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Home Entertainment:

Upsize your PS3 hard drive

By James Yu, GameSpot.com
02/10/2007



 


Remove the four screws that hold the hard drive to the tray. Use a screwdriver that fits snugly because the screws are extremely tight and easy to strip.


Swap in the new drive, and replace the screws.


Put the drive tray back into the system and slide it into place. Then replace the blue screw and snap the side panel back onto the system.


Turn on the console and let the system format the new drive. Then load up the PS3 backup utility to restore data from your external storage device back onto the PS3 hard drive.

At this point you should have a newly upgraded PS3 and the leftover hard drive. You could try selling the old drive, but small-capacity used drives may not fetch enough money to be worth the hassle of finding a buyer. If you still want to make the drive useful, you can buy an external drive enclosure to make it into a portable storage device.

 

 
 

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virtualess says...
Good article.

Here are some questions I believe some other PS3 owners would like to find out:

1) Would there be a drop in access speed if larger size is used? Say 250GB vs 160GB?
2) For all games that are purchased online (like fLow) and other demo games, would they be backed up? I read somewhere else vaguely that this is so but would be confined to the unit of PS3 you are using.
3) Is there a good and practical software that convert DVD movies (personal) to the format that PS3 play (and ditto for PSP)?

 
 
Georgester says...
I don't have a PS3 and I'm interested in the new 40Gb so I'd be interested to know too. But I think

1) I think it depends on the RPM of the HDD.
2) I think you would need to back it up too. I think if you backup the hard disk, everything saved goes with it. I'm not too sure.
3) You can play DVD movies on the PS3. But I don't really know any freeware software that would do it although there are a few good shareware (trial before pay) software that can for the PSP. I don't know about the PS3 on that.

 
 
litford says...
i'm just wondering if this will void my warranty?

 
 
azpunkguy says...
You won’t void your warranty, not will the size slow down the access speed I recommend that you go with a 7200 RMP drive 200 or 250 GIG, spend the money and you wont be disappointed, I'm not! You can find these drives at tigerdirect.com or other online sources. Follow the directions here and everything will work out great!

 
 
L3371 says...
The heat output of a 7200rpm drive will increase over 5400rpm as will the heat from a 250Gb over 160Gb.
Anyone tried a Solid State Drive in their PS3 yet?
I am looking forward to purchasing the new 256GB SSD as there is nearly no heat and the read/write times are nearly half that of standard HDD. Power consumption is also reduced.

 
 
Oroz says...
Use a External Harddrive and install yellow dog linux or just use a Max Drive 160 HDD its easy and u can take it off and use it with your Windows to move MP3, moves ect around easy fast and u dont have to use Linux if u dont want to. and its not bad for around $160us www.play-asia.com...

 
 
MARCMICH says...
How, or can I use external hardrives? I just purchased a cavalry 500 gb usb External hardrive. The ps3 didn't recognize it. I really don't know much about "partitioning" as I'm afraid that in the format stage I'll erase the ps3 hardrive.

 
 
Venazard says...
I have some questions.
1). Will all the games I've downloaded still be in my account? After all I don't want to have to repurchase them.
2). Where would I be able to purchase a 250GB Hardrive & for how much in U.S. Dollars?
Any help would be nice. Thank You.

 
 
Venazard says...
Another question. Will any brand that fits the correct size of 2.5 inches work or are there any specific brands that will only work? Thanks

 
 
skullpr says...
Hey everyone, first off I would like to congrats on a nice and simple step-by-step explanation on the HDD swap. I got a PS3 a few months ago, and I've been searching a lot to change my HDD and install another OS as well. Now, I'm no expert but what I've learned so far (and I'd appreciate any corrections) is:

MARCMICH
I have a Seagate 500GB HD, and it doesn't detect it either. If I'm not mistaken it has to be NTFS format. You can look it up in google.com (ntfs for ps3), maybe that will help.

VENAZARD
About the downloaded games you can download them to the same platform up to 5 times, without having to repurchase. You can find prety descent prices at newegg.com, and there are 7200 RPM drives at tigerdirect.com. The make of the HDD doesn't matter as long as its 2.5" and its a SATA drive.

Hope that helps you, any corrections will be greatly appreciated.

 
 
hodriver says...
IN RESPONSE TO virtualess' QUESTION CONCERNING CONVERTING DVD VIDEO TO PS3 COMPATIBLE VIDEO FILE FORMATS:

I'm not at all familiar with the codec support profile of the PSP. However, I do know for a fact that the PS3 supports the DivX/XviD codec. This means that anyone interested can simply take a ripped DVD and convert it to an *.avi file for streaming or local playback on the PS3; and it can all be done with freeware to boot!

First and foremost, you'll need a utility for backing up/ripping DVDs. It has been my experience that the freeware application, DVD-Shrink, is the most intuitive and feature rich application with which to do this. However, I've not seen it available for download for some time now. You may want to see if it's floating around anywhere as a torrent; although I'm certainly not suggesting you take that as a first option. DVD-Decryptor is an acceptable alternative but lacks the compression functionality of DVD-Shrink (to my knowledge).

Next, you'll want to find a suitable freeware utility to transcode your video to DivX or XviD. Luckily, one can nowadays easily convert video to DivX using the freeware utility Dr. DivX from DivX labs. This utility allows one to convert a variety of formats to DivX video with either original Dolby Digital audio (AC3), or compressed MP3 audio; although I suggest MP3 encoding be avoided due to A/V synchronization issues that tend to arise with DivX/XviD encoding and playback.

Then, once you've successfully re-encoded your new video, change the file extension of the new DivX file from *.divx to *.avi to avoid unnecessary complications that can arise from DivX's stupid attempt at making their format appear special and proprietary. Just for the record, this is suggested because not all software media players will recognize a *.divx file as playable; even though the only difference between a *.divx DivX file and an *.avi DivX file is the extension.

Last, you'll want to open the newly re-encoded file to assure that it's playable. I suggest trying to play it with Windows Media Player; simply because all Windows PCs will have it installed and it's a decent media player. After that, you'll just need to get it to the PS3. You can burn it to a disc (CD/DVD), write it to a memory card, copy it to a thumb drive, or my favorite, stream it to your PS3 on your home network with a UPnP server. However, the UPnP media server is an entirely different discussion.

I hope this answers your question, even though I failed to offer an equivalent option for the PSP.

 
 
THECHEF714 says...
I RECENTLY INSTALLED A 250G INTERNAL HDD ..... IT WORK'S FINE.
THEN I GOT A ENCLOSURE FOR THE 20G THAT CAME OUT OF THE PS3 TO USE IT AS AN EXT HDD
BUT THE PS3 DON'T SEE IT...?????

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT !!!!!!

 
 
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