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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - can I copy save data to another Wii U console?

Curmudgeon on 28 January 2016

Until now I've been sharing my Wii U with someone else, but I'm about to move and we've decided to buy another Wii U so we both have our own. However, both of us would like to keep our save data. It seems that if you transfer data to another Wii U, all data on the console will be transfered and afterwards deleted from the 'source' Wii U.

Does not anyone know if there's a way around this problem? Or is 1 of us doomed to lose his save files?



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Slarvax on 28 January 2016

Aahm... try copying everything to an HDD? Nothing else comes to mind. Sorry.



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Ultrashroomz on 28 January 2016
Slarvax said:
Aahm... try copying everything to an HDD? Nothing else comes to mind. Sorry.

I don't think that'll work unfortunately.





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Platina on 28 January 2016

Not that I can think of.. D:

It's a lot like transferring data from the Wii to Wii U or from 3DS to 3DS..

Data and saves are locked to one system and to prevent pirating and whatever, they are set only to one system so if you transfer data, it will be deleted from the original



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Platina on 28 January 2016
RolStoppable said:
You can copy save files to an USB device (games with strong online components can be exceptions). What happens afterwards if you try to move them on another Wii U, I do not know. But by merely making a copy of your save files, you can fiddle around with them, and if it doesn't work, they will still be intact on the Wii U you copied them from. Basically, trying won't hurt.

Do you know if saves are labelled nicely in folders or are they obscure jumble of words and numbers?

If I recall correctly, my 3DS SD card has folder names that are seemingly random so finding the correct file is a bit of a hassle..



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Curmudgeon on 28 January 2016

Thanks for the replies. A shame there appears to be no convenient solution. When I have my new Wii U I'll try copying to a USB device to see if I can make it work. If not, we'll have a little competition about who gets to keep his saves. It's been decided we'll settle it in Smash!



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episteme on 28 January 2016

No, you can copy games and savegames to an external drive, but you can only access them with your console.

Probably because the most popular Wii hacks were based on manipulated savegames that you could download from the internet and access them on the Wii over the SD card slot.



Platina on 28 January 2016
RolStoppable said:
Platina said:

Do you know if saves are labelled nicely in folders or are they obscure jumble of words and numbers?

If I recall correctly, my 3DS SD card has folder names that are seemingly random so finding the correct file is a bit of a hassle..

I am not talking about moving anything to a PC. We aren't talking about a system transfer here, but merely about moving individual save files to a different system.

If you go into the Wii U data management menu, you'll get to view all games you have save files for. If you click on a game, you'll see the save files for individual users, nicely labeled with their name and a picture of their Mii. From there you select what you want to copy to an USB device. Afterwards you put the USB device in another Wii U, go to data management, view what's on the USB stick and it should show the games and save files just as before. I don't think that the copy process in and of itself should be an issue, but rather the fact that save files are tied to users. If a given user is not present on the new Wii U, then it should be impossible to load those files. You might get around that by tying an NNID to your username on the original Wii U and then using the same NNID on the new Wii U. That might be possible because it's just save files, not eShop account stuff that would necessitate a full system transfer.

There are games that do not tie save files to individual users, so at least those should be easy to copy to another Wii U, all the while keeping them on the initial Wii U as well.

Oh okay, I see what you mean.

This is the part that I don't think will work.. If I am correct, the system configures the memory stick to work for it exclusively so when you place a memory stick on to another system, the Wii U will detect that it is not original and will not read it in the first place

Same thing as placing an SD card from one 3DS to another basically



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TomaTito on 28 January 2016

Nintendo formats every storage device into their WiiU file system, whatever it is. Either way, save data is normally stored together with the game data, for some reason they can't be seperated (only if you delete the game data).

This summer I lost all my Splatoon progress when the external storage got corrupted, somehow my game's content and save file got stored there... Now I store all the save files in the internal memory.

I've discussed this issue with a friend, and we thought that a cloud base system would be great. Then you could load your progress in a friends console; maybe NeXt.



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