a backup

[Delphinus253]

anyone know how to make a backup of your character files to another memcard?

[Bit]

There actually isn't a way to do that.

[Delphinus253]

oh drn

[Soukosa]

The only way that would happen is if a 3rd party wrote a program that ignores the flag that keeps you from doing so. There could also be a homebrewed program to that too, but last I heard, they were having problems accessing the memory cards with them.

[St_Botchua]

if your trying to back up in case of fsod x the best way is i know it sounds bad but dupe everything you have and give that to another char then atleast you wont lose items

[Shimarisu]

There seems to be a problem copying PSO files. I can only add my guess as to how it works, but here's what happened with my USB card:

I had a RAmar and a few other chars on this card. I would routinely back them up, delete them and use the card for a new char, then restore the RAmar and the other 3 chars. This was mostly so I could make mags with new IDs, or to get a new baby mag colour.

When PSO ep 3 arrived, I did not have another memcard. That's OK, I thought, I'll use my USB. Now the GC I play ep 1+2 on is a UK model. The GC I play ep 3 on, is a Japanese model. I knew the memcard was not the same format, so I backed up my data (all of it, every file on the card) three times over in case of problems, then wiped the card and reformatted it to Japanese. I then played ep 3, backed up the data, reformatted the card back to UK format, and wrote my PSO 1+2 files back.

Except, when I loaded them, it didn't work. It said my files were all corrupt. I tried every backup I made, and still, they were corrupt. So I tried the same on the JP cube with the PSO ep 3 save. That too, was reported as corrupt.

I think what PSO 1+2, and ep 3 do, is write an invisible header to the mem card. This will be a piece of data which is not accessible as a file, which verifies the PSO save as valid. So you can use the USB to delete and remake chars and write them back fine, as long as you do not format the card and delete the header. I think this is so people do not upload their chars and other people can download them. I know you can on X-box, but even with 2 USB cards you cannot copy a character to another card on GC. You can have your character backed up on PC, and you can delete chars and write them back, but that is because the header file is still on your card. The header file would be unique to every new character file (of four) made, they would have the same code.
If you deleted all 4 characters on the file, the character file would not be remade so the code would still work. So you can have infinite characters on USB, but only if you do not reformat the card. Does this make sense? Putting your files on another USB would not work either, unless there was some way of dumping the data on the card as-is and not just copying flies over. As of yet there is nothing in the software to do that.

One thing you can certainly do is rewrite the entire character file from your PC backup to the USB. The code on the header file and on the character file remains constant, so you can rewrite it as often as possible. Another thing that is certainly possible is restoring after a corruption. If you get FSOD-X, the invisible header file would not be touched. The character file is corrupted, and that can be restored with USB. However, once you come back online all your items and c mode ranks are reset. That is because your characters are time stamped by the server each time you use them online. It is no biggie, just restore again, transfer items to another mem card, then go back online, have the reset happen, then go offline and transfer back.

I say this of course, but losing my c mode rank was an absolute horrible nightmare. I was however, able to restore all my characters when I got FSOD X 2 days ago.

My Ramar that I deleted myself a few weeks ago though, had to be remade. Luckily he was a low level and didn't have much important stuff.

- Shimarisu

[Soukosa]

The memory cards seem to have a ID number on them that gets set when the card is formated. PSO takes this ID and puts it in the system file when it's first created. Then each time it loads up the data, it checks the stored ID against the ID of the card and if they don't match, it complains about it being corrupted. If you want to see how this works, put just one of the old system file backups on the card and start up PSO with it. It'll create a new character file and guildcard file just fine, but anytime after that when it loads the data, like at the character selection screen, it will say the data's corrupt, but it can't be since it just created it. I've figured out where the ID is located in the data, but I can't change it due to a checksum that's being a pain to crack.

[Shimarisu]

When you find out, could you let me know? I swear I've had some items go missing and they may be on my 'corrupt' data. I also had a full store of mats on one char that I lost (no real problem, as I find them so often on Whitill, but it's very annoying to lose so many).

I can alter the data via a hex editor or something. I meant to look to see if I could do it myself, but given the compression it seemed like too much work for a store of mats, heh.

- Shimarisu

[Soukosa]

I'll let you know, if I ever do figure it out. I've been through this as well, but in a differnt way. The software messed up when I was backing up the data to my computer and it caused the card to need to be reformatted. The data in system file isn't encrypted, so once the checksum is figured out, it'll be easy to change things.