PS3 hardware failure

[AzBat]

As a 360 owner, I'm appalled to hear how you could lose all your data if your PS3 craps out. With the 360 if the machine craps out I just snap the HD on the new 360 & use their transfer license tool. No need for the old system. I don't think I could be such a trooper like Carl seems to be. I would probably get a gun out & shoot it. LOL

Tommy McClain

 

[djskribbles]

Well it's obviously too late, but that is why the backup feature is there. At least you can backup most of your saves.

 

[patsu]

For people with a PSN account, I have no idea why their protected game saves are tied to PS3 hardware id instead of PSN id. That's wrong.

Alternatively, they can allow us to copy the protected game saves anytime, but verify our identity when we try to read the content.

 

[djskribbles]

Yeah, Sony really needs to allow us to backup our protected save files somehow.

 

[Rangers]

As a 360 owner, I'm appalled to hear how you could lose all your data if your PS3 craps out. With the 360 if the machine craps out I just snap the HD on the new 360 & use their transfer license tool. No need for the old system. I don't think I could be such a trooper like Carl seems to be. I would probably get a gun out & shoot it. LOL

Tommy McClain

Wait a minute I'm confused. Do you mean PS3 owners just lose the saves?

How could they lose "all data"?

Like on XBL, everything you DL is tied to your gamertag. Isn't it the same with PSN?

 

[Carl B]

The saga continues with a great comeback for the good guys. So, as I was doing my 5-saves-at-a-time dungeon diving, I thought I could make the PS3 last longer by keeping the chips cooler. I opened it up and lay down some large amounts of Arctic Silver on the Cell and RSX, with a priority on the RSX due to the lack of video (I was wondering whether this might be extreme heat-related artifacting).

The PS3 was lasting a bit longer each time I turned it on, and ultimately I took a break to go to dinner. When I returned and turned it on again - video had been restored! I quickly grabbed all of my PS2 saves before it crashed again, since that would have been a true nightmare to attempt. It did end up freezing at the last minute. But I turned it on again a bit later, still video, and grabbed the rest of what I needed. Now the data transfer plan was viable again also, but the interim PS3 unit I had bought was a refurbished 40GB (had returned the previously mentioned slim) - huge data discrepancy. So I turned on the original again and started deleting everything I could that was not a save game file or essential game data - brought it down to 20GBs, small enough to transfer to the temporary drive and hopefully small enough to get the transfer done without freezing (the PS3 had been lasting longer and longer though).

Took a while to get the transfer set up, like five times before the units actually recognized each other. Began the process and for the 20GB it took roughly an hour. Afterwards, a perfect system clone on the new PS3. What a rollercoaster! The irony is that if I didn't do the save game dungeon diving, the PS3 never would have had the chance to pull out of its coma, even though at the end of the day it proved superfluous. My Bluetooth on the device is still out of commission, and I have a Sony coffin on its way to pick it up - but now that it's working more or less, I wonder what to do.

PS - Some of these posts have been moved from the 'distribution' thread to here, since it seemed the more appropriate topic.

 

[corduroygt]

Wait a minute I'm confused. Do you mean PS3 owners just lose the saves?

How could they lose "all data"?

Like on XBL, everything you DL is tied to your gamertag. Isn't it the same with PSN?

Yeah we're talking about salvaging the game save data here. Actual game data, paid content, etc can be re-downloaded from PSN to up to 5 different PS3's and unlimited times on the same PS3, and you can deactivate a system through the XMB to get one of your 5 slots back. I think you have to call Sony to deactivate a broken PS3 that you cannot turn on anymore though.

 

[goonergaz]

I think anyone with an original PS3 should seriously consider buying a slim - xferring the data and selling on!

WRT backups, Sony NEED to make it so you can do a complete backup rather than selective...in fact I suggest on the Sony website complete backups with an incremental option too

 

[goonergaz]

As a 360 owner, I'm appalled to hear how you could lose all your data if your PS3 craps out. With the 360 if the machine craps out I just snap the HD on the new 360 & use their transfer license tool. No need for the old system. I don't think I could be such a trooper like Carl seems to be. I would probably get a gun out & shoot it. LOL

Tommy McClain

I guess you pay the premium - but seriously we're talking about a few protected game saves! It's also a shame I can't 'just get back' my XBLA DLC that I paid for. I have to wait until a year is up before I can re-register the games to my new X360 through no fault of my own.

 

[AzBat]

Sorry, I guess I'm confused. So if you didn't do a backup at all, you can't just plop your old drive in the new system since it's not recognized? Don't that mean everything on the drive is lost? Save anything that can be redownloaded from PSN correct? However, corduroygt slightly confused me by saying "unlimited times on the same PS3". That implies to me that you have a fixed number of downloads if it's not the original system?

I'm not saying the 360 method is without negatives. Before they released the license tool you were just screwed if you couldn't sign in to Live or were a guest trying to play a downloadable game on a different system than it was originally downloaded on. The tool eases the pain, but only using it once a year is crazy.

I had an issue where I had to do a warranty return on my first 360 for a defective DVD drive. They are suppose to transfer all your licenses to your new console ID & deactive the old consolde ID before they send it back. Unfortunately they didn't so when I got my replaced system no profile but my own could play the downloadable games. Called support & they told me to just use the tool. I didn't think nothing of it until I tried to purchase my true 2nd system about 6 months later. The transfer tool wouldn't work because it hadn't been a year. I had to complain to MS to get them to remove the 1 year wait since they messed up, not me. Took almost a week or so, but they eventually did it.

Anyway, I like being able to just take my drive with me & put it on whatever system I want without having to go through a backup procedure. Yes, it requires a login to Live to use downloadable games or premium content, but that hasn't been a problem so far. And the game saves work with no requirements at all.

Considering Carl's experience, I'm not exactly thrilled with their procedure. If you're not some techie who knew you had to backup your data, you would probably just give up & accept that content is gone. Doesn't seem real consumer friendly to me.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

Sorry, I guess I'm confused. So if you didn't do a backup at all, you can't just plop your old drive in the new system since it's not recognized? Don't that mean everything on the drive is lost? Save anything that can be redownloaded from PSN correct? However, corduroygt slightly confused me by saying "unlimited times on the same PS3". That implies to me that you have a fixed number of downloads if it's not the original system?

Based on my understanding...

+ Purchased PSN games can be downloaded to up to 5 different PS3s unlimited number of times as long as the PSN id is the same.

+ Purchased shows can only be watched on the same PS3 you bought them on. You can redownload them once. You'll have to back them up using the backup tool in case you delete the movies/TV programs accidentally. You can use the PS3-to-PS3 network transfer to move purchased shows to a different PS3. If your PS3 dies before you backup/transfer the movies, you'll have to call Help Desk.

+ Locked game saves are tied down to PS3 hardware. They are treated like purchased shows, which is plain wrong.

I guess it's nice to carry the HDD around but I prefer another method for copying files around. If I lose the HDD like I lost my first PSP, I'm going to scream. It's a 500Gb HDD (Okay, I can recover my media, but the locked game saves will be gone 4ever if I don't have a PS3 HDD backup).

 

[Carl B]

Considering Carl's experience, I'm not exactly thrilled with their procedure. If you're not some techie who knew you had to backup your data, you would probably just give up & accept that content is gone. Doesn't seem real consumer friendly to me.

Yeah it is a pain, for sure - those protected saves represented hundreds of hours of gameplay, and the gauntlet run to preserve them is not something most people would attempt... and even then I feel I got lucky to an extent. The main problem is that the formal backup is tied to hardware, and honestly when are you going to need that backup the most? When your system fails - but in that event it is useless (other than hard drive failure).

I understand why Sony does it the way they do, but I do agree that a hard drive swapping ability would be very nice to have. You could mandate that no single PSN account be active on more than one PS3 at a time, that PSN accounts be mandatory for a drive to be 'active,' and allow drive transfer based on the activate/deactivate hardware model that is already in place for system-to-system data transfers. Of course, if your system is crashed, you call Sony and have them deactivate your present system remotely. Then at least in the highly unpredictable event that your PS3 suddenly dies, you have that one opportunity to transfer to your new system, be it from the store or a refurbished model sent to you.

 

[corduroygt]

The internal hard drive was designed to be a part of PS3, not an add-on. So you can't just remove it and put it inside a different PS3 like the xbox drive. If you want to move content, the original PS3 was designed so that you could use memory cards, usb drives, etc. However, locked game saves breaks the system, I'm surprised they allow such things in the SDK. Using PSN authentication seems like a better solution if you want to prevent cheating.

Also the 5 different system rule was designed so you could have the same content in multiple PS3's in your home, or to help you preserve your content in case your PS3 failed 4 times. It wasn't designed for game sharing like many use If you run out of your 5 activations, you can call Sony and have it reset so everything will be deactivated. You can only do this once though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Also the 5 different system rule was designed so you could have the same content in multiple PS3's in your home, or to help you preserve your content in case your PS3 failed 4 times. It wasn't designed for game sharing like many use If you run out of your 5 activations, you can call Sony and have it reset so everything will be deactivated. You can only do this once though.

I disagree. I think the principle behind game share is so someone can play their bought content on someone's else's PS3 without having to transport either an HDD or my entire console to a different location. eg. Trine is a 3 player local-coop game. If I want to play it with my friends both here at my house and round theirs, I shouldn't need to buy it twice!

 

[patsu]

Yap ! I use that feature this way too. When we visit a friend's place and want to play my PSN games, I simply login to my account on his PS3 and download it there. If he likes the game, he will buy a separate copy himself even though he doesn't have to (He doesn't want to change my profile, trophies, etc.).

 

[goonergaz]

Conversely if we owned (say) 3 Xbox360s I believe I'd need to buy 3 copies of any DLC - one for each machine should I want to play on either machine!

Sony def. need to sort it out so you can do a complete backup OR swap a HDD to a new machine...why not just have a system that locks you out until you phone up and cofirm (for example) the serial numbers of the machine the HDD came from and went to...or just make it like the singstar lock - nothing works until you phone up and get it re-registered?

 

[Carl B]

The internal hard drive was designed to be a part of PS3, not an add-on. So you can't just remove it and put it inside a different PS3 like the xbox drive. If you want to move content, the original PS3 was designed so that you could use memory cards, usb drives, etc. However, locked game saves breaks the system, I'm surprised they allow such things in the SDK. Using PSN authentication seems like a better solution if you want to prevent cheating.

There's no questions as to how it was originally designed, just as to why it remains that way after the need has clearly presented itself for scenarios in which the hard drive itself is the last remaining link to your old system (precisely because it is indeed removable). And even with the saves that *do* transfer cross-system, when I was experimenting in the early stages of my own drama, I found that most games recognized the data as being from 'another user,' and there were penalties associated via means of trophy lockout.

I think Sony should revise the means via which they recognize a single user/system to accommodate for irreversible system failures. When the system launched, the mass early gen breakdown was not in the calculus - but I think we're all pretty much aware now (including Sony) that every launch PS3 is on a clock. These are the most loyal Playstation owners for the most part, and the ones who will likely be losing the most data to boot. Sony could also implement a 'remote storage' system allowing purely game save/data backups on their servers associated per PSN ID. Cheap, secure, duly constrained, system independent, and maybe they could even charge $5 or some other nominal fee to fund the service.

 

[goonergaz]

indeed, I mean, it makes you wonder wny the PS3 has the data transfer utility...it must be because they are/were expecting people to migrate from phat to slim

 

[corduroygt]

I disagree. I think the principle behind game share is so someone can play their bought content on someone's else's PS3 without having to transport either an HDD or my entire console to a different location. eg. Trine is a 3 player local-coop game. If I want to play it with my friends both here at my house and round theirs, I shouldn't need to buy it twice!

Well, you can always deactivate your system before going over to your friend's, then log in with your psn and download the game, and then play it with your friend, deactivating it after you were done. So you wouldn't need 5 activations to be able to do that, you could share only one. The 5 is just there so that in case you couldn't deactivate for whatever reason such as a broken PS3, you could use another one.

 

[Phil]

Does anyone know how you can deactivate your PS3 system without signing into PSN? The problem is, I bought PS3slim to avoid updating my older PS3 system in order to keep "OtherOS". Since then, I've successfully transfered all my userdate from the old PS3 to the new slim. Now I'd like to deactivate my old PS3, but can't, because I can't log into PSN because it sais I have to update first (which if I'll do, I'll lose OtherOS).

I've heard there is a way to deactivate your system online. Anyone have the link? I've searched but haven't found anything so far. Thanks.