Our guide on how to copy your save game files from your old PS4 to your shiny new PS4 Pro will help you continue your favourite games on the next Playstation, without losing all of your progress.
With Sony’s new PlayStation 4 Pro due to arrive on November 10th, a lot of gamers have been asking “what happens to all my save data when I upgrade? Will I just lose all that progress?” After all, not many people would be thrilled at the prospect of starting Witcher 3 from scratch after 30-40 hours of gameplay, without seeing the ending first.
No worries. Sony has thankfully planned ahead and transferring your save data from all of your games is actually pretty easy. Here’s how to copy your save games, system settings and other important stuff from the old PS4 to the new PS4 Pro, including what to do if you’ve swapped out your original Playstation hard drive.
Read next: PS4 tips, tricks and best hidden features
Transferring PS4 Saves To PS4 Pro Method 1 – Ethernet
Similar to transferring data between a PC and a Mac, you can use an Ethernet cable to move data between a PS4 and a PS4 Pro. According to Sony this should move all of your precious data over, including your save files, screenshots, saved video clips and even system settings.
However, like moving data from a Mac to a PC, this process is likely to take absolutely ages. You also can’t transfer games between two machines, which is a minor annoyance. Instead you’ll have to re-install them once you’ve booted up your new PS4 Pro.
However, if you are planning on selling or trading your old PS4 in before you buy your new PS4 Pro, this method obviously won’t work as you’ll need both consoles. Thankfully Sony has thought of this too, and there are other ways to copy your save games and other bits to the new Playstation.
Transferring PS4 Saves to PS4 Pro Method 2 – Use The Cloud
If you have a PlayStation Plus account, you can use online storage to move your important data to your new PS4 Pro instead.
Users who have PlayStation Plus now get 10GB of cloud storage, increased from the 1GB you used to get. Thankfully 10GB should be enough to store all of your save files, screenshots and videos. You can’t store actual games in the cloud, so you’ll have to manually re-install them from disc or re-download them when you boot up your new PS4 Pro.
If you haven’t ever automatically uploaded your save files to the cloud, now is probably a good time to start. All you have to do to enable this is go into “Settings”, then “Application Data Management”, then “Saved data in system” and then “Upload to online storage”.
Once you’ve set up your PS4 Pro, it’s very easy to download your saves from the cloud. Just go into “Settings” then “Application Data Management” and then “Saved data in online storage”. From here select “Download to system storage” and you will get all those precious save files back.
Transferring PS4 Saves to PS4 Pro: A warning if you replaced the standard Hard Drive on your old PlayStation 4
If you replaced the standard 500GB or 1TB drive on your old PlayStation 4, transferring your data might be a bit trickier. There will be no issue actually moving the drive as the PS4 Pro has the exact same hard drive slot as the standard PlayStation 4 (2.5” SATA), so you can just remove it and put it in the new machine.
However, this is where potential “weirdness” might start to become an issue. If you put your existing Hard Disk Drive into your new PS4 Pro, the PS4 Pro will format the drive. Meaning all the content you have on the drive will be erased. While this isn’t a disaster if you have set up PlayStation Plus online storage using the steps above, you’ll lose everything if you haven’t backed up to the cloud.
So before moving your hard drive across to your new Pro, make sure you back all your game saves up online. Especially if you’ve already started Skyrim Remastered and don’t want to lose all of those hours of progress.
If you don’t have PlayStation Plus, we would recommend getting a one month membership just for this reason. It’ll make your life much more pleasant when the Pro arrives, rather than a whole load of hurt and heartache.
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