Seriously; just do it every once and a while if you're fond of your game saves and don't feel like re-downloading everything you bought/demoed off the PSN Store and reinstalling all your games again.

A little FYI for those who have swapped out HDDs; the PS3 will require a format of your old drive if you were to say, install it in a new PS3. In other words, it won't allow you to use all the data that's on it. Back up data however, will work nicely.

(PS3 died earlier this week, and the 210GB of data on the drive had to be reformatted for the new system to utilize the drive. Ouch.)

I wish it would allow you to (easily) select what you want to back up instead of forcing you to back-up all your saves, music, videos, etc. I'd back-up every week if I could just get the save files.

I know you can back up each save file individually, but that is more time consuming that just clicking back-up saves.

Definitely. Data back up is manageable with say a 60 or 80GB drive, but if you upgrade to something much larger and use the additional space, it means having to have a home server or additional back up drive large enough to hold the new HDD imprint.

I used to back up individual game saves to USB drive, but doing them one by one became too tedious, especially since many of them are dynamic game saves that update each time you play the game.

Some like Rock Band won't even let you back up your game save, since it presumably contains an encrypted data key containing all your download track information. Considering all the hours I killed unlocking tracks in that game, I'd rather just start over completely with RB2 with the downloaded tracks from RB1 (great feature for $5).

Even if there was just something simpler like an user account data back up option (user game saves, installs and PSN purchases), it would allow much greater flexibility in addition to making the back up process much faster for those with larger drives.

I still have a 60GB back up imprint from about three months ago, but after finding out you couldn't just swap drives and use the console data stored on it, I decided to just start over from scratch. No game saves, no installs, etc. The only thing I have is my trophy data, which while nice, is nothing compared to the saves.

When I get the 60GB console fixed, I'll load up my old data back up on to that one and use it as a secondary/back up PS3 for playing PS2 games and old PS3 games. Figure I can then transfer the game saves back to the new console.

I frankly don't think it is worth it. You can redownload everything off the PSN that you lost except your save files. I am unwilling to commit that much HDD to backing up what's on my PS3 when so much of it can be recovered very easily.

Hell, you can even download save files online that are close if not exactly comparable to your own.

Its a nice feature, but I'd rather have the extra HDD space on one of my drives.

But if they gave you the option to just back up saves with 1 click (instead of 3 clicks per save when doing them individually), you could back up your saves weekly and they would take less than 20 MB per back-up. What I want is for them to expand our back up options so you include the elements you really want to back-up.

Actually you can back up your saves individually, I forgot.  I am still not that worried about it until my HDD starts acting up.  Not something I am willing to do on any kind of often basis.

It would be nice if you could back them all up at once, but its really not that big of an issue.  I mean how many games are you constantly updating your save file weekly on?  3 at the most?  I am generally only updating one.

yeah, which is what the "3 click per save when doing them individually" means.

Yes, back-ups are a good idea. My PS3's disc drive failed the other day and I've had to back up the game saves onto a USB pen drive. There's not enough room on it for a proper back-up so I'll have to re-download everything when I get the PS3 back from repairs.

Sony's customer service told me to remove my 320GB hard drive before I send in my PS3 so it'll reformat itself when I put it back in, which is really annoying. I don't see why I can't just leave the hard drive in, since they're going to repair it instead of sending a replacement.

It's only worth it if you lose your data. Fortunately, it's not something that's common, but hard drives can and do fail. The PS3 as well, reliable as it may be, can and does on occasion fail.

Regular back ups of most data stored on the HDD is not necessary, but a game save back up utility would be nice (to also back up your PS2 and PS1 virtual cards). Downloading game saves won't put you back into the same spot you were in during your own play through, and it won't give you back character customizations for games that have them. Doesn't work for any RPG either for the same reasons (stats). They're only useful for enabling bonus material and cheats you haven't unlocked yourself.

Redownloading all your demos and purchases eats up a lot of time and bandwidth too, so I prefer not to take the same Xbox 360 20GB and Wii approach to console data management, where low storage is "acceptable" because one can always delete and redownload everything. Such solutions never beat having all your data available instantly.

In the future, it just means I'll either buy yet another back up drive or just switch to a 1TB external back up drive and eventually an external RAID array/data server to make the process faster and more reliable.

Kind of a pain, but if you've been bitten in the ass more than once by massive data loss, it's worth it.

i only back up my saves, everything else can be redownloaded.