Steps for copying Minecraft saves to a PC

copy-mc-saves.md

Steps for copying Minecraft saves to a PC

(There's more of this Gist than will fit in the preview. Click on it to see the whole thing)

First, open, play and then quit Minecraft at least once; to make a .minecraft appdata folder)

1. Open Windows Explorer (press Win+R, then type explorer)
2. Go to the %appdata% directory. There should be a folder called .minecraft listed
3. Open the .minecraft folder. There should be a saves folder in it.
4. Open a second Windows Explorer window (pressing Ctrl+N might work, or type Win+R and explorer again)
5. Go to the USB drive
6. Copy your World folder into the saves folder on the first window. e.g. if your World is called Frobnitz then copy that folder.

Now you can start Minecraft. If you go to Single Player then the "Frobnitz" world should be available to play

But there is no saves in the .minecraft folder?!

Someone's hand-crafted the Minecraft profile to put them elsewhere. Perhaps a drive other than C: to avoid filling it with everyone's Minecraft worlds!

You'll need to open up the launcher_profiles.json file (with WordPad) and look for the gameDir:

 "gameDir": "F:\\minecraft\\saves",

Whatever value that is (F:\minecraft\saves in this example -- the double \\ is because the \ has special meaning in Minecraft's programming language, so it has to be "escaped") is where you need to copy your World folder to.

Copying back

Any changes you make in the game will not go back onto the USB. You'll have to copy back after, if you want to keep them:

1. Go to the %appdata%\.minecraft\saves directory (or wherever the gameDir is on the PC) in one explorer window (open a new one if you didn't keep the one above open)
2. Go to the USB drive in another explorer window (ditto about the one from before...)
3. Copy your World folder back to the USB