I am looking to preserve my save files. The method must support backup to a computer and be restorable to the original hardware through direct means or via an official ram/rom cart. It doesn't need to store in emulator compatible formats or store individual saves separately. A software based approach would be ideal but hardware is ok too. The Sega CD is more urgent.
The Saturn device should work, though I am broke at the moment. By "Mask of Destinys transfer cable" I assume you mean this: http://www.retrodev.com/transfer.html Unfortunately I don't think it will work unless someone actually wrote a save dumper/writer.
I was able to dump my MEGA-CD memory cartridges with the vanilla tool and some knowledge about how the system work. (memory maps) But for putting the data back, a special application would need to be made ...
If you have a flash cart that also acts like a CD BRAM cart that also saves to SD card, you can put the cart in BRAM mode, transfer saves using the regular SCD manager (like the one on Sonic CD), then the cart will write the BRAM to SD when you reboot. The NeoFlash MD Myth and the Mega Everdrive will do this... not sure if the regular Everdrive MD does or not.