While professional data recovery companies can handle virtually anything, the Sony PlayStation presents several significant challenges. Generally, if you’ve lost data from a PlayStation, you’ll need to use Sony’s utilities.
Below, we’ll explain why, then provide some general tips for PlayStation data recovery.
Why Professional Data Recovery Companies May Not Provide PlayStation Data Recovery
Data recovery can be expensive. While game data may be valuable, most users would rather restore their purchased games from Sony’s cloud service, even if that means losing some of their progress and achievements. As a result, data recovery providers don’t get many opportunities to restore data from PlayStation systems.
Secondly, Sony PlayStation drives use a proprietary file system, which isn’t widely supported. Professional data recovery laboratories use an array of industry-standard tools that are designed for NTFS, EXT, HFS+, and other common file systems — but not PFS (Pseudo/PlayStation File System).
In order to recover data from a PlayStation console, data recovery providers would need to create specialized utilities. That’s not practical, given the relatively low need for professional data recovery from PS4/PS5 systems.
And last but not least, PlayStation systems use proprietary hardware encryption. Encryption improves security (and prevents users from hacking their systems to run unauthorized software), but complicates data recovery.
Recovering Data from a Sony PS4 or PS5
If you’ve lost data from a PS4/PS5 hard drive, the best course of action is to use PlayStation’s built-in utilities. For PS4:
- From the Home Menu, go to Settings.
- Choose System.
- Choose Back Up and Restore.
- Choose Restore PS4.
- Select Restore and select Yes to confirm the operation.
For the PS5, use the cloud restore option if available:
- Open Settings.
- Scroll to Saved Data and Game/App Settings.
- Choose Cloud Storage.
- Choose Download to Console Storage.
- Choose the games/data you’d like to recover, then finish the operation.
Don’t Trust Data Recovery Software for PS4/PS5
Recently, we’ve seen a number of companies advertising data recovery software for PlayStation. We would take their claims with an enormous grain of salt — once again, Sony systems use a proprietary file system and hardware encryption. Currently, a reliable software solution simply does not exist.
Software trials may show a large number of “recoverable files,” but if the files are recovered in an encrypted state, they’re not useful for the users — you can’t simply recover the drive to another device, then plug that into your PlayStation.
There’s only one data recovery scenario in which professional providers could offer help: If you’ve accidentally plugged a hard drive with important data into a PlayStation and reformatted it, technicians may be able to recover the (non-PlayStation) files from the drive.
If that’s the case, we strongly recommend disconnecting the hard drive and leaving it powered off. Don’t attempt to use data recovery software (learn how data recovery software can reduce your chances of a successful case result).
Datarecovery.com provides free media evaluations for hard drives, solid-state drives, and other storage devices. We also provide a no data, no charge guarantee: If we’re unable to restore the files you need, you don’t pay for the attempt.
To learn more, submit a case online or call 1-800-237-4200 to speak with an expert.
