640gb 2.5in sata, for ps3 systems $50

How easy is it to install on PS3?

Also, thanks to PS+ I have cloud save storage so will I lose anything? I do have some USB drives....

Wont I have to re download EVERY update, and PSN game? Will take days if not weeks lol
 
hmmm just bought it, no tax and free ship. Recently Ive had to be deleting things and since I have PS+ I'm goign to be donloading a lot more, somethign my old 60 or 80 gig couldnt handle
 
[quote name='FlyingMonkey9']How easy is it to install on PS3?

Also, thanks to PS+ I have cloud save storage so will I lose anything? I do have some USB drives....

Wont I have to re download EVERY update, and PSN game? Will take days if not weeks lol[/QUOTE]

It takes like 5 mins to remove the old drive, and install the new drive. But you have to backup your old one to a USB drive first if you don't want to lose your saves\installs. That can take hours. Then you just restore onto the new drive after you install it.

edit: If you have your saves backed up on PS+ then you can just redownload the saves. As for the updates, it doesn't take long. If you don't care about transferring installs\game downloads, then you can just install the new drive, format it, and download your saves.
 
This is an awesome deal.

However, my 350gb seems to be enough for me, I don't keep things like movies once I'm done watching them. But I do have a giant backlog of PSN demos and full game trials to plow through and those can add up.
 
[quote name='rockx4']It takes like 5 mins to remove the old drive, and install the new drive. But you have to backup your old one to a USB drive first if you don't want to lose your saves\installs. That can take hours. Then you just restore onto the new drive after you install it.

edit: If you have your saves backed up on PS+ then you can just redownload the saves. As for the updates, it doesn't take long. If you don't care about transferring installs\game downloads, then you can just install the new drive, format it, and download your saves.[/QUOTE]

Also make sure you use the correct size screwdriver bc it's VERY easy to strip the screws that hold the drive in the bracket.
 
I haven't looked at samsung hard drives in a while, are they any good now, I remember they used to have nothing but problems, anyone had good luck with them lately?
 
Damn good deal. Now is there a Gig Cap on what the PS3 can accept? I've heard in the past that 500Gb is max but reading a couple other forums I'm seeing that the sky's the limit. (granted it's a 2.5" SATA Drive)
 
[quote name='shadow17x']5400 rpm meh. I upped mine to 7200 and the speed is definitely noticeable. A good price though.[/QUOTE]

Are the 7200 drives ok to use on the old (non-slim) PS3s or is heat still an issue?
 
Just to answer a slew of people's questions since I've upgraded twice. The standard is 5400 rpm and the system will accept 7200 rpm drives however most say the difference is not too noticeable and unless you have a slim I've heard that the phats can get much hotter with the 7200. The swap is completely fast and requires no effort. If like me you have hundreds of gigs of stuff on your hard drive the backup takes about 5-6 hours and the restore another 3-4. Also make sure to go to sony's site and get the latest firmware and whatever you're using to backup the system will not recognize the new drive until it has the ps3 software. One more thing the system can go over 500gb up to 1tb from what i've seen.
 
I thought the maximum a Ps3 could use was 500gb I may be mistaken but I remember hearing that before. Although being a FAT32 format I don't think it should matter but if that was the case I would have Snagged 1 TB when I had the chance. Can anyone confirm?
 
As far as hardware reviews go, how does this hard drive measure up?

And specifically, how does it compare to the default hard drives included in PS3s?

(Also, the Western Digital Scorpio drives appear to be a popular choice for upgrading PS3s. How does this compare to them?)
 
[quote name='bilbobagins3']Just to answer a slew of people's questions since I've upgraded twice. The standard is 5400 rpm and the system will accept 7200 rpm drives however most say the difference is not too noticeable and unless you have a slim I've heard that the phats can get much hotter with the 7200. The swap is completely fast and requires no effort. If like me you have hundreds of gigs of stuff on your hard drive the backup takes about 5-6 hours and the restore another 3-4. Also make sure to go to sony's site and get the latest firmware and whatever you're using to backup the system will not recognize the new drive until it has the ps3 software. One more thing the system can go over 500gb up to 1tb from what i've seen.[/QUOTE]

what do you mean don't you just upgrade your HDD then the PS3 recognizes it? I thought this can be done by formating the new HDD once removed and installed on the PS3?
 
[quote name='CaoPi']what do you mean don't you just upgrade your HDD then the PS3 recognizes it? I thought this can be done by formating the new HDD once removed and installed on the PS3?[/QUOTE]

You can indeed just pop in a fresh drive and the PS3 will format it for you.
The drive you're backing up to needs to be FAT32 though.
 
And how much does microsoft charge for their hard drives again ? Ha, its amazing that Sony lets us use any sata drive with our ps3. the fact that the sata drives are cheap makes it even better. Thanks sony !
 
[quote name='GLOCKGLOCK']Are the 7200 drives ok to use on the old (non-slim) PS3s or is heat still an issue?[/QUOTE]


Good question. I'm not so sure about the old ones. I actually updated my slim 160 to 640 at 7200. Like I said the change is definitely noticeable.
 
Fyi, when I upgraded my hard drive the backup I made off the old drive also restored patches, dlc, installs (including the massive Gran Turismo install) and add ons. I was under the impression this wasn't the case but at least for me it worked. I was using one of the 60 gig units though so maybe that has changed in newer models.
 
If I place the new drive into my PS3, format it and then take both drives to my PC... can't I just copy all the data from old to new to save time or is the DLC, etc tied to the ID on the HDD???
 
[quote name='Xenogears']Its really easy to replace the drives, and this is a really nice deal.

You can find instructions all over the net, but I think these are the ones i used for the replacement. http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/2296642?start=0&tstart=0[/QUOTE]


Thanks Xenogears. That was a great guide for the physical replacement of the drive. Now for those of us who are "back-up" clue-less, what do we do? Hook up our PS3 to an external drive (via usb) and then transfer stuff? Then replace the physical drive, hook up the external drive (again via usb) and write the stuff over to the new drive?

It's probably easier than that, but I'm more hardware-replacement oriented, than software replacement oriented. Thanks.


EDIT: Answered below.
 
and answering my own question :)
I guess not... HDD is encrypted and DLCs etc is tied to a combination of the HDD serial and PS3 hardware ID and as of March there wasn't a program to read HDDs in Windows. Sounds like a 1/1 copy in Unix can be made, but of course transferring to another HDD wouldn't work.

Looks like you have to use the built in PS3 backup.... oh well.
 
Just to add my own info to the mix.

If you are like me and didn't have an external drive big enough to backup the PS3 HDD you currently use there is a very very easy solution.

Step 1: Buy one of these (doesn't need to be this exact one mind you)
Step 2: Put the new HDD inside it and connect it to your computer
Step 3: Format it to FAT32. This can be done via the command prompt but I prefer using this small self contained exe.
Step 4: Connect the new drive in the enclosure to your PS3 and backup the PS3 to it
Step 5: Connect the new drive back to the computer and transfer the backup to your computer. It is going to be about the same size as the total space used in your PS3. So if you have a 250GB HDD and are using like 180GB of it, then your computer needs to have 175-180GB free (for a small amount of time).
Step 6: Swap the drive in the PS3 with the new drive that is in the external (so now the new external drive is inside the PS3 and the old PS3 drive is inside the enclosure)
Step 7: Format the external (containing the old PS3 drive) to FAT32
Step 8: Transfer the backup to the external
Step 9: Restore backup to the new PS3 drive.

I know it is longer then just backup and restore, but I am unsure how many of you guys have external drives big enough and this is only $15 more to do it this way. Also when you're done you'll have an external HDD to use for whatever you want.
 
i purchased a 320g Seagate HDD to do a backup with to my ps3 and couldn't get the ps3 to recognize it....Is there a particular brand of HDD's that work better with ps3?
 
[quote name='Saix_XIII']Are you talking about attached via USB or when you put the HDD inside the PS3?[/QUOTE]

USB and i meant external hard drive!
 
[quote name='JUSTSULTAN']i purchased a 320g Seagate HDD to do a backup with to my ps3 and couldn't get the ps3 to recognize it....Is there a particular brand of HDD's that work better with ps3?[/QUOTE]

Make sure it's FAT32 format.

Any brand and model of HDD should be fine. Just make sure it is 2.5in sata, and formatted in FAT32. But if your worried about compatibility and reliability of the HDD, these are the suggestions I saw a few places when doing research for my replacement. The default HDD in all PS3's is a Seagate, so using a Seagate brand replacement may be best. Keep the size under 500 GB and get one with 5200 rpm. Failure rates may be higher if you go with different brands, exceed 500gb in size, or get one with 7200 rpm.

I just remember those tips, anything should work though
 
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Should I pull the trigger if I have the 40gb model? Have heard a few reports of overheating and ps3s getting pretty dang hot- and this is what concerns meI maxed out 40 gigs in about 2 weeks.
 
I just upgraded to a 500gb on Saturday for $55. Oh well....

Anybody who isn't sure about upgrading themselves though, it's super easy. I've never upgraded or modded a computer in my life, but did my PS3 hard drive upgrade in a couple of minutes with no problems.
 
I never upgraded any PS3s HDD before. What's with all the overheating worries? Should there be a problems, if any when upgrading this for Slim PS3 models?
 
The only heating issues seem to come from the faster spinning 7200RPM hard drives.

5400RPM drives such as this one, should actually produce less heat than the stock PS3 hard drive.
 
Food for thought...
-I don't think there is a consensus on heat regarding 5400 vs 7200. Most newer designs are 7200 and also more efficient. Look at most notebooks these days (where heat is a major consideration)...most machines are 7200. Had a 7200 in my machines for about 6 months and no issues.
-keep in mind, hdd market going through two changes currently. The first is a shift to 7 mm height. You're ps3 bracket may not accommodate what is available in the market at some point.
-the second is the move to advance format. Long story short, what was written in 512 sectors is moving to 4k. It's complicated, but how the image is deployed to the drive is critical. So at some point, you may not be able to take your 512 image drive and transfer it to a 4k.

There may be some ultra nerds on the thread here so feel free to chime in.

Point being, at some point in the future you may not be able to purchase a drive that will even work as an upgrade in older ps3. Not anytime soon, but someday...so if you can find a good, cheap 7200 9.5 512k drive to squirrel away, may not be a bad idea. If nothing else, be aware of these other changes now coming into the market before saying "hey..this 2.5 HDD should be fine in my machine" and buying it and trying to stick it in...there are increasingly going to be more variables involved.
 
[quote name='Saix_XIII']Just to add my own info to the mix.

If you are like me and didn't have an external drive big enough to backup the PS3 HDD you currently use there is a very very easy solution.[/QUOTE]

It would probably be the way I'd do it, since I do own an external drive dock, but no extra drives.

The only issue would be warranty stuff, since I've only owned my PS3 for a couple of months.
 
[quote name='TheLongshot']It would probably be the way I'd do it, since I do own an external drive dock, but no extra drives.

The only issue would be warranty stuff, since I've only owned my PS3 for a couple of months.[/QUOTE]

There is no warranty issue, this is a feature that Sony approves of and lists how to do it in the manual you got with your PS3.

[quote name='Average Gamer']does all 2.5" HDD work on PS3?[/QUOTE]
Any 2.5 SATA HDD should work.
 
[quote name='Saix_XIII']

Any 2.5 SATA HDD should work.[/QUOTE]


Not completely true. Yes, PS3s use 2.5" drives, but you have to watch out for the drive height too. It won't fit unless it's a standard 9.5 mm height drive. Some of the larger 2.5" drives are thicker, 12.5 mm in height.
 
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