Swapping HDD's in my PS3 - backup utility and other related Q's
- Thread starter djskribbles
- Start date
One thing I've been curious about re:swapping a HDD in the slim, is the bay big enough to take the thicker 2.5" drives (ummm ... 12.5mm I think)? I noticed a 750gig for $150 on newegg the other week.
Don´t take it for granted that the PS3 will be able to take advantage of all 750 GB if it fits. At least previous firmware did not support more than 500 GB HDDs, probably because there were not larger 2.5" drives, so that may have changed.
Send a question to Sony.
Don´t remember if the bay was thicker than the HDD, but why don´t you just pull it out and check it.
From very early on it was clear that the 500GB limit was bogus, as people created a custom connector to connect large 3.5" HDDs to the system. Just check youtube for some random examples, like this 2 TeraByte one:
So unless something has changed, it has always been possible to connect larger HDDs. I think that people just quote whatever figure that's been tested, and for most people that's always the largest currently available 2.5" drive. But I think there are also people already running a 1TB 2.5" drive in there now.
So unless something has changed, it has always been possible to connect larger HDDs. I think that people just quote whatever figure that's been tested, and for most people that's always the largest currently available 2.5" drive. But I think there are also people already running a 1TB 2.5" drive in there now.
I upgraded from 40G to 160G and didn't have any problem. It restored both my Belgian and US PSN accounts fine.
djskribbles
Legend
If you're just swapping HDD's on the same PS3, the backup feature will restore your PS3 so it's exactly the same as it was before; content, accounts, settings and all.
Some 2.5" drives with bleeding-edge capacity have been higher than the standard 9mm, so at certain points certain drives actually didn't fit, physically. However, I agree that there's been no indication for any software/logical limitation to drive sizes so far. If you can connect it somehow, it's going to work. If it fits inside the bay, all the better.
I thought I heard that the problem was in formatting >500GB or something, and you needed to format NTFS first, then reformat as FAT32, to gain access to the larger sizes. I don't know how true this is.
The internal PS3 HDD uses a proprietary filesystem. You're probably thinking about external (USB) drives.
Your local Linux hippie or Mac user will gladly format external drives of any size to FAT32 without intermediate steps.
Yes, you're right. I remember now. Pretty obvious if you stop to think about it!
Hmm... need to be careful.
According to some user posts, Sony did in fact changed the firmware to limit the internal HDD capacity to 500Gb. It used to work with 1Tb internal HDDs. After a certain firmware version, people had to downgrade to 500Gb for their PS3 to work again.
The question is: Whether Sony changed it again to remove the limitation.
except save files right? what about demos and themes, and installed games data and update? I used up almost all 60 gig HDD, how long does it usually take to backup and restore?
I think that depends on the game. Many (most) let you save out your save to any device, allowing portability, but some games won't. eg. FIFA 09 wouldn't let us share a manager mode save with a different account on the same PS3. Actually that was to a different account. Same account, different PS3, should work always.
djskribbles
Legend
Save files are restored too. It restores it so it's EXACTLY like it was before. The only time you'll have problems is if you restore on a different PS3.
As for how long it takes, it depends on the device you're putting the files on (ie: external hard drive is faster than USB drives), but I'm assuming you have an external hard drive considering the amount you're backing up. Considering your 60GB is almost full, it will probably take 1.5-2 hours. Took me around 45min but I only had ~24GB.
djskribbles
Legend
Yes.
No, you can have your account activated on 5 PS3's, so even if you swap HDD's, it's still the same system and still counts as only one. If you plan on selling your PS3, make sure you deactivate your account to retain your five activations. All PSN content associated with your account can be downloaded infinite times, but your account can only be activate on 5 different machines, which essentially means the content can only be on 5 machines. If you deactivate your account on a PS3, the content becomes unusable on that machine.
I've gone through it all so I had to research all of this before. :smile: A lot of people here helped me along the way, too.
Hope that helps.
djskribbles
Legend
I've upgraded the HDD in my PS3 twice and everything was restored each time and I had no issues. When I restored on my Slim though, barely anything copied over.