Back up save files on RG350 devices

Last updated: 02DEC2020 (see Changelog for details)

If you want to back up your save files on the RG350, RG350M, or RG350P, it usually involves finding each emulator’s default save location, which follows no standard hierarchy. Luckily, somebody recognized this inconsistency and built an app that allows you to back up save files to your external SD card, and then also restore these save files back to your internal card.

The app is called SaveSync, and it works really well for both save files and save states.

Table of contents:
Supported systems
Installation and configuration
Known issues
Changelog

Supported systems

SaveSync works on the following emulators:

• Screenshots (backup only)
• FCEUX (NES emulator)
• Gambatte (GameBoy/GameBoy Color emulator)
• OhBoy (GameBoy/GameBoy Color emulator)
• ReGBA (GameBoy Advance Emulator)
• PCSX4all (PlayStation 1 emulator)
• PicoDrive (Sega Master System/Genesis/Game Gear emulator)
• SMS Plus (Sega Master System/Genesis/Sega CD emulator)
• PocketSNES (Super NES emulator)
• Snes9x (Super NES emulator)
• SwanEmu (Wonderswan emulator)
• Temper (PC Engine emulator)

Installation and configuration

To install this app, download the latest .opk release from GitHub, then place it in the media/data/apps folder on your internal SD card (see my transfer guide for more info). Make sure that you have an external SD card inserted into your device, and make sure that your device is set to the correct date and time (via the “Clock” application on your device).

Once installed, you will find the app in the “Applications” tab of your device. Simply start up the app and you’ll be greeted by the front menu. Here are the various options available (taken from the developer’s GitHub page):

• Backup – Copies save data from the internal storage to a folder called “backup” on the external storage. If there is no backup folder present, the app will automatically create one. Saves exported to the external storage can then be transferred to other devices or even used in other emulators. The app will overwrite any existing saves in the backup folder even if it has a newer modified date than the internal save.
• Restore – Transfers backed up save data from the external storage to the internal storage. This is useful if saves were exported for external editing or use on other devices and will allow the device to then use the edited or updated save data. The app will overwrite any existing saves in the internal folder even if it has a newer modified date than the external save.
• Sync – The app will attempt to merge the contents of both the internal storage and the backup folder, if certain files are newer on the internal storage then it will overwrite the version in the backup folder and vice-versa. Useful if you want to unify save data between multiple devices.
• Snapshots – Create multiple backups of different time points and restore from any of them. For RPG players, this feature would be quite useful as it lets you create multiple backup archives and then restore to any one of them, like having save states for your save states.
• Advanced options – Allows various features to be debugged.

After running the Backup function, you will find a folder named “backup” on your external SD card. Inside, there will be folders for each emulator, which will include save states and save files.

For more information, including a walkthrough of Snapshots, be sure to check out the original GitHub page.

Note that GitHub user vloschiavo has made an update to this app which also includes the following systems/games:

• Devilution
• ScummVM
• Ur-Quan Masters
• Atari800
• OpenDune
• OpenLara
• GCW Connect
• Super Mario 64 port

Known issues

Some known issues and quirks (also taken from the developer’s GitHub page):

• The first time this app is run, it may take longer than usual as it needs to generate the initial backup folder structure and files. Subsequent runs will be much faster as it only accesses files that have changed since the last backup.
• After running backup/restore/sync for the first time, some emulators might take a little longer than usual to start up. This only happens once and is due to a limitation with OpenDingux itself.
• SaveSync will only check timestamps when deciding whether or not to overwrite save data. This means if you backup your saves and then start a fresh save on one of the games and replace the backed up file with the fresh save, it will replace the save on the internal partition on the next sync because its last-modified timestamp is more recent.
• OpenDingux has this weird quirk where if you make some file transfers in the terminal, it doesn’t always commit those changes right away. This means sometimes if you create a backup and then power off the system immediately, those saves might not be transferred properly. I’m not sure why OpenDingux does this, but just to be safe I’d recommend waiting 5 seconds after closing SaveSync before powering off.

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Changelog

02DEC2020
– added note about updated version of this app

05NOV2020
– added some additional notes from developer

16OCT2020
– published guide