What's up with PS3's greedy HDD space consumption?

[Shifty Geezer]

Mate's PS3 on the Weekend. A few download titles @ ~200 MB each, give or take. A couple of movies @ ~4 GBs each. No themes, no pictures, no music. 250 GB HDD installed. 30 GB's used. That doesn't make sense. Well we could perhaps say he's got stuff on there that he's forgotten about, or...I dunno. But now my PS3 has arrived and I'm also seeing crazy HDD usage.

My complete and absolute use of the PS3 so far :

40 GB model. Actually disk capacity = 37 GB

Switched on.
Setup, no network.
Installed firmware 2.17 from USB device. ~ 120 MB file
Installed 4 themes from USB device. ~10 MB total. Deleted 3 of them. Kept one @ 3MB
Switched to that theme.
Added Wifi network.
Used web browser to test internet connection. Visit only the default Sony webpage for a few pages.
Enabled ATRAC and WMA support.
Listened to a few tracks in different formats from USB device and tried out different visualisers.
Added PSN account.
Perused available content.
Downloaded Lemming demo ~ 220 MB
Accidentally added 200 MB film clip. Cancel download.

Total amount of data copied to HDD net = 353 MB
Total amount of data passed through PS3 (excluding web page data) < 400 MB
Amount of HDD space = 31 GB out of 37 GB
Where's my 6 GB's gone!

Neither my HDD consumption nor my mate's reflects the content on our machines.

 

[AlNom]

I don't suppose you've played any full disc games that did some hidden caching

 

[patsu]

Is there a workspace of some sort ? e.g., For unpacking downloaded files/firmware, or staging for partially downloaded files that will be cleaned up if you run out of space, caching, etc.

Also have you played any BR game on it so far ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Above is my entire use history for the 3 hours or so it's been out of the box. There have been no discs at all in this PS3, games or films.

@ Patsu - What you say makes some sense. I expect there'd be some reserved capacity for internet caching or temp...stuff. What troubles me though is the condition of my friend's PS3 and relating that to mine. Unless reserved capacity is a percentage of the drive space? He seemed to have gobbled up ~30 GBs on nothing. I'm missing ~6 GBs. His HDD is 250 GBs vs my 40. That's about 6x bigger, and the unexplained capacity use is maybe 5x bigger. It's in the realm of plausible, though we'd need many more examples to compare.

No-one knows of an official HDD usage report?

 

[Npl]

prolly a fixed ~5 GB area for caching during games/movies/... ?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This gamespot forum thread backs up the view of a percentage reservation.

I was wondering about my PS3 60GB HDD. When i first used the system it stated 55GB. Now i understand this is normal as Sony might keep 5Gb for updates like the 360 keeps 7. But of those 55GB, there were only 46GB left. Thing is, the system was new and had no data at all on it. So where are those additionnal 9GB?

46 GB out of 55 GB is 83%. 31 GB out of 37 GB on my PS3 is 83% The percentage missing on matey's 250 GB HDD is about 12%. Might well be a 'reducing percentage', or 'percentage/max amount, whichever is smaller' reservation.

So like the RAM reservation, Sony seem to be taking up resources for know known reason and no tangible benefits

 

[patsu]

Above is my entire use history for the 3 hours or so it's been out of the box. There have been no discs at all in this PS3, games or films.

@ Patsu - What you say makes some sense. I expect there'd be some reserved capacity for internet caching or temp...stuff. What troubles me though is the condition of my friend's PS3 and relating that to mine. Unless reserved capacity is a percentage of the drive space? He seemed to have gobbled up ~30 GBs on nothing. I'm missing ~6 GBs. His HDD is 250 GBs vs my 40. That's about 6x bigger, and the unexplained capacity use is maybe 5x bigger. It's in the realm of plausible, though we'd need many more examples to compare.

No-one knows of an official HDD usage report?

Not that I know of. I have a 60Gb and quite a few stuff on the local HDD (10 trailers, 6-8 demoes, played 6 PSN games and 16 BR games on it, plus assorted home videos, music and photos). Still going strong.

Without further info, I'll pin it to a working cache (plus secured HDD access).
Would be comforting to know if any extra space used up will be cleaned up and reused automatically.

Finally, congrats on your purchase, Shifty.

 

[Arwin]

It's an interesting observation, anyway. The benefits could be all sorts of things, like making sure that there is enough space left to install at least one game's cache, making sure there is enough space to make a backup, or whatever.

And yeah, congrats on your purchase, Shifty! Hope you enjoy it!

 

[Gradthrawn]

This gamespot forum thread backs up the view of a percentage reservation.

46 GB out of 55 GB is 83%. 31 GB out of 37 GB on my PS3 is 83% The percentage missing on matey's 250 GB HDD is about 12%. Might well be a 'reducing percentage', or 'percentage/max amount, whichever is smaller' reservation.

So like the RAM reservation, Sony seem to be taking up resources for know known reason and no tangible benefits

Its pretty well accepted that the PS3 reserves a % of the HDD instead of a static amount. Nothing official, but reports seem to vary from 11 - 15 %. Actually, I think it might even be on your PS3 box (IIRC).

Of course, none that know why and exactly what for are talking. Hmmm, we could write SCE?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Finally, congrats on your purchase, Shifty.

£255 brand new all inclusive on eBay - you can't say no!

Won't be getting a decent display until I've done my own eBaying and raised the cash, and picking a monitor is going to cause plenty more headaches. How many dozens of different monitor models are there, why are none 1280x720 native, is it better to go higher or lower res, how do you know what the upscaling is like, and why don't they use 16:9 ratios?!

 

[LordNerevar]

If you plan to buy a monitor for PS3 you have to look out for a few things.
The monitor must have HDMI port(only a few expensive models have this) or a DVI with HDCP(HDCP IS mandatory).
If you want Full HD, you'll have to buy a 24" monitor.If you're happy with 720p, then you can buy just about any DVI+HDCP monitor.
All Wide monitors have 16:10 ratios.I think there are maybe 2-3 24" models which have 16:9.

 

[NVNDA]

It's simple shifty. lol

1 720p monitor that allows 1:1 mapping for games

1 1080p monitor that allows 1:1 mapping for bluray

 

[infinity4]

Read somewhere that 16:10s are preferred to 16:9 for two reasons:

- It is economically cheaper to manufacture them (somehow what?)
- Reserved space for taskbars

If you are buying a monitor make sure it supports 'fixed aspect ratio', because stretching from 16:9 vertically to 16:10 will make you care about it once you have seen the differences.

Mine supports it but unfortunately this comes at a cost of cutting out horizontally - Fitting 1600x900 on 1440x900 doesn't work obviously.

 

[randycat99]

Shifty, you may want to consider the impact of default cluster size to map every available location on the hdd into a directory. On a sub 10 GB drive, the default cluster size (typical of FAT32) was acceptable. On a 40 GB drive and a 250 GB drive, the default cluster size yields a tremendous amount of directory information to track.

It would not be unimaginable that a more appropriate cluster size will be adopted to format these mega-large hdd, going into the future. If these ps3 hdd's utilize a proprietary Sony formatting, then that will have to be something for Sony to adjust in their formatting software.

 

[sevanig]

Congrats on the Ps3...
Yer uneconomical file usage is due to FAT32

You can get a cheap dell 24" monitor, I heard they are ok...
But i'd suggest a HD projector
The size of screen for the price is good value.

Oh and also get some games too, Uncharted, Ratchet, Heavenly sword (rent) the usual suspects.
And don't forget to pre-order GTA4 too

 

[inefficient]

Congrats on the Ps3...
Yer uneconomical file usage is due to FAT32

No. The PS3 can read removable devices formated at FAT32. But the PS3 does not use FAT32 for it's own disk's filesystem.

 

[Dregun]

Congrats on the PS3, I hope you enjoy it but if not at least you can say you gave it a try.

I know the PS3 has what seems to be wasted space and that it seems to scale fairly well when bigger HDD's are added. What its actually used for I think is a mystery many of us want an answer too.

As for a display I cannot agree more with sevanig.

I have a Panasonic AE900u thats projecting a 92" image and everything I throw at it looks fantastic! I saw one on ebay the other week that was used but had a bulb with only 400hrs on it going for $459 shipped! Its only 720p and due to the smooth screen technology (removes the screen door effect) the image is slightly softer then many DLP's but very enjoyable.

For under $1000 you can get a Projector, Screen and a 25ft HDMI cable if you don't mind buying a slightly used projector. After all being mesmerized by a 100+ image is enough to make you forget you lost a few gig's because of Sony

Dregun

 

[Bigfoot438]

The missing 3GB

Just so you all know, I have no idea what happened to the missing 6gbs of memory but the missing 3gb like if it says that it's a 40gb system then you get into the system info and it says x/37 or with 60gb i believe it x/55 it's because 1GB is 1,073,741,824 bytes but Sony just rounds their HDs to 1,000,000,000 bytes resulting in the original loss of memory. As for the 6 extra GBs that are missing I am rather agravated. (Sorry for misspelled words and bad grammar)

 

[Sigfried1977]

HD manufacturers advertise the available disc space as if the multiplication factor from bytes to kbytes to mbytes and so one was 1000 when it's actually 1024 as far as I know. The PS3 on the other hand (and pretty muchany other OS) displays in real GB. A 60 GB HD means 60.000.000.000 bytes, which in Gbyte means 60.000.000.000 Kbyte devided by 1024 devided by 1024 devided by 1024 = 55.879 GB.
You already lose a good 4 GB because marketing took a bit of a liberty in their favor.

With a 320 Gbtye HD installed you end up losing a hefty 20 GB (298.02322 GB)

 

[betan]

HD manufacturers advertise the available disc space as if the multiplication factor from bytes to kbytes to mbytes and so one was 1000 when it's actually 1024 as far as I know. The PS3 on the other hand (and pretty muchany other OS) displays in real GB. A 60 GB HD means 60.000.000.000 bytes, which in Gbyte means 60.000.000.000 Kbyte devided by 1024 devided by 1024 devided by 1024 = 55.879 GB.
You already lose a good 4 GB because marketing took a bit of a liberty in their favor.

With a 320 Gbtye HD installed you end up losing a hefty 20 GB (298.02322 GB)

There is no such thing as real GB. IEC and IEEE use SI like decimal prefix definitions which are clearly more consumer friendly, so do HDD manufacturers.
Computer software tends to use binary prefix (which others redefined as gibi-byte) because coders are geeks and love binary.