How do I backup a PS4 to an external hard drive and get around error 'CE-31414-3'?

Without knowing anything about the external hard drive you are using, this sounds like a formatting problem to me. According to playstation.com, it says that external hard drives must be formatted in FAT32 or exFAT. Most external hard drives are formatted in NTFS. You will probably have to plug your external hard drive into your PC and format it first. (Doing so will erase any data that is currently on the hard drive, so make a copy of that somewhere first, if it is anything that you need to keep.) You can find a guide to do this online, if you are not familiar with the process.

New solution: CE-31414-3: Unplug and replug the drive when PS4 reboots.

I ran into similar issues with backing up my PS4. I confirmed that I had a single exFAT 0.5TB partition on an MBR partition table (created on a Mac using disk utility after enabling 'show volumes'). The PS4 would prepare the backup but after reboot it would quickly fail with error CE-31414-3.

My suspicion was that the problem is actually the power down cycle reboot sequence: I believe the PS4 powers down and powers up the portable USB SSD too quickly for the SSD to properly reboot. So I manually unplugged it from the PS4 for an extra second after I saw the second write to disk finish. This allowed PS4 to find the disk and the backup has now started.

I had also tried 'rebuilding the database' in safe mode and setting the description to a single letter and setting the partition name to a 4 letters - but these did not help.All off these are likely unnecessary if it actually is the short-duration power cycling problem.

I had the problem of not completely backing up, three times it failed, then I read an answer on another forum.

From memory, go to devices/USB devices and when it shows your USB hard drive press options on the controller. You have the option to exfat your hard drive, it worked fine for me.

As mentioned, you shouldn't connect it as extended storage. If it asks you whether to use it as extended storage, say no. It should then just consider it a USB media device. Then go to the system menu, select the Backup and Restore option, then select the external drive from there.

I would guess that formatting from the PS4 is also not ideal, I've always formatted my backup drive from a PC. Now Windows might not format large drives as anything but NTFS, so you might need to download a FAT32 format program.

You need to re-format it as eXFAT. You can do this by going to the screen where it asks you to "Stop/Start using USB Device as Extended Storage" and press the Start button to format it.

Just ran into the 'CE-31414-3' error with a new WD My Passport drive. In this case, it was to do with extra partition for WD utilities, which I deleted in Disk Management in Windows 10 and then reformatted as one whole partition in exFAT, in Windows 10. Didn't require anything else.

So here's what I did.

CONFIRMED: Extended Storage won't work for backing up. 1) You'll need to plug your external USB HD to a PC or Mac to format it as EXFAT. At least that's what I did.

2) Next, start the back up process. It'll say "PREPARING BACKUP" and you'll see it readying all your files to be backed up. When it's done, the PS4 will automatically restart.

3) Right when the TV goes dark (because the PS4 is off), UNPLUG the USB HD. The PS4 will start beeping. At this point, plug the USB HD back in.

4) Sit back with a bowl of ice cream and watch all that backup magic unfold on your TV.

You're welcome, Everyone.

I found the answer. I formatted the HDD with my MacBook Pro in exFAT, but it keeps launching with an error. I tried reformatting the HDD with my Windows laptop with the same exFAT format and it works.

Just format the backup disk drive in Windows, not in macOS.

I know this is old but wanted to give another solution which worked for me.

Preface: that I did try the unplug trick that is noted above and it might work for you but it didn’t for me.

I thought my only option was to format or get a new external but I thought I would look around a bit more to check.

My update was not working because there was an EFI partition on my hard disk (200 MB) and I’m guessing even though I choose the correct partition it was choosing the smaller one instead.

I say this because when I deleted and wiped the small partition using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, the backup completed smoothly! Apparently, as I searched around, this partition was created because it was formatted using OSX and it isn’t needed anymore. It works just as fine as a hard disk on my PC now.

I found a fix to this issue after my 7th attempt.

1. Format the Hard Drive to ExFAT format (make sure you have enough storage capacity)

2. You HAVE TO sync the Trophies. Go to [Trophies], press the Options button, and choose the [Sync With PlayStation Network] option

3. Insert the USB storage device into the Playstation (I used one of the USB Plugs on the front of the PS4)

4. On the PS4 go to to [Settings] > [System] > [Back Up and Restore].

5. Configure what you want to Back Up. Then click the big [NEXT] button

6. This is the most important step. You must unplug the External Hard Drive when the PS4 is restarting and then plug it back in once the PS4 has restarted.

7. Wait. Wait. Wait some more until the thing backs up. It's taking 3+ hours to backup 537GB of data.

For me, it was formatting the drive with exFAT on MacOS. It defaults to a GUID partitioning layout, which PS4 treats as two separate partitions and apparently gets confused over it. Reformatting the drive with exFAT on MacOS with MBR layout fixed the problem.