PS3 homebrew backup manager.
MultiMan Backup Manager for Playstation 3 is one of the most actively developed homebrew packages at the moment on the Playstation scene and from the amount of features it has, there has obviously been a lot of work that has gone into creating this handy application. The latest version we tested moved over from a pretty standard backup manager design to a more of a XMB look which works well as a Playstation application. It even makes it look somewhat official.
After the Sony-inspired design, we get down to looking at what the MultiMan manager can do and we find there's a lot. The newest version, 2.00.02, adds compatiblity for Super NES games with the bundling of SNES9x which can be found under the Retro heading.
The main features of running actual backups are as follows: Backup and Copy Playstation Games, Delete game backups from your hard drive (external or internal), Rename Playstation Games, Download available updates for backed up games, Test the files associated with backed up games and apply/re-apply permissions to games which the user has backed up making sure they run smoothly (this has been a feature we've used often between testing various backup managers). Those are the main functions of backing up stuff, but some other very useful features for actually successfully loading game backups are the booting options: Blu-Ray Mirror/BD Mirror, Direct Boot, External or Internal copy or Game Disc.
As far as we know, there isn't yet support for NTSC filesystems but coders are working on that front. There IS an option within Multiman to use a "PFS Driver" to switch to NTFS but there' not been any testing done on it yet. The program is not able to run games with files over 4GB from an external FAT32 drive (it will split them), so you'll have to run them from the internal drive. And no, you can't play backups from a Bluray disc.
Multiman also handles video files with the help of ShowTime for PS3. ShowTime isn't our favourite way of viewing media files YET, but the movement in development of that media player is impressive, considering how little documentation there is for PS3's implementation of the Cell processor.
One last feature we shouldn't forget mentioning is Multiman Backup Manager gives users access to a selection of other homebrew applications with a link to the PSX Store directly from the main interface under "Web". While it's not a replacement for lost Playstation Network access, it helps a little bit by giving rebels like us a place where we can download some extra software for our consoles.
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