Blog:Profile Bug

The Profile Bug is a bug that affects players who have a very large profile save on a memory card with heavy usage. It creates problems such as annoying temporary freezes in unexpected places, extended saving times, some more serious problems in the game, and can even cause you to accidentally corrupt your profile.

The Bug Explained
LittleBigPlanet PS Vita can create very large save files as it has to remember every level, sticker, and captured object you created or obtained. Initial loading times can be very long if your profile size is very large, and the time it takes to save increases when you have a lot of content saving.

Write amplification interferes with the programming
Due to LittleBigPlanet PS Vita's kludgy code, the game saves and loads your profile in places it does not need to do so. The saving code probably was intended for hard disks and not flash memory, which the memory card is made of. The effects aren't noticeable with a memory card that is fresh and not very many pages have been used up.

When the memory card is heavily used, the memory card needs to write more physical information to itself than the game actually wants to write to the memory card. This write amplification consumes bandwidth to the memory card which reduces random write performance of the already slow memory card.

The extended write time interferes with the game's assumption that writing is done almost instantly, causing various problems in the game to occur such as the game freezing for short periods of time.

Symptoms of this bug

 * Sounds may take longer to load than it is supposed to, causing sounds to play at an incorrect time.
 * When you close your Popit, the game saves data to you memory card as a kludgy workaround to a more serious saving glitch. If you have a very heavily used memory card, the saving icon can appear for a long time.
 * When you publish a level, view or download DLC items, use the camera tool, or switch to a different page of downloaded levels, the game can appear to freeze in the middle of the process.
 * When trying to connect to other players, you are always kicked to the pod, and it will show a message similar to the string "Unable to connect to other players". When this happens, usually it will show the white loading screen for minutes at a time.
 * When changing the magic mouth's text, after comfirming the text changes you may be unable to do anything for a while.
 * When entering a level, the game may freeze temporarily when Sackboy spawns for a few seconds.
 * When the game attempts to load another player's earth, the game may take an extended period of time to load the earth, or may even never load it.
 * The game may take an extended period of time to save your profile. It can show the saving icon for more than five minutes if you have an extremely large profile on a heavily used memory card.
 * When searching for levels, the keyboard may freeze for a few seconds before moving to the results screen, preventing you from doing anything while it is frozen.

These symptoms are more problematic while connected to the LittleBigPlanet servers. If you experience most or all of the above symptoms, you are affected by this bug, and need to upgrade to a larger memory card.

If you are affected by this bug
If you are affected by this bug, the first thing you must do is to reset your customized planets as they prevent your game from loading community planets, thus causing you to not be able to enter levels.

The second thing you must do is to not press the "PS" or power buttons when the saving icon is on the screen, as they can cause your game to crash, and this can corrupt your saved profile or game.

The third thing is you cannot back up your profile in LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, so you can't make and keep two profiles unless you have a PS3. On LittleBigPlanet 2, you can back up profiles, and you can keep one profile for creating, and the other for playing with other people.

How to fix
As this is caused by slow writing to the memory card the only cure to this problem is to switch to a new or barely used memory card. Don't delete anything as this will never alleviate the problem. To transfer your PS Vita memory card files from your current one to a different one you need a PlayStation 3 system, with at least enough hard drive space to hold the backup.

How to copy your PS Vita memory card data to a different memory card

 * Step 1: Charge your PS Vita until it shows that it is fully charged. This removes the chance of a low battery interfering with your transfer.
 * Step 2: On the PS Vita system, insert the memory card that you want to transfer content from.
 * Step 3: Sign in to the same Sony Entertainment Network account used to sign in on your PS Vita system.
 * Step 4: Connect your PS Vita to the PlayStation 3 using your USB cable included with the PS Vita system, which will automatically open Content Manager. If it is not open, tap on Content Manager and tap open.
 * Step 5: On the PS Vita system tap on the button that Backs Up all content from your PS Vita system to your PlayStation 3 system.
 * Step 6: Follow the on screen instructions and wait until it completes. This will take longer than it estimates.
 * Step 7: Close Content Manager and remove your PS Vita system from your PlayStation 3 System.
 * Step 8: Turn off your PS Vita system completely by holding the power button until a red button shows and tapping it. Now charge your PS Vita until it shows that it is fully charged.
 * Step 9: Remove the old memory card inserted in the PS Vita system and insert the memory card you want to copy your files into, then turn on your PS Vita system.
 * Step 10: Reconnect your PS Vita system to your PS3 system and tap the option that restores your backup to your PS Vita system.
 * Step 11: Tap on the most recent backup. Follow the on screen instructions and wait until the restore completes. Then follow the on screen instructions. When all of your icons are showing again you are done, and you can now store your old memory card wherever you like.

When your content is transferred to a new memory card you should notice that LittleBigPlanet PS Vita doesn't experience the above issues on the new memory card, but your content is still here. This means that you have done the backup correctly.