Backup PlayStation 4 Saves to Flash Drive

You can backup saves for your PlayStation 4 games to a flash drive.

These instructions are based on version 2.50 and may be different for future versions.

What you will need

You will need a flash drive that is large enough for the save file you want to copy. As of this writing, this flash drive must be formatted as FAT (including FAT32) or exFAT. Source: http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps4/settings/data_system.html

Due to how the PS4 is designed, your flash drive might not physically fit into one of the USB ports on the front of the system. It's a good idea to have a USB extension cable that you can easily plug into the system.

You can use a USB hub instead of an extension cable. However, backups took an exceptionally long time when I used an AmazonBasics USB 3.0 hub

Backup Individual PS4 Saves

Make sure that your system is on.

1. Connect your flash drive to one of the front ports of your PlayStation 4
• Unlike most devices, you must firmly insert your flash drive into the system or else it will not be fully inserted
2. Go to the Home menu ('PlayStation' button on your controller)
3. Press up until you see the row of icons that starts with Notifications (the symbol where a speech balloon has a lower-case 'i' in it)
4. Select Settings - it's the icon to the immediate left of the power symbol
5. Press X to enter settings
6. Go to Application Saved Data Management
7. Go to Saved Data in System Storage
8. Go to Copy to USB Storage Device
• If you see an error about not having a USB storage device connected, you might not have it fully inserted into your system
9. Select the game you want to backup
10. Select the save file (or Select All to select all of them)
11. Select 'Copy'
• You may be prompted to overwrite an existing save file on the flash drive
12. When finished, remove the flash drive from the PlayStation 4

Where Are My Saves?

The backup process creates a 'PS4' folder in the root of your flash drive. Your PS4 saves are located at:

PS4\SAVEDATA\

The first folder in the save directory might be the system's folder. This might allow multiple saves from the same game but different systems to be backed up to the same flash drive, but I haven't tested this because I only have access to a single PS4.

Folders for individual game saves can be found under that first folder.

Backup Entire System

A previous version of the article mentioned that the PlayStation 4 lacked a backup utility. A recent system update added this functionality. You can read more about it here:

Backup & Restore Playstation 4 System

April 17, 2015 update: instructions updated for PS4 version 2.50
April 20, 2015 update: added link to system backup article