Playstation 3 HDD going slow as hell... Help!

[martinstraka8282]

So I upgraded my 60gb PS3 to a 250gb Western Digital 2.5" 5400RPM Sata Drive, and everything went smoothly with backing up, installing, and restoring. I have now put all 160gb's of MP3's on my PS3, and it is SO slow now. All the icons take a few seconds to load up, and when I am navigating my music it takes forever for the info to come up when I scroll through my music. For exampple: I scroll down to Snoop Dogg, and when his name finally comes up, I click on it and then it takes another 10 or 15 seconds for the songs to come up. Everything plays fine, it just takes forever.

Im thinking it could be because my hard drive is about 75% full, but my drives on my computer are way faster even when they are full. I am thinking that maybe the PS3 just cant handle so many MP3's, but other than that Im confused cuz it all worked fine before I put all my music on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[bhuyanp]

IMO, it's 5.4k rpm and data read rate causing the PS3 to run slow. Nothing to do with PS3 as such.

[JasonR]

Yeah, I would have gone 7.2k...

[martinstraka8282]

Is library seeking and file searching one of the areas that a 7200rpm drive would excel the most?

[devils3023]

Originally Posted by bhuyanp

IMO, it's 5.4k rpm and data read rate causing the PS3 to run slow. Nothing to do with PS3 as such.

The factory hdd is also 5400rpm so I don't think that's the issue. Most of the larger 160gig+ hdd only come in 5400rpm versions because of stability issues and noise/heat issues that can occur w/ the higher speed drives. My guess is the sheer size and data stored on the hdd now is causing the longer loading times and isn't anything to worry about.

[seto]

Well, it's the read speed of the data off the plates so one would theoretically believe that your seek times would be improved by having a 7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm HDD.

[martinstraka8282]

Is there anyone out there that can report the same experience, or the opposite?

btw thanks for the input guys.

[JasonR]

How much memory does the PS3 have, he says he notices it compared to his PC. Well 2GB compared to 512MB might be the case too....

[martinstraka8282]

It has seemed to get worse as I have filled up my hard drive. When I only put about 5 gbs of mP3's on it, it was fine, but now that I have all of it on there, it seems to go really slow.

[Todd]

Originally Posted by martinstraka8282

Is there anyone out there that can report the same experience, or the opposite?

btw thanks for the input guys.

I have the wd 250gb scorpio drive in my PS3 and when I load a bunch videos, pictures, or my mp3's it does take longer to load files I tend to keep all my files on an external hdd just transferring what I want.

[martinstraka8282]

Originally Posted by Todd

I have the wd 250gb scorpio drive in my PS3 and when I load a bunch videos, pictures, or my mp3's it does take longer to load files I tend to keep all my files on an external hdd just transferring what I want.

I have considered doing that as well, but what would be the point of having a 250gb hard drive if you cant fill it up. I wouldnt mind a 10k rpm 500gb external drive that can be powered thru usb so that it only comes on when the PS3 is turned on... if such a thing exists.

[Shin-Ra]

Is it any quicker navigating through files you've already been through? Transferring so many files at once it may not have catalogued everything yet.

[martinstraka8282]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

Is it any quicker navigating through files you've already been through? Transferring so many files at once it may not have catalogued everything yet.

Sometimes I think so, but then I go back to an artist that Id been through already, and it does it again. It doesnt seem to be doing it when I scroll through my game demos, and PSN games, or my video trailers, just my MP3s. I also wish there was a way to create folders and subfolders rather than having to scroll through hundreds of artists.

[Shin-Ra]

Originally Posted by martinstraka8282

I also wish there was a way to create folders and subfolders rather than having to scroll through hundreds of artists.

There is but it's going to take some time, even with a little trick.

Highlight a track, press △, select Information.
Highlight Album, press ╳, enter a single letter.

Repeat this for each track in the same album.

If your Music list isn't already grouped by 'Album' press ◻ until it is.

Highlight the album named with the single letter, press △, select Information.
Highlight Album, press ╳, enter the real album name you want to use.

[martinstraka8282]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

There is but it's going to take some time, even with a little trick.

Highlight a track, press △, select Information.
Highlight Album, press ╳, enter a single letter.

Repeat this for each track in the same album.

If your Music list isn't already grouped by 'Album' press ◻ until it is.

Highlight the album named with the single letter, press △, select Information.
Highlight Album, press ╳, enter the real album name you want to use.

Is there a way to create a folder inside a folder though? Example:

Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle - Tracks 1-14
- Doggfather
- Tha Last Meal

ATM I look up Snoop Dogg, and then all the songs from all his albums are in a list together as opposed to the albums being subfolders with the tracks contained in it. When I organize it by albums, I have to scroll through a lot more files to get to particular artists because the amount of albums are more than the amount of artists.

[Shin-Ra]

You can't change grouping options within a group at the moment, no.

Do your music tracks contain single/album art?

Do the tracks without artwork load up quicker?

[martinstraka8282]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

You can't change grouping options within a group at the moment, no.

Do your music tracks contain single/album art?

Do the tracks without artwork load up quicker?

No I don't have any artwork attached to any of the MP3's. I've actually gone through and properly named, and deleted any tags or artwork other than Artist, Album, Track, Track #, Genre and Year using a program called MP3tag. The icons are slow to load up even though its just the generic icon. I wouldn't mind a bit of lag on the menu, but sometimes it takes about 15 seconds to load.

I can't seem to figure out whats causing this, my 60gb drive didnt act like this when it was full.

[Toptube]

its probably because you have all of your mp3 in one folder.

when you open that folder, its trying to cache all of them at once and its overflowing the ram. the PS3 is designed to run games and is setup to do so with 256mb of system ram and 256mb of video ram.

but for general purpose browsing and file management, 256mb is 256mb. in other words, not much. you'll likely see an improvement once all of them are organized into album and or artis folders. you'll also notice that while browsing the web you'll run out of memory pretty quick and you'll have to clear the cache semi-often.


even on a PC with 2 gigs of ram you'll see similar behavior with a folder full of images. put 200+ pictures in a folder with thumbnail view and scroll through sort of quickly. you'll likely have to wait for the computer to catch up to see the thumbnails. even if they are indexed. but you should have plenty of memory to temp cache them so that after they load up, everything is fine.

[Todd]

Originally Posted by martinstraka8282

I have considered doing that as well, but what would be the point of having a 250gb hard drive if you cant fill it up. I wouldnt mind a 10k rpm 500gb external drive that can be powered thru usb so that it only comes on when the PS3 is turned on... if such a thing exists.

You can't use a hdd that's powered through usb, however my western digital external hdd's power on/off when the PS3 is turned on/off. I run a 500gb and 1tb external hdd plus the wd 250gb scorpio internal hdd there are things you can't do with folders, and files on the external hdd's modifying album and artist information I have over 250gb of mp3's with art work and yes it takes longer to access folders but this doesn't hurt game play or anything else it's just to much for the 256 ram as the other writer suggested.

[Papi4baby]

Originally Posted by Todd

You can't use a hdd that's powered through usb, however my western digital external hdd's power on/off when the PS3 is turned on/off. I run a 500gb and 1tb external hdd plus the wd 250gb scorpio internal hdd there are things you can't do with folders, and files on the external hdd's modifying album and artist information I have over 250gb of mp3's with art work and yes it takes longer to access folders but this doesn't hurt game play or anything else it's just to much for the 256 ram as the other writer suggested.

Actually the small WD portable HD are USB powered only

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=387