended for handling backups of commercial game saves, since homebrew stuff mostly ignore MC attributes and timestamps. Using mcPaste for homebrew stuff won’t be harmful, but it simply isn’t necessary.
   2. mcPaste is intended to backup saves from MC to any non-MC media, or to restore such backups from any non-MC media to MC. But the safest media of all to use is a PS2 IDE HDD, as it allows all filenames that are valid on MC.
5. Delete: Deletes the currently selected file.
6. Rename: Changes the currently selected file or directory’s filename.
7. New Dir: Creates a new directory in the current directory.
8. Get Size: Returns the file size of the currently selected file.

The operations menu can be performed on multiple items. Use Cross to select multiple files at once, then access the operations menu as usual.

Note:

Rename is not available for operations on memory card, and Paste is not available for operations on host.

Copying Game Saves

To copy a game save, activate the file manager and enable MC Title mode. Select the game save you wish to copy, then open the context menu and select Copy. Browse to the location you wish to copy the save, then open the context menu and select Paste.

Note:

Some games require time stamping to be present which uLaunchELF currently does not support. If you manipulate these saves with uLaunchELF, it is possible that the game will reject the save next time it is loaded.

Now using uLaunchELF i was able to copy the savegames from my Memory Card to the USB Pen Drive. Then i plugged the Pen Drive to my PC and bingoo…i had my PS2 saved safely on my PC.

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