Does anyone out there have any experience doing this? I have a 40 gig older fat model I want to upgrade to a couple 100 gig or so and would like to know what kind of drive to get?
Sata? 2.5 or 3.5"
PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
dsheinem wrote:In any case, sorry that my avatar makes you cringe these days, but I haven't really changed my posing habits at all.
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
Any 9.5mm tall or less 2.5" SATA HDD or SSD.
Only three platter drives will be taller, but pretty much only the older 1TB 2.5" drives were three platter.
Edit: you CAN even fit the 12.5mm 3 platter drives in if you force it..
Only three platter drives will be taller, but pretty much only the older 1TB 2.5" drives were three platter.
Edit: you CAN even fit the 12.5mm 3 platter drives in if you force it..
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
2.5. It takes small laptop sized HDDs. I have a 640gb in my hacked one.
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
Yep, dunno why I totally brainfarted during my upgrade process, so I'll list out what you need to do it.
Your PS3, with old HDD installed
New harddrive (formatted to FAT32)
Temp HDD, at least as big as your old HDD and formatted to FAT32
1) Turn on PS3 with old HDD installed, attach temp drive
2) Goto system settings, look for the Backup Option
3) Backup existing PS3 drive to the temp HDD (took my PS3 about an hour to do, maybe two)
4) Once finished, turn off the PS3, install the new drive, place the old drive in a safe location
5) Turn on the system, format the PS3 drive, goto System Settings, and select Backup option again, this time, choose 'Recover existing backup'.
6) Wait for backup from the temp drive to copy to the new drive.
7) ????
Profit!
I was originally under the assumption that you could upgrade to a larger HDD without a temp HDD. Maybe you can, but I should as hell couldn't get it to work.
Your PS3, with old HDD installed
New harddrive (formatted to FAT32)
Temp HDD, at least as big as your old HDD and formatted to FAT32
1) Turn on PS3 with old HDD installed, attach temp drive
2) Goto system settings, look for the Backup Option
3) Backup existing PS3 drive to the temp HDD (took my PS3 about an hour to do, maybe two)
4) Once finished, turn off the PS3, install the new drive, place the old drive in a safe location
5) Turn on the system, format the PS3 drive, goto System Settings, and select Backup option again, this time, choose 'Recover existing backup'.
6) Wait for backup from the temp drive to copy to the new drive.
7) ????
Profit!I was originally under the assumption that you could upgrade to a larger HDD without a temp HDD. Maybe you can, but I should as hell couldn't get it to work.
If you aren't having a good time, why are you playing?
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
Thanks a bunch!
dsheinem wrote:In any case, sorry that my avatar makes you cringe these days, but I haven't really changed my posing habits at all.
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
Thought I'd bump this to share my experience upgrading my PS3 hard drive. I have an extra slim PS3. Came stock with 500GB. Seems like a lot, right? Well, I also have been downloading games from PSN and would like to put some of my favorite MP4 anime on there. So I went with 1TB.
Purchased a Seagate Momentus 1TB drive from Best Buy. Did a backup onto an external drive. Transferred data. So all is good, right? Nope. All the data was corrupted. So I figured maybe the backup I did was bad. Restored the OS and went about my business re-downloading everything. The PS3 got hotter than usual and ending up freezing every 4 - 8 hours. Figured, maybe because it is summer, and it is hot. Maybe because I am downloaded hundreds of GB of data. But after the 2nd day of this I thought I'd try another hard drive.
So I got a WD Scorpio Blue 1TB drive. Installed. Loaded the OS. Downloaded all my PSN stuff. No freezing. System runs more cool. Everything is just as good as it was before I decided to put in a larger drive. I didn't try restoring from the backup though. And that's fine. I'll do a backup of this new drive once everything is 100% in place. I believe the corrupted data was from an issue with the Seagate drive, not my backup drive. But I do not know for sure.
What does this all mean? Well, either I got a defective drive or a Seagate Momentus 1TB drive just doesn't work well with the PS3. I have read something about Seagate drives needing to use the jumpers when used in a PS3. I didn't continue to research why. But it is something to look into when upgrading your PS3 HDD. On the other hand, WD Scorpio Blue 1TB drive runs very well.
Purchased a Seagate Momentus 1TB drive from Best Buy. Did a backup onto an external drive. Transferred data. So all is good, right? Nope. All the data was corrupted. So I figured maybe the backup I did was bad. Restored the OS and went about my business re-downloading everything. The PS3 got hotter than usual and ending up freezing every 4 - 8 hours. Figured, maybe because it is summer, and it is hot. Maybe because I am downloaded hundreds of GB of data. But after the 2nd day of this I thought I'd try another hard drive.
So I got a WD Scorpio Blue 1TB drive. Installed. Loaded the OS. Downloaded all my PSN stuff. No freezing. System runs more cool. Everything is just as good as it was before I decided to put in a larger drive. I didn't try restoring from the backup though. And that's fine. I'll do a backup of this new drive once everything is 100% in place. I believe the corrupted data was from an issue with the Seagate drive, not my backup drive. But I do not know for sure.
What does this all mean? Well, either I got a defective drive or a Seagate Momentus 1TB drive just doesn't work well with the PS3. I have read something about Seagate drives needing to use the jumpers when used in a PS3. I didn't continue to research why. But it is something to look into when upgrading your PS3 HDD. On the other hand, WD Scorpio Blue 1TB drive runs very well.
Re: PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade
I'll add some info from my own experience to this thread as well. 
I too had a 40GB PS3 fat that I wanted to upgrade the HDD in. But instead, I ended up getting a 160GB Slim instead. Long story short, Game Stop had a good deal going on where I'd get X% more for my Fat, a good price on the Slim, and a free game. For the cost of the game and the cost of the HDD I would have had to buy for the Fat, it just made more sense to get the Slim.
Before getting rid of the Fat, I used the system back up utility and a temp external HDD. When I got the Slim, I restored everything from the external drive. BUT! It wasn't actually everything.
On and off since the game came out, I'd play Little Big Planet with my brother. We wanted to 100% the game. Because of the way game saves and profiles work in PS3 (which I'm not a fan of) I didn't actually back up everything. When I ran the back up utility, it was from MY profile. The profile I created for my brother in order to play LBP was not backed up. So, I lost a LOT of progress in LBP. And I think the whole process might have even screwed something up (I'm sure I should have an important item that I don't).
Some game saves can't even be backed up. Street Fighter 4, for example, which was no big deal for me, but I'd imagine it would suck big time for some.
I too had a 40GB PS3 fat that I wanted to upgrade the HDD in. But instead, I ended up getting a 160GB Slim instead. Long story short, Game Stop had a good deal going on where I'd get X% more for my Fat, a good price on the Slim, and a free game. For the cost of the game and the cost of the HDD I would have had to buy for the Fat, it just made more sense to get the Slim.
Before getting rid of the Fat, I used the system back up utility and a temp external HDD. When I got the Slim, I restored everything from the external drive. BUT! It wasn't actually everything.
On and off since the game came out, I'd play Little Big Planet with my brother. We wanted to 100% the game. Because of the way game saves and profiles work in PS3 (which I'm not a fan of) I didn't actually back up everything. When I ran the back up utility, it was from MY profile. The profile I created for my brother in order to play LBP was not backed up. So, I lost a LOT of progress in LBP. And I think the whole process might have even screwed something up (I'm sure I should have an important item that I don't).
Some game saves can't even be backed up. Street Fighter 4, for example, which was no big deal for me, but I'd imagine it would suck big time for some.