Hard drive questions

[Gamekid]

1) As of right now with internal non removable hard drives, like the kind we all use in our desktop computers, if files are deleted off of the hard drive, it is possible to get the file back. Since the ps3 will come with a hard drive, will it be possible to get files back on the hard drive?

2) The hard drive is designed to cache files on it. So if you play Stranglehold, the files are copied from the disc to the hard drive and then to ram as they're needed. My question is that between a 20 and 60GB hard drive, will that affect game play performance. Here's the thing, if you play Stranglehold, would gameplay be affected on a 20GB hard drive vs a 60GB hard drive since files would be stored on the hard drive and then copied to ram?

[no_wei]

well, i'm not an absolute expert on the subject but i'll tell you what i know.

1. all hard drives are, to some degree, removable. it's just a matter of how easily they can be removed.

as to the deleting/recovering aspect, i'm told that files can, in fact, be recovered, but this can be difficult. i know that many security protocols call for a file to be overwritten a certain number of times before it is considered unretrivable. i think the dod's guidelines call for like 20-odd times. other people insist on destroying their old hard drives via blowtorches, because they claim data can always be retrieved.

apparently computer science ninjas have nothing better to do with their time than rummage around for old hard drives in order to painstakingly reconstruct people's old personal information in an effort to steal people's identities.

although with many of these claims, i want to know why this property of hard drives can't be further exploited to give me 20x the storage capacity, or even an infinite amount of storage capacity.

of course most of what i know about hard drive properties is probably vaguely related to windows file system formats, so, since the ps3's operating system is based on linux, i believe, all this might be totally different, and i could just be talking out of my ass.

so here, finally, is the common sense answer. just don't delete files you don't want to lose. use one of the many ports on your ps3 to copy your data to some other device or just transfer it to a pc over the wireless network.

2. i think you've got one too many steps here. i haven't heard anything about this, but i don't see why the ps3 would copy game information to the hard drive before it was buffered to the ram.

it seems to me it would make way more sense to just buffer the info from the disc directly to the ram, just like with psx and the ps2. especially because the hard drive is often times one of a computer's slowest points, so designing the system to work in that fashion would inherently adversely affect performance.

that being said, some info would be copied to the hard drive, but i would imagine this is most likely only going to be stuff like save information and the like which would be pretty insignificant on either a 20 or 60 gig hard drive.

i'm also sure there will be a way where it's possible to copy a game to the hard drive (i know a lot of people who had modded xboxes and did this, but i'm not sure if you could do it without a modchip) and play it from the hard drive, which might actually improve overall performance (because despite my previous claim, the hard disk is probably faster than the optical drive... maybe), but again, i think this is something the system will be able to do, not something the system must necessarily do.

and obviously if you've got a 20 gig hard drive and 25 gig game on a blu-ray disc you wouldn't be able to copy the entire thing to your hard drive, but, as many people have pointed out, i wouldn't expect most, if any, ps3 games to be this big for a while. as the system ages i would expect more 25 gig games, and when they start to fill up dual layer discs even the 60 gig hard drive will look small. and again, most of the people i know with modded xboxes also have upgraded hard drives that are (significantly) larger than 60 gigs, anyway.

so, i would expect that hard drive upgrades would be one of the more popular upgrades for the ps3, and, depending on how one chooses to use his or her ps3, might even become necessary.

maybe someone out there can clarify my ramblings, but i hope that helped at least somewhat.

/no

[Psiweaver]

well you hit on the fact of how difficult it is to install a new one and that will be the key

[partridge]

I thought the PS3 hard drive was a fairly generic affair, apparently you can upgrade it quite easily to a larger one if you want. Sony don't even have any plans to offer a branded hard drive, they are happy for consumers to buy any compatible drive. If I can find the link I'll post it.

[Gamekid]

I think that the idea is that Sony will give us a starter hard drive which we can later upgrade if we want to. The hard drive is required to save game progress and I guess the ps3 would'nt run without a hard drive installed because game files are also cached to it.

[suprmallet]

From what I've read, it sounds like you could upgrade it with any kind of hard drive you want BUT only the ones Sony sells will have the Linux OS, which is what would actually allow you to access the system. Now, what you probably could do is attach an external hard drive for content, but keep the bundled hard drive for the OS software.

[partridge]

Sony have no current plans to sell larger hard drives for the PS3, so where did you get that from?

[Gamekid]

It's possible that you could attach a removable hard drive via USB since there are USB slots in the front.