How to back up your saves on Batocera

Do this before you upgrade

Back up your save files

About ten minutes with a computer or a USB stick, and everything you have played survives the upgrade.

An upgrade or a re-image replaces the whole system, so anything you have not copied off the machine first is gone. It takes about ten minutes to do yourself, and this page walks you through it.

Read this part first

We cannot carry your save files across for you, and no one can do it after the fact. Copying them off is the only thing that saves them, and it has to happen before the machine is upgraded.

Where your saves live

Everything is in one folder on the console:

/userdata/saves

Inside it you will find a folder per system (psx, snes, gamecube, dreamcast and so on). Your in-game saves, battery saves and memory cards are all in there. Copy that one folder and you have copied everything.

Two ways to copy it off

Pick whichever suits you. They both end up with the same thing, a complete copy of the saves folder somewhere that is not the console.

Method 1, easiest

Over your network

Your console shares its files on your home network already. Leave it switched on and sitting at the game menu, then from a computer on the same network:

  1. Windows: open File Explorer and type \\BATOCERA\share into the address bar, then press Enter.
  2. Mac: in Finder choose Go, then Connect to Server, and enter smb://batocera. Pick the share folder.
  3. Open the saves folder.
  4. Drag the whole saves folder onto your desktop, or into a folder you will remember.
If the name BATOCERA does not resolve, use the console's IP address instead. You will find it at the top of the main menu on the console, and you would type it as \\192.168.1.50\share or smb://192.168.1.50.
Method 2, no computer

Onto a USB stick

If you would rather not use a computer, plug a USB stick into the console and use the built-in file manager:

  1. Plug the USB stick in and give it a few seconds.
  2. Connect a keyboard and press F1 at the game menu. The file manager opens.
  3. In one pane go to /userdata/saves. In the other pane go to /media and open your USB stick.
  4. Copy the saves folder across, and wait for it to finish before you pull the stick out.

Check it actually worked

Before you send the machine in or start an upgrade, open the copy you made and confirm you can see the system folders inside it, with files in them.

An empty folder that copied in one second is the failure people only notice later. Thirty seconds of looking now is worth more than anything either of us can do afterwards.

Putting them back

After the upgrade, copy the folders back into /userdata/saves on the console the same way you copied them off, keeping the same folder names. Reboot the console and your games will pick the saves back up.

One honest warning about save states

There are two different things people call a save.

A normal in-game save, a battery save or a memory card file will carry over fine. A save state, the instant snapshot you make with the hotkey, is tied to the exact emulator version that wrote it, and an upgrade brings newer emulators. Those states may not load afterwards.

If you have a run in progress that you care about, save it in the game properly before you upgrade.

That's the whole job.

One folder, copied somewhere safe, checked that it is not empty. Once that is done the upgrade cannot cost you anything you have played.