Upgrading my PS3's hard drive...


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I'd just like to ask a couple of questions about this before I commit to buying the new hard drive.

At the moment, I'm still on my original 60GB hard drive, and I'm planning to buy a 320GB drive. Now, I have several flash drives to back up my game saves, and any music and pictures downloaded from the PSN Store. My big concern though is backing up my games and my game data (by which I mean the compulsory installations and the updates), as there's one or two games that have been taken off the store now (Gran Turismo HD, for example).

I don't have an external hard drive at the moment, but I am planning to buy a 2.5" caddy to put the old 60GB drive to good use after I've upgraded.

If I put the 60GB drive into the caddy, then put the new drive in the PS3, will I be able to transfer the games and the game data over? Or will I have to get another drive to backup the data to?

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Settings > System Settings > Backup Utility

(or something very similar).

If you do that, I would back up the game saves and anything else onto a flash drive just incase. A friend of mine upgraded his and when he went to restore it it said there was some kind of error with it for some reason. In any case, you can just slam in the 60gb back in and try the backup utility again.

You'll need more than just a 4gb flash drive likely for the backup utility; you'll need an external hard drive. The drive must be formatted as FAT32 - not NTFS.

Edit: to clarify, you can back up (most) game saves to a flash drive, and your music, movies, photos, whatever else you have on it, but the gamedata can basically only be backed up via the backup utility.

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No you can't stick the old one in a caddy, if you want everything as it is, you have to use the backup utility and then use that to restore, it won't work any other way if you want to backup all your data.

You can use an iPod to back up to, I know DM did, but yours is still with Apple isn't it?

The best way I would do it.

-Delete all the games install data in the "game data" folder that is bigger than a couple hundred MB, some peoples data has been corrupted and can be traced back to game installed data in that folder, and all of it can be installed or redownloaded again after.

-Then use the back up utility and put it on an external device that has enough room.

-Swap harddrives, the old one iirc should still be fine in the same PS3 if something goes wrong with the data.

-restore backup data to new harddrive.

-If there is anything wrong with the backup data, you should be able to put the old one back in and backup again.

Then you should be set.

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^ Wow, I didn't realise you could use an iPod! Yeah, mine is still being repaired at Apple, even though the website has said since Friday that a replacement is pending. :whistle:

I'll probably just bite the bullet and endure downloading and installing everything all over again (I'll just remember to make a list of what's on my PS3 before I swap the drives). The only thing I'm really gonna lose is GTHD, and GT5 is coming out soon anyway, so it'll never be touched after that! :p

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its really worth the time to just use an external hd to use the backup utility first. it'll take a while, but it makes the restore to the new hd so much easier.

  • format ext hd in FAT32 (not using the Windows Format utility)
  • use PS3 backup utility to backup entire PS3 to ext hd
  • install new 320GB hd
  • use PS3 restore utility to put all the ext hd data back on the new PS3 hd.
  • done.

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Sadly, I don't have an external drive, so I can't do it. On the plus side, I've got Virgin Media 50Mb broadband, so the downloads fly. :) I must be one of few people on here that actually get speeds off PSN. :p

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