PS2:Creating Game Save Backups

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You may wish to make copies of your game saves as a backup in case your memory card is lost or corrupt. If you have a PS2-to-PC memory card adapter, it may be as simple as using bundled software to copy the saves. Otherwise, if you have the ability to launch homebrew on your PS2, you can copy the saves to a USB flash drive with the below instructions.

Requirements

  • A USB drive, formatted as FAT32
  • Either LaunchElf, uLaunchElf or wLaunchElf.

Backing Up Individual Saves

  1. Open your LaunchElf of choice and press circle to enter the file browser.
  2. Select your memory card (mc0 = memory card 1, mc1 = memory card 2).
  3. The saves will be called BASLxx-xxxxx or BASCxx-xxxxx which is the games serial, figure out your serial number by checking the spine of the games box or using this website.
  4. Select the saves you want to backup by pressing X then press R1 and press copy.
  5. Press Triangle to go back.
  6. Insert your USB and select mass:/.
  7. Navigate to where you want to place your backups.
  8. Press R1 and choose paste.

This also works for PS1 saves as well, however, if they're on a PS1 memory card there will be no folders. This is solved if you copy the save to the PS2 memory card.

Creating a Memory Card file to use with Emulators

Same requirements as above, however you will need to download mymc-alpha-2.7.zip, and a bat script that will make the process a little easier.

Extract mymc somewhere onto your computer and then download the bat script and place it in the same folder as the mymc.exe

Now back on the ps2.

  1. Open your LaunchElf of choice and press circle to enter the file browser.
  2. Select your memory card (mc0 = memory card 1, mc1 = memory card 2).
  3. Press Square to select all (the folders should have wight boxes next to them now).
  4. Then press R1 and then press copy.
  5. Press Triangle to go back.
  6. Insert your USB and select mass:/.
  7. Press R1 and select new folder, and then label it whatever you want.
  8. Select and open the new folder, press R1 and select psuPaste. The files will now copy from your memory card onto this usb drive in .psu format.
  9. Once complete press Triangle to back out of the new folder and the usb drive, and then you can remove usb stick
  10. Plugging the usb stick back into your computer, navigate to the new folder, but don't open it, just select the folder and drag and drop it to the bat script
  11. A new ps2 memory card file with the same name as your folder you made on the ps2 will now be saved in the same directory next to your folder of .psu files

You can now use mymc-gui.exe to open, view and check the memory card image was saved successfully and contains all your saves.

Please note: by default mymc format will only make 8MB memory card files. So files from larger after market memory cards may not import if you have used more then 8MB on the memory card.

It's not recommended as some emulators may not know how to address the extra space but, If you want larger memory cards you can modify the script accordingly.

For 16MB memory cards

mymc "%~dp1\%foldername%.ps2" format -c 16392

For 32MB memory cards

mymc "%~dp1\%foldername%.ps2" format -c 32784

See mymc x format -h for more info