[HOW-TO] Backup your savegames with Dropbox

[Xodan Rot]

Hey, I have seen a lot of people here having problems with losing their game progress. There is a simple and comfortable way to backup your savegames automatically. The solution is "Dropbox". It's a cloud service that uploads the content of a folder to your personal online storage. The difference to the "Steam Cloud" is that "Dropbox" allows you to restore old versions of the files in that folder with it's web interface. That means when you run into a bug or do something stupid you can just restore the previous version of your save file. Another difference to "Steam Cloud" is that the way I will show you here, the save files will be uploaded while you're playing and not only after closing the game. That way you can restore the game progress from the last ingame savepoint. And also important: "Dropbox" is a very reliable service. I'm using it for a long time already and it always worked.

So what do you have to do to backup your savegames with "Dropbox"? There's a very easy way to do so.

1. Create a "Dropbox" account and download and install the client. You can either do that by going to dropbox.com or if you like this tutorial you can use this link which will give me (and you) additional storage space: {LINK REMOVED}http://db.tt/WrO5cXf
2. Download "Dropbox Folder Sync" and install it. Start the program and select the location of your "Dropbox" folder. Download: http://satyadeepk.in/dropbox-folder-sync/
3. Now go to your "Borderlands 2" savegame folder. On Windows 7 this folder is in: C:\Users\[YourUsername]\Documents\My Games\Borderlands 2\WillowGame. Now right-click on the "SaveData" folder and select "Sync with Dropbox" from the context menu. This will move the folder into your "Dropbox" and create a hardlink at its old position.
4. You're done!

Now every time the game is saved it will be uploaded to "Dropbox".

So how do you restore your savegame in case something bad happend?

1. Log in at dropbox.com
2. Navigate to the save file.
3. Left-click on the file and select "More". Now you can see "Older versions". Click that option. Now you will see all the backups of the save file. You can either download an older version or let "Dropbox" restore it. I uploaded my "SaveData" folder to "Dropbox" yesterday and already have 84 different versions of it saved online. I can restore every single version of it.

I hope you liked this little tutorial! If you have any questions I will try to answer them.

TornadoX

[INSTG8R™]

I figure this a good enough reason to bump this. I had been doing some reading over at the Official forums.
Of course the modders are trying there best to get into the guts of this and start playing with it.
Well they made some VERY significant changes this time. Alot of the files that use to be open including your Profile are now encrypted making alot of simple tricks in BL1 now impossible.

From the thread:

the save file is compressed with LZO-Professional v2.0 and signed with a SHA-1 checksum.

Now I didn't go thru it all but this is the situation with some of the more important files used by modders

But this might also explain the cloud sync's possible issues dealing with a compressed encrypted file. I can't recall the game now but there was another game that had issues with how the save files were done as well and the Cloud couldn't handle it.

Now of course this is speculation on my part but it does make some sense and recalling a Cloud issue in the past with handling of an "odd" save file(wish I could remember the game tho, thinking it might have been TDU2 which also encrypted the save file to prevent tampering)

TL;DR :

I think the Save game corruption is being caused by the fact the Cloud can't properly handle the Save Files Compressed, Encrypted File Type :)

[Xodan Rot]

I don't really think that's the problem. "Steam Cloud" doesn't have to "understand" the content of the file to upload it. It just has to create a 1:1 copy of it. I think the problem with "Steam Cloud" is something else: There is just too much load on the "Steam Cloud" servers. More and more people are playing games on Steam, more and more games support savegame uploads and more and more people upload their screenshots to it. All of this is causing the servers to overload and they aren't able to handle another connection when you try to upload your newest savegame. So that means "Steam Cloud" will still have old saves and the new saves will only be stored on your PC.

"Dropbox" has always been able to upload and synchronize every file for me. And I'm already using it for a long time. So if you use "Dropbox" to backup and synchronize your savegames you won't have whatever problem "Steam Cloud" is having.

[Xodan Rot]

Bump so more people see it and do backups.

Especially because the "badass rank reset" glitch still exists (100+ pages in the official forums): http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=150243

[bukkie661]

How very convoluted...
Make a map on your desktop.
Go to: My Games\Borderlands 2\willowgame\Savedata\[lotsanumbers]
Lasso all files in that folder, right click and select copy.
Paste files in the map on your desktop.

Optional, do the files-swap trick to get insane badass points if you're so inclined, lol.

[wesmagyar]

According to chrome this site is suspected of malware distribution....

[Smog....🐸]

Seems to me as someone has already said that its a long winded way of doing the same thing Steam does already when all you need do is drop a copy of the save game files to a folder on the desktop.

Its not like this isn't a new problem, its been discussed to death and it all boils down to your choice when you start the game.....it actually asks which version you would like to use be that the cloud or local, just hit local and the problem no longer exists or better still disable cloud saving if you only use the one machine.

KISS.....Keep It Simple Stupid......lols or something like that.

[Xodan Rot]

Originally posted by Javamonsoon:

Make a map on your desktop.
Go to: My Games\Borderlands 2\willowgame\Savedata\[lotsanumbers]
Lasso all files in that folder, right click and select copy.
Paste files in the map on your desktop.

That's not the same, though.

1. You will have to do that manually. Every time.
2. You won't do that while you play so you only have backups after your sessions not during.
3. You don't have a "infinite" amount of older versions of your saves that way. Of course you can create a new folder every time. But that will get annoying later.

According to chrome this site is suspected of malware distribution....

I'm using Firefox and Avast Web Rep and I'm not getting any warnings.

[Xodan Rot]

Anyone still interested? :)

[GoldenVega333]

Sorry to necro this thread.

I'm creating an application to backup saved games to any cloud service which has its own synced folder:
http://pedrocaleiro.com/eeriegamesync/

It does the same as DropboxFolderSync. If you use it please submit feature requests and bug reports.