My PS4 (it's a PS4 slim, to be more precise) is not turning on properly anymore and it has the "blue light of death" (BLOD). Whenever I try to start it up the screen stays black and I can't really interact with the device at all.

The warranty expired already long ago and Sony kindly offered to replace the device relatively cheaply, which would be cool except I'd loose all my game data (they would not fix my broken device but rather send me a different one) because, unfortunately, I was stupid and I have no backups. So before I send my PS4 slim to Sony, I would prefer to either (a) try to fix it myself or (b) somehow perform a game data backup.

I have done some research on what could cause the BLOD and found on youtube a tutorial about how to fix it if there is a problem with the heatsink clamp. An electronics-savvy friend of mine tried that with my PS4 but it did not work (guess the heatsink clamp was not the problem then).

Now my last idea is to try to access the PS4-internal hard drive from my Macbook in order to extract the game data. I have also done some online research about this but without success. Notice that RemotePlay does not work because I cannot even connect to my PS4 (for a manual connection I would have to enter a code that's shown on screen connected to the PS4, but as mentioned above, that screen stays black).

Does anyone have an idea how to:
(1) connect my Macbook with the PS4 slim via a cable
(2) access the game data on the PS4 hard drive
(3) store that data on my Macbook (or an external hard drive) in a way that I can push it back on a new PS4?

I am by no means a hacker (as in hacking into computer systems) but I'm a python programmer and no stranger to the console. So if there is a solution that requires me to go a bit deeper into the system, that should be ok. Any ideas?

Many thanks

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1 Answer

Unfortunately, the data on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 hard drives are locked to their respective console. So even if you can read the hard drive in your Mac, it's totally useless to try copying it to a different console. If Sony fixes your old console you could simply try imaging the drive and restore it, but if they send you a "new" one, you're out of luck.

FWIW, PS3 and PS4 hard drives are easy to remove from the console. Then it's just a hard drive you can connect to a PC with any sort of SATA connector.

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