I got myself an Anbernic RG35XX as a birthday present and I am quite happy with it. It’s a really nice little device and I have a lot of fun playing some old games I never got to in the past. Currently I‘m trying to extend my knowledge of the Zelda lore by playing Minish Cap.

But one thing did make me nervous: everything is based on SD cards. All system files, ROMs and save game files are on there and there is no connectivity to automatically transfer your files to another location.

But fortunately, the device has two SD card slots and when you are using the fantastic GarlicOS (for more information see this starter guide) you are able to inject your own shell scripts to the startup process. Neat!

So I wrote a one line script that copies all save games from one card to the other. Currently I‘m running it at every system start and it does not seem to have an impact on the startup time since it only should copy files that changed since the last time.

If you want to use my script, just create a file named backup-saves.sh in CFW/autostart on the ROMS partition of your main SD card and add the following:

#/bin/sh

# If you are using a dual card setup with roms on the second card, use this line:

cp -r -u /mnt/SDCARD/Saves /mnt/mmc/SavesBackup

# If you have a single card setup and just want to use the second card as a backup, use this line:

cp -r -u /mnt/mmc/Saves /mnt/SDCARD/SavesBackup

May your save games be safe.