PS3 HDD replacement mystery

arcane93

arcane93

CAGiversary!
Feedback
5 (100%)
I have an 80gb PS3 and I was quickly running out of drive space (especially given that a single game install can eat up 4.5GB by itself), so I decided yesterday to run to Micro Center and pick up a 500gb drive to upgrade it (probably overkill, but when I'm going to the effort and expense anyway, might as well go all the way). I backed up my system, installed the new drive, and restored. Everything (as far as I can tell so far) worked perfectly.

Except . . . Something seems to be eating up a lot of extra space on the new drive.

With my previous drive, System Information said "Free Space: 11GB / 74GB", meaning that I had 63GB of data on the system. The system backup on my external drive came to 52.9GB (don't know if it's compressed by that much, or if there was just 10GB of data that it couldn't back up).

With the new drive, it says "Free Space: 359GB / 465GB", meaning that there's 106GB of data on the system. I haven't done anything with it yet other than restoring the backup -- no new installs, and I haven't even played a game on it yet.

So, uh . . . Where is that extra 43GB of data (at least, assuming that it copied everything over) coming from? That's a lot of extra space being taken up, significantly more than would have even fit on the old drive. While on the one hand it doesn't really matter because it's not like I'll be hurting for space anytime soon, I'm still wondering what it is.

The only thing that I can think is that maybe it copied the archive files over from the backup and then decompressed them but didn't delete them, but if that's the case, how do I get rid of them now that I don't need them anymore? And it really doesn't even make sense for it to work that way anyway, because if you were, say, replacing a reasonably full drive with another drive of the same size (or had to restore a backup on the same drive, for that matter), it would be a problem.

I dunno, I'm confused. :whistle2:? Anyone have any idea?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hm, guess that makes sense to an extent, but that's a lot of extra space. I hope I'm going to see significant performance increases for all of that, if that's what it is.
 
you always lose space after you format a drive, even with PCs. I have a 160 gb and I think when I powered it up for the 1st time, there was only 140 - 150 gb available.
 
[quote name='js1']The bigger the drive the more the PS3 uses for memory and system use.[/QUOTE]
This. The PS3 reserves a percentage (I've heard 10%) of the HDD for the OS. So the larger the HDD, the larger the amount of space it will set aside.
 
This should really be in the faq or something.

Here is my post asking the same thing earlier this month..

http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241645

I had a 40gb system. I had only used 15 gb of the 37 available after a format.

See most people just spout off that "duh a drive is not really that big". etc

My delima was that I was "missing" more than my entire other drives size.

I noticed no performance gain. I had a 400GB it equalled 372 GB after format and the PS3 used over 50GB for itself, before adding any games.


It really makes no sense as far as I am concerned. My stem ran great with the PS3 using only 1 GB or whatever for its file system previously.
 
Go to Wikipedia and look up hard disk drive. Look under heading "capacity measurements."

According to the article, you get about 91% of the drives capacity.

Also, the PS3 might also reserve space for virtual memory/swap space (I'm guessing).
 
[quote name='jh6269']you always lose space after you format a drive, even with PCs. I have a 160 gb and I think when I powered it up for the 1st time, there was only 140 - 150 gb available.[/QUOTE]

What you're describing isn't a loss of space, it's actually just a difference in the way that drive sizes are labeled vs. the actual size. When labeling drives, they use a "calculation" based on the idea that 1GB = 1000MB = 1000KB = 1000B, which is blatantly incorrect -- it's actually 1GB = 1024MB = 1024KB = 1024B. The result of this is that drives are sold as being larger than they actually are. It wasn't a big deal back in the day when drives were smaller -- a "20MB" drive was actually 19MB, not a huge difference. Of course, when you start talking numbers in the hundreds of gigabytes, it's a much bigger deal -- a "500GB" drive is actually only 465GB, 35GB difference, which is a pretty massive amount. And yeah, your "160GB" drive would actually be 149GB. It's shameless false advertising, which they get away with only because it's the way that it's "always" been done. I'm well aware of that issue.

What I'm talking about here is different, though -- it's a significant amount of additional space just "missing" from the actual size of the drive, above and beyond what was used on the previous drive.

I guess I'll buy into the idea that the PS3 takes a percentage of drive space for system use, but man, what a horribly designed system, if they're taking up that many gigabytes of extra space, when it doesn't really make any difference in system performance, just because they can.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
[quote name='arcane93']What you're describing isn't a loss of space, it's actually just a difference in the way that drive sizes are labeled vs. the actual size. When labeling drives, they use a "calculation" based on the idea that 1GB = 1000MB = 1000KB = 1000B, which is blatantly incorrect -- it's actually 1GB = 1024MB = 1024KB = 1024B. The result of this is that drives are sold as being larger than they actually are. It wasn't a big deal back in the day when drives were smaller -- a "20MB" drive was actually 19MB, not a huge difference. Of course, when you start talking numbers in the hundreds of gigabytes, it's a much bigger deal -- a "500GB" drive is actually only 465GB, which is a pretty massive amount. And yeah, your "160GB" drive would actually be 149GB. It's shameless false advertising, which they get away with only because it's the way that it's "always" been done. I'm well aware of that issue.

What I'm talking about here is different, though -- it's a significant amount of additional space just "missing" from the actual size of the drive, above and beyond what was used on the previous drive.

I guess I'll buy into the idea that the PS3 takes a percentage of drive space for system use, but man, what a horribly designed system, if they're taking up that many gigabytes of extra space that don't really make any difference in system performance just because they can.[/QUOTE]

2 other people have already mentioned that the PS3 reserves certain amount of the HDD for System files and OS. You aren't the only one got this problem (It really isn't a problem). It is probably a safety measurement Sony takes for updates and such. You have a 500gb HDD anyway 43gb missing isn't going to kill you >.> and that isn't a "significant amount" comparing to the overall capacity. If you're really concerned so much about this, give Sony a call and ask them I'm sure they'll have a better explanation than the rest of us here.
 
Arcane,

They label drives as 1000 MiB == 1 GiB, and it absolutly is correct.

The filesystem measures 1 GB == 1024 MB, so you lose a percent this way. I don't know what format the drive is in for PS3, but just formatting a drive will cause you to lose capacity.
 
I think he was hitting you on the "lose capacity" remarks. its really just a difference in unit of measure.

They are both correct.

The bigger picture here, as it was in my thread I linked from 11/03/09... is that its a complete joke to have sony use a % of the drive... I think its like 640GB as a max drive the PS3 can take, but give me a break. The system does not need 10% or whatever the calculation is.

My PS3 took more than 10% it took close to 52+ GB (cant remember exact numbers here). Thats almost 14% of my drive.. and thats above (in addition to) the 28GB difference that the drive formatted with free.

As the PS3 gets more popular and people use their drive space and upgrade this is going to become an irritating issue for a lot of people... the other end of the argument is Sony didnt have to make it so easy to change drives out. They could have went with their own drives and really killed us. I would take this over the other option, but still.
 
Snake,

Check out the Wikipedia article, it states that, depending on the format, you only get about 91% of your total capacity. So basically 10% or so is wasted due to the way the drive is formatted.

I bought a 350 GB SATA drive for my PC, I use Ubuntu, and formatted it with ext3, and I think right out of the box, I only had about 300GB freespace.

I doubt this issue has anything to do with Sony or the PS3 per se. This is normal.
 
[quote name='jh6269']Also, the wasted HDD space, I consider it "lost."[/QUOTE]

do the math or look at my link.

The 400 GB I had should have had about 372 if I put it in a PC after format... it had 317.

I dont think you have replaced a drive in the PS3 or you wouldnt be disagreeing here. The PS3 sucks too much up for resources on a bigger drive. Its a joke really.
 
Is it a problem with the Fat32 file system? I thought there was a point in PS3s cycle that any drive bigger than 250 did not work
 
your ps3 and the hard drive are working just like they should. the ps3 will reserve a set amount of space for cache and OS services. the other "missing" data is probably just game data you have installed from the backup. check that and delete it from the games you no longer play.

sometimes that game data (depending on the game) can range from 90 megs to 7 gigs of space.
 
[quote name='smiggity']Is it a problem with the Fat32 file system? I thought there was a point in PS3s cycle that any drive bigger than 250 did not work[/QUOTE]

It is 640 MB I do believe as a max size. I believe after reading more into it that FAT32 only comes into play on external drives, not the internal.


I think the OP knows the issue now, its simply the file system that the PS3 sets a portion on reserve and considers it as used space. Its NOT the same as the 1000=/=1024 arguement. That is understood in both his post, and my post earlier this month about this issue.

This is an entirely different issue at hand and will become more of a discussion if people start upgrading drives.

I know for a fact that my drive was not used up by game saves. I did a complete fresh install and checked the drive space before transfering the backup over. I then reformated and did it again to verify. Both times it was the same reading without any of the info from the backup on the new drive.

People may not pay attention, but for me the "missing info" was actually larger than the entire available space on my original drive. So I thought something was not right.
 
Snake,

You had a 40 gig drive, it had 37 gigs free w/no data. You upgraded to 400 Gb, and ended up with 370 gb free. It's proportionally the same amount of space missing, around 10%.

The reason the 40 go
Gigs was missing (as you say, the entire size of your old drive) is because you increased your capacity by 10. 40 x 10 = 400; 10% of 400 gb is 40 gb.

It's no mystery, the formatted drive wastes 10%. The ps3 is not going to use more space on the drive just because the drive is bigger.
 
[quote name='jh6269']Snake,

You had a 40 gig drive, it had 37 gigs free w/no data. You upgraded to 400 Gb, and ended up with 370 gb free. It's proportionally the same amount of space missing, around 10%.
[/quote]

except I had 314GB free without installing a single thing... I know that I should have had 370GB, but then the PS3 took another 53GB for its file system.

This is where I think we are not lining up in our thinking. The OP had the same problem it seems.

What I am trying to say is what you explained is common knowledge, for the most part. The 10% you say is normal if you put a drive in a PC, etc...

In a PS3 its that 10% mentioned above +++++ another % for the PS3s file system, buffers, etc.

I checked this twice and had nothing installed on my drive.

The PS3 reserved 56GB or there abouts for apparently its file system. That is bigger than my entire drive before and my PS3 ran fine before... so I didnt understand why it needed so much room.

When I go to system and info it shows 317GB total drive space. It does not show ~370GB free, like it would if this exact drive was in a PC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top