Topic: Can i create backups for my save-files?

Hello Nlife!

Wow i just keep asking questions don't i? I'm sure you are all tired of me by now but i hope not.
Can i create backups for my save files on an external HDD/SD Card (both Wii mode and Wii U)
If not, what would I do if my WiiU broke? Are the save files gone forever?

I hope your having a great weekend everybody, cheers!

I believe you can transfer your save files to an SD card and back those up on your PC.

The thing about it is if you get a new Wii U then it won't read anything done on the old one.

I dunno whether Nintendo can or will make it so it can be read if they repair it or not.

So all doing that would be protecting against would be user error as far as I know.

I am weary of it as well (I don't trust usb hard drives at all and there are no tools to do anything to recover as far as I know).

You can back up your saves and stuff to a PC via an SD card however you can not transfer your saves to another Wii U even if yours break. What you would have to do is send the broken Wii U to Nintendo and they can transfer the data to a new one or repair your system. If its under warranty it will cost you nothing if it isn't then they will charge you a fee.

Yes you can back up save data externally. The Wii mode acts like a Wii, so you need to use an SD card in the SD slot and you won't be able to copy save data for games that were Wi-Fi Connect enabled.

If you have Wii U download software then the game and save data is copied together, just like on a 3DS, so you'll need a backup device able to hold as much storage as the full game content. It's a little clunky still, but you can only attach a second USB device when you're actually in the data management part of settings - you'll also need to disconnect it before you exit that area. It could get smoother, but at least you can do it.

As others have said you'll need Nintendo's help to transfer your NNID to a new machine so send your Wii U in for repairs rather than trying to swap out kit yourself. Hopefully they'll implement some kind of Wii U to Wii U transfer or better still have accounts that exist independent of hardware (maybe do like Apple and limit the number of linked machines) in the near future to allow for user-directed kit swaps.

Do Nintendo bother about save data at all if you send it to them ? (And it ends up being replaced for another).

When I sent my Wii in for repair they were unable to transfer save data (fortunately I had backups), however I know in most people's experience they do transfer the save data on the system. Of course if you're using an external hard disk which isn't something they support they wouldn't be able to do that so you'll really be on your own for backups. They should transfer your NNID at a minimum if the whole units needs to be replaced.

yeah you can make backups. but like others have said, you cannot transfer them to other consoles. would also like to point out, even if you wipe your wiiu, you still wont be able to restore the backups. guess how i found that out! not impressed at all.

Yeah my backups are just insurance against a hard disk failure. If there was a fire I'd have to appeal to Nintendo before the drive in my fire safe would actually be of any use!

Save game management on Wii U is broken and needs fixing IMO.

I am about to have 2 Wii U's in two different houses and not being able to transfer game saves back and forth at all is going to suck

I've gotten into this discussion with someone before, but I DO get why they console-restrict saves. It makes downloading saves from the internet for cheats or for the advantage of having some sort of advantage in the save file done by a hacker extremely difficult.

The one thing that is abound on PC gaming forums are people swapping save files or uploading ones with purposefully cheated stats or resources. Consoles have it less so, but the way Nintendo does their save files makes this nearly impossible.

While that inconveniences people with multiple systems, it definitely eliminates that "go on the internet and download a save file with 189723891278931 gold or 81728937913 lives" stuff that people all over PCs do

(forgive me for replying to an old topic here but I lost my entire Rayman Legends game so I'm looking up ways to backup my saved games and ran across this so I'm commenting)

ZyroXZ2, you are absolutely right! It definitely would make that near impossible. But my thought is this... if I paid for the game, it's mine. If I want to be a cheater, who cares? How does it hurt the company if I cheat? I mean, pirating a game I understand how that hurts a company. But if I go out and buy a game, the company made its money. Now who cares -how- I play the stupid thing? I mean personally I think it's a waste of money if you go out and buy it and then you just cheat. And I've found that cheating tends to ruin a game for me anyway...I get bored with it. Morrowind, for example. My son and I discovered that you could use those trapped souls with a stat spell (it's been so many years, I don't remember the particulars) and instead of casting at another target, point the camera at your own feet and cast it and it would cast on you. We jacked our own stats up HUGE that way. Our JUMP stat got so high we could jump across half the map in one jump. But then the game got boring to our own surprise... and we just stopped playing. Never did beat the game.

But if buying the game then running it over with your car is what makes you happy, you have that right! Yes? It's this same idea with gifts that I learned back in my early 20's from a very dear friend in college. Thank goodness I met her and she taught me so many things. My father's side of the family always attaches strings to gifts. But that's not the point of gifts. You buy the gift in the HOPES of pleasing that person. But once it leaves your hands, it's done. It is theirs to do with as they choose. If I give my son a Wii U for his birthday and what makes him happy is to sink it to the bottom of the ocean, then it was his to do that with. My happiness comes from the act of being kind and giving something to others, not in being a nazi and making sure he does with it what I want him to and how I want him to do it.

It's the same with our purchases. We shouldn't be beholden to game companies once we've purchased the product to play the game a certain way, in my opinion. They may have created the game to be played a certain way but we shouldn't have to be held to playing it that way. (what if musicians forced us to interpret their songs the exact way they meant them? or artists made us see their paintings exactly the way they wanted us to see them?) Now if it's an online game, yes. That's different only because it has to be kept fair for people of different abilities who will be playing together, and where what I do affects other people like in the case of purchasing gold on MMOs since it affects the economy of the entire game. But a single-player game, no. It doesn't affect anyone but me. So if I want to cheat, it does nothing but benefits/hurts me.

Of course now I've made this long speech and I've probably missed some big point somewhere and I'll be completely embarrassed. laugh And by the way, I wasn't ranting or making a case angrily above... just explaining my thoughts. I know it's hard to tell tone in text so I thought I'd let you know that my tone above was not frustrated, irritated, or angry. I'm smiling and drinking apple juice. giggle

I -DO-, however, want to know more about how to backup my saved games. You CAN use your SD card? I've been reading that that had no function for the Wii U at all, that the SD card wouldn't see Wii U data, and it was only used for the Wii games? Did they make some changes there? How do I do this?

But yeah, backups.... so if I accidentally poof my entire game like with Rayman Legends, I can get it back. I play on the gamepad without the TV (since a lot of times I don't feel well enough to get out of bed) and apparently when choosing the TV Off Mode option on the menu, you can accidently, on occasion, hit New Game and not realize it. And both things bring up a confirmation dialog box.

I've been very sick, lot of pain, and I have some narcoleptic type episodes where I tend to fall asleep uncontrollably. I was doing that, on and off, last week and I was kinda half awake and (tried to) hit the TV Off Mode on the menu and the confirmation came up. I didn't read it, I just hit continue as usual. Instead of going to the screen it normally goes to, it started a new game... and immediately automatically saved over my old game!

The bigger suck is that not only do I have to redo all the regular levels and stuff, but the game also has these daily and weekly challenges where you go up against people all around the world and strive for best times and distances... and try to get trophies and such for your achievements. That's something you can't redo. Ever. Those particular achievements I accomplished are just poofed. Blargh.

I get so frustrated with poor design in games and consoles when it comes to major things like this.
No way to backup your saves? Major design flaw!
Having two options that close together, one that you might use every time you start the game up, the other that would completely erase your game, both having a very similar looking pop-up confirmation box.... HUGE design flaw!
Especially since little kids play this game. I've seen parents talking about how their kids have accidentally poofed their game several times due to this flaw. =( sad panda

Anyway, I'm glad you guys are talking about backups. Definitely an important topic! Thanks all! =)

Oh, btw..... HI ALL! I'm new... and I write long posts. Sorry for that. It's MY design flaw. laugh

No response, so I'll give it a go to make you feel welcome.

Yes you can backup your save data/game. If you're using a disc release the data file is smaller and stored on the internal flash, but it can be copied to an external device for backup purposes. If you're taking about a downloaded game the save data is included with that - you cannot separate the two, so you'll necessarily need a larger backup device.

The SD card slot can be accessed by some Wii U games: Smash Bros uses it to save custom dioramas, for example, but it cannot be used for backup purposes. Only something that looks like an external hard drive will do that job; you could use SD via a USB card reader, but if you're already buying download titles I think an external hard drive is a worthwhile investment (though you'd really want two for backup purposes). Bear in mind that the Wii U doesn't output sufficient power over USB to drive a portable hard disk, so you'll need either a powered USB hub or a y-cable which is compatible with your drive so you can use two USB ports to drive it.

Hi Sean_Aaron. Thank you for replying. That was so kind of you. =)

What I ended up doing was putting a 32GB USB flash drive into one of the USB ports and formatting it and copying all of my saved data over to that. What I wanted to do was just to use it that way, to periodically copy my data over to it to back it up. But I think that the Wii U is using the flash drive now as my primary storage device. It looks like it's accessing it anyway when I'm playing Rayman Legends.... the light on the flash drive blinks faster like it's being accessed.

But it's nice to be able to have the ability to backup my saves at least. I know, though, that if the Wii U gets restored to factory settings or something of that nature, that it won't recognize the flash drive anymore until it's reformatted.... at least I believe that's what I've read elsewhere. Is that correct? So my backup saves would be useless to me unless I sent the whole console into Nintendo for repairs with the flash drive and paid the fee to have the saves transferred is my understanding (unless it's under warranty in which case they'd do it for free).

But I'm not complaining. Barring system failure, which I'm in see-no-failure mode, my flash drive should be an ample means of backing up my saved games, right?

Thanks again for replying. It's great how little things like that can really help someone feel more welcome and a part of a community rather than not. =)

Backing up save data on WU sounds (like an) obnoxious (problem). What I do for my 3ds is every once in a while pop my 3ds current sd card into my pc, & I just copy the entire drive(you can do that in Windows 7, I do it to guarantee I don't forget anything, or lose hidden files on the card's root directory, since I use it occasionally for other things, like Smash WU photos) to a destination folder labeled (folder #)(date in mm/dd/yyyy form)(few key words to describe photo contents, &/or changes, such as updates)

I found this to be extremely annoying, & I always wished Nintendo would have corrected that. I'm no expert, but I think it's possible the reason for this, might have been something to do, w/ online data codes of sorts, probably unique addresses, since each online-compatible game had a code that merged w/ the Wii console to form a new, unique code. This is just speculation, of course.

For what it's worth, in the early 90's, Nintendo tried to stop sales of an unlicensed Nes peripheral(the Game Genie). As I recall, their argument/case was that the Game Genie allowed people to beat a game too quickly, & then they got bored w/ the game. I am pretty sure they saw it as threatening to their (games') sales, since in theory, some kid that doesn't own Super Mario Bros. 3 for example, goes to his friend's house, his friend has a Game Genie, they cheat, & beat the game. The kid then has no interest in purchasing SMB3. In my opinion, Nintendo's argument was valid, but such a scenario did not grantee lost sales.

In this regard, I think Nintendo simply still has the mentality that cheat-to-beat scenarios always lead to poor sales. Lastly, remember the WU is only the 2nd Nintendo console to be more pc-like in functions(3rd Nintendo machine counting the 3ds, & 4th if you count the DS/DSi system interface). This doesn't excuse them from poor programming practices, but helps explain it.

Is it possible to share save data between 2 devices. What I mean by this is could I have for example:

• My main save files, main DLC and Mario Kart 8/Tropical Freeze digital download on the Wii U's memory
• All VC, 3rd party digital downloads and save files for those games (e.g. Splinter Cell Blacklist, Rayman Legends) on the external hard drive

That way if my hard drive fails, the most important saves are still safe.

Rather than shout out to individuals I'll try to cover it all in a hopefully coherent post.

Yes, the online data backup block was annoying on the Wii; thankfully Wii - Wii U transfer includes all save data, but naturally you still cannot transfer those saves to SD card in Wii mode afterwards (groan).

Although Wii U backups may look onerous they really aren't outside of the lack of tracking the last time a file was copied and the timing issues relating to when you connect/disconnect an additional drive. One nice thing is that you select all the data you want copied and it does it in one go - that wasn't possible on the Wii.

If you've never used an external device I think it might give you a simple "use this for storage?" query, but you should be able to move data back to internal storage because selecting the copy/move data option in settings should allow you to copy/move whatever you like wherever you like (well, limited to internal storage and up to two external devices), including to multiple external drives.

NOTE the Wii U will not boot with more than one external storage device attached! You can only attach a second external drive after going into the copy/move settings (if you do it earlier the Wii U will stop and tell you to disconnect it; if you're in the Wii U menu it will reboot) and you need to disconnect it before exiting that area or again, the system will reboot itself (if you disconnect after exiting that part of settings but before going back to the main menu you'll get a warning about disconnecting hard drives when the system is running). So if you want to separate games you'd need to get into the habit of shutting down the Wii U and swapping drives; you can unplug a drive when the machine is running (and risk data corruption) but if you connect one the system will not simply read it and continue.

Yes, if you get a new Wii U your external drive data will not be readable because it's linked to both the system hardware and the NNID. I think recently it's been stated that Nintendo can enable an NNID transfer remotely, but I f you have a fault with your Wii U, getting it repaired is preferable to replacement to avoid lengthy repeat downloading. This shouldn't apply to doing a system swap using the Wii U migration tool; only if your Wii U was totally broken.