Note from Wololo: This tutorial was initially published by /Talk member KronosXLI, as part of our monthly tutorial contest. KronosXLI won the “mods award” in June (a $10 PSN Code) for his entry. You can find the original post here.

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This tutorial is intended for use with downloaded games but can be used with physical titles as well.

You know where on the PSP, PS3 and PS4, you can delete a game and not worry about losing your progress or vice versa. Well that is not the case on the Vita and that’s a problem. This problem exists because someone at Sony thought it was a good idea to combine game data and save data without any form of save management functions on the Vita.

Since there are no save management options available unless explicitly made available in game, we are forced to keep backup of entire games on our systems if we want to free up space on our Vita while keeping our saves. Worse yet, depending on the game we might need to re-download the game in its entirety if we need a fresh start and we all know how superfast PSN downloads are right?

Without any more ranting here is what you’ll need:

• Your PS Vita
• A PC (Windows 8.1 OS in my case)
• CMA, OCMA or QCMA installed (is there a Mac/Linux version of QCMA? If not then you must use Windows)
• Your game downloaded/installed on your Vita

 

Now the instructions:
1. Backup your game to your PC via CMA
2. Locate where the game is backed up, it’s usually located in "C:\Users\[User]\Documents\PS Vita\APP\[appfiles]\" in Windows where [User] is your user profile and [appfiles] is a 16-character folder unique to your PSN ID or check CMA options for the Applications/Backup location.

 

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3. Copy your game backup somewhere you can easily find it. In my case the game is in a folder named “PCSE00465", which is Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment [US]. You can also check a folder inside called “sce_sys" for the “icon0.png" to see which game folder you are in. This step is optional and mostly to identify where the game is and in case something goes wrong you can copy it back.
4. Make sure CMA or QCMA is closed.
5. *In the game’s folder, copy the “savedata" folder somewhere you can find it. This is, as the name states, your game’s save files.

Now, if you are trying to start fresh without re-downloading the game (deleting your save):

• Delete the game from your Vita (if you done the save will still be there)
• Delete the “savedata" folder from the game’s folder e.g. from my “PCSE00465" folder.
• Start CMA and copy the game from the PC to the Vita

The game should now start with all your DLC and updates without any save file.

To backup your save (minus the 3GB+ game), hold on to the “savedata" folder you copied in step 5 above and label it appropriately. You can then delete the game from your Vita and/or PC.

To restore your save, repeat steps 1 and 2 then copy your save from step 5 to the game’s folder(overwrite if necessary) then copy the game back to your Vita. Be careful as some games may need you to update the game to use your save like SAO so remember to re-download and install the updates and DLC.

*Note for step 5: The save files in the “savedata” folder are encrypted. As such we cannot manage the individual saves (in the case of multiple save slots) for games like Gravity Rush.

Those with a PS+ subscription won’t really need this since they can upload/download their saves.

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