PS3 Harddrive Space

I plan on upgrading my current HDD in the near future, but in the meantime, I have a question about HDD space needed to download a game. I was pretty stoked when Vanquish was revealed to be the newly offered free game, so I freed up some space on my 120GB HDD. I believe I had 16-18GB free, so I thought I had more than enough space to download Vanquish, which I believe is a 12GB game. However, when I tried to download, my PS3 told me that I didn't have enough space on my HDD. Has anyone ever had this problem when downloading games onto their PS3? Specifically, have any of you ever had enough HDD space available to download a particular game only to have your PS3 tell you that you didn't? Thank in advance.

you need double- 1 amount for the installer and 1 for the game

[quote name='plvl']you need double- 1 amount for the installer and 1 for the game[/QUOTE]

So in the case of Vanquish, I need 24GB of available space to download a 12GB game. That sucks. I guess I really do need to upgrade my HDD.

Just purchased a 1TB Scorpio Blue HDD for $80 (no tax or shipping charges) from B&H. Looking forward to having enough room to play all the IGC titles available through PS+.

I dont think the PS3 will accept anything over 640GB as an internal drive. hopefully your 1TB is an external HDD...

[quote name='JSiggy']I dont think the PS3 will accept anything over 640GB as an internal drive. hopefully your 1TB is an external HDD...[/QUOTE]Incorrect.

I have a 750GB Scorpio Black in my CECH-3001 PS3 and it has all the correct capacity (698GB), and there are numerous CAGs with 1TB HDDs in their PS3s.

That limitation, if it was there previously, has long since been lifted.

Yep - I'm running a 1 TB (Hitachi) drive in my PS3 slim - no problems and it shows up with the correct (something like 940 gigs formatted) space.

To add to what the previous 2 posters said, the HDD I ordered has numerous reviews from various sites confirming that it works on the PS3.

[quote name='shrike4242']Incorrect.

I have a 750GB Scorpio Black in my CECH-3001 PS3 and it has all the correct capacity (698GB), and there are numerous CAGs with 1TB HDDs in their PS3s.

That limitation, if it was there previously, has long since been lifted.[/QUOTE]
There wasn't a literal memory limitation, just more physical dimensions. Three platter drives were previously too thick(@320 gigs per platter) and two platter drives fit the bill. Now they have drives at 500 gigs per platter and denser, so most now fit.

Just wanted to confirm that I installed a new 1TB HDD on my PS3.

I just recently installed a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 5400RPM drive in my PS3. I also did so primarily so I could add more PS+ games and I would recommend it to any PS+ members out there.

A couple of thoughts for anyone thinking of doing it:

1) It is extremely easy to change out the HDD. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that will walk you through it and Sony even made the primary screw a different color. The actual swapping of drives takes only about five minutes. [Total time: about 2 1/2 hours, YMMV. There are five steps. Backup (1 hour*), physically changing drives (5-10 minutes), formatting (15 minutes), initial setup (10 minutes), reinstall (1 hour*)] *Depending on amount of data.

2) If you have a large external hard drive or know someone who does, use it to back up all the data on your current drive. While it is possible, if you only back up save data to a flash drive you're going to have to reinstall all your games individually. Backing up to an external drive takes about an hour with another hour transferring it to the new drive.

3) The PS3 reserves a certain amount of space on the hard drive for system software, updates, messages, etc. This is a fixed amount plus a percentage of the hard drive so the bigger the drive, the more space it will reserve. On a 1TB drive, that's 60-70GB!

4) A larger HDD requires more power so if your PS3 isn't already consuming more power than your kitchen, it will when you're done. (Though it will still probably be less than the cable box.)

5) There are some reports of overheating with faster (7200+ rpm) drives. Apparently the PS3 can't buffer at those speeds anyway so the slight gain probably isn't worth the money or the potential trouble.

[quote name='Stanley the Bugman']
5) There are some reports of overheating with faster (7200+ rpm) drives. Apparently the PS3 can't buffer at those speeds anyway so the slight gain probably isn't worth the money or the potential trouble.[/QUOTE]
Those reports are very old now, I'm on year 2 or 3 of my 7200 rpm 640 gig Samsung Spinpoint. The biggest performance gain is by having a larger cache on the drive than the standard 8mb. I notice a 25% increase in speed on long installs, a faster XMB access and have no issues overheating. My primary reasons for going with a 7200 rpm drive was because they had more cache at 16mb than the standard 8mb at the time, they were faster reading and writing(able to fill up the cache faster) and this one in particular consumed less energy and produced less heat than most stock 5400 rpm stock laptop drives at the time.

I have no regrets and am surprised that people are still citing very old reports like hard drive technology hasn't made any progress.