PS3 HDD Upgrade. 5400 vs 7200

By DirtyLarry
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Michael1406

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I started to strip a couple of screws when I swapped in my 160GB drive.

Question though. Did anyone else have to reinstall a firmware from an external device when they swapped their drive? I did, but I saw no mention of it in any guides I read. Also, IIRC, I had to set up my wireless settings again. But it only took a minute so that wasn't a problem. I'm using a 40GB UK model. Has a different drive bay to those I've seen too.

Grand Master

Smigit

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Not that I have a PS3 yet but when I do and should I decide to upgrade the drive I'll likely go a reasonably priced 7200 drive. I know they cost extra but if down the line I decide to swap out the drive again at least it'll serve me well elsewhere.

Grand Master

AbandonedTrolley

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I started to strip a couple of screws when I swapped in my 160GB drive.

Question though. Did anyone else have to reinstall a firmware from an external device when they swapped their drive? I did, but I saw no mention of it in any guides I read. Also, IIRC, I had to set up my wireless settings again. But it only took a minute so that wasn't a problem. I'm using a 40GB UK model. Has a different drive bay to those I've seen too.

I almost stripped 2 screws, as mentioned in my post the screws were the hardest part of the setup imo.

Yup I also had to install the new firmware from an external device, but then again I didn't do a proper back up from the machine, just copied single files. I'm unaware if having done the backup mode also copies firmware to the appropriate drive/disk. Again though the only hard part in that was realising you can't just put it on the root directory and had to be in a certain place :)

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AStaUK

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Out of interest how much space do you have to use with the 320gb drives. On my PS3 it only shows the drive as being 298gb and once formatted I have 263gb to use. Is this the same as others who have fitted a 320gb drive?

Thanks, AStaley.

Grand Master

morficus

Posted
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I bought an external drive and use TVersity for everything now. Its pretty nice.

yeah.... that's what I considered doing originally... but I hate the idea of having another device next to my TV and if I end up buying stuff from the video store... I'd like to keep in on the PS3

Out of interest how much space do you have to use with the 320gb drives. On my PS3 it only shows the drive as being 298gb and once formatted I have 263gb to use. Is this the same as others who have fitted a 320gb drive?

Thanks, AStaley.

298gb is actually correct for a 320gb drive. It's the difference between the 'calculated space' and 'effective space'

'Calculated Space' is done by using 1,000 as the base number (1,000 bytes = 1 kb)... but the 'effectivespace' (aka: the REAL space) is done by using base 1024 (1,024 bytes = 1 kb).

so if you do the math... and transform 320gb into bytes using the 'calculated space' method... that give you 320,000,000,000 bytes... now turn that into gb but using the 'effective space'... that you'll end up with 298. :yes:

now as of to why after you formatted it when down to 263gb... I have no clue... it might be a partition that the PS3 puts on the drive for thinks like the boot sector, OS and stuff of that nature.

edit:

Ignore my above post, found my answer. Seems the PS3 reserves a percentage of the drive for system use.

lol.. after spending about 10min typing up an answer ;)

oh well

Grand Master

morficus

Posted
Posted

so I got my 320gb drive today and installed it practically with out a hitch.

the only issue I ran into was when I was restoring my data... it got to 1% the just froze. HDD access light on the PS3 nor the external drive were flashing... everything just died for a bit. So I just manually power-cycled the PS3 and re-started the process. No lost data what so ever :D

oh also.. that's DirtyLarry for the screw warning :yes: funny thing is that a podcast I was listening to this morning on my way to work was talking about the same thing. To quote them... "be care when unscrewing the drive, since the PS3 screws are made out of paper" :p

Grand Master

WastedJoker

Posted
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How easy is it to backup? I've just bought a 250GB Seagate Momentous 5400.4 because I'm using the 7200rpm version (120GB) in my laptop and it works great.

I don't have any external drives spare to format in FAt32 for the backup but I do have a 4GB usb stick that I can use.

What critical things should I backup? I can re-download games I bought on PSN again can't I?

Grand Master

morficus

Posted
Posted

the only 'critical' stuff are the game saves and game data.

everything else can be re-downloaded (games, demos, videos, add-ons, etc)

I'm pretty sure that if you delete all of those and just keep the games save and game data folders... the backup will be really really small, since the backup option pulls in all the videos, music, themes and pictures that you have on your PS3.

Grand Master

DirtyLarry Veteran

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Yeah, I was fortunate enough to have a 300 GB external HD hanging around that I could format to FAT, so I did not have to deal with it.

It is fair enough and should be pointed out you need something formatted in the FAT format to back up your files though, as when I tried my first external HDD in, it did not work since it was not formatted as that.

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