External Hard Drive Questions

[moose4130]

I bought a 320 GB External HD, a Western Digital My Book. Do I need to format it for my PS3? How can I help it work with my PS? I copied 40GB worth of MP3 files to it, hoping to be able to play them with the PS, but it doesn't seem to like it. If you select the usb drive on the XMB, nothing comes up, or it will act like it is trying to read it, but never comes up with anything. Help?

[foots]

Originally Posted by moose4130

I bought a 320 GB External HD, a Western Digital My Book. Do I need to format it for my PS3? How can I help it work with my PS? I copied 40GB worth of MP3 files to it, hoping to be able to play them with the PS, but it doesn't seem to like it. If you select the usb drive on the XMB, nothing comes up, or it will act like it is trying to read it, but never comes up with anything. Help?

Did you try selecting the drive under music, hitting triangle and selecting Display All?

My external WD HDD came out of the box formatted FAT32 so I wouldn't think you need to format it.

EDIT: Also with that many files the PS3 may not show them instantly.

[moose4130]

I can press triangle, some of the folders come up, but the contents of them stay hidden, and the music one either won't come up or takes way too long.

[richieb1971]

If your PS3 can see the drive and you cannot see the files its because your PS3 is fussy like mine.

One thing I would recommend all HDD users do is create the specific directories that the PS3 wants to see.

PICTURES VIDEOS MUSIC (all upper case on the root directory).

That way, you put all your crap in the respective directory and the XMB sorts out everything. So if you go to music on XMB, you press X (not triangle) and it lists only music. etc etc etc.

I don't know if this would make any difference to your problem, but its worth knowing and takes the fiddling out of everything.

[Beefbowl]

Originally Posted by richieb1971

If your PS3 can see the drive and you cannot see the files its because your PS3 is fussy like mine.

One thing I would recommend all HDD users do is create the specific directories that the PS3 wants to see.

PICTURES VIDEOS MUSIC (all upper case on the root directory).

That way, you put all your crap in the respective directory and the XMB sorts out everything. So if you go to music on XMB, you press X (not triangle) and it lists only music. etc etc etc.

I don't know if this would make any difference to your problem, but its worth knowing and takes the fiddling out of everything.

+1

you need to create a folder called PS3 with sub-folders like MUISC VIDEOS etc.

[ECWaenigma]

Thank God somebody asked this as I'm looking at doing the external thing as well. Any other ideas or info from anyone? I'm pretty inexperienced with this kind of stuff.

[richieb1971]

Originally Posted by ECWaenigma

Thank God somebody asked this as I'm looking at doing the external thing as well. Any other ideas or info from anyone? I'm pretty inexperienced with this kind of stuff.

What are you trying to do?

When buying a HDD there are some things you need to know.

If the drive is pre-formatted as FAT32 the PS3 will see it automatically. If the drive is NTFS it will not recognise it at all. If the drive is NTFS and its over 32GB in size and your only way to format it is Windows, your going to have to download a utility to format it as FAT32.

Once the drive is FAT32, just use a PC to create the folders VIDEOS/PICTURES and MUSIC in the top directory. It must be upper case. Put your files in the respective directory and the PS3 will list them in the XMB like it does with any other file.

If you need to format the drive in FAT32 format. Use Seagate discwizard. It will go step by step into things and it works in seconds. Windows unfortunately doesn't format anything for FAT32 if its bigger than 32GB which is ridiculous.

Usually, most drives are FAT32 out of the box, but i've seen quite a few that aren't. In most cases, external HDD's are FAT32. But if you buy an USB type enclosure and put an internal drive inside it, then you'll encounter the scenario where you need to format the drive in FAT32.

Hope this helps.

regards,

Richie.

[Beefbowl]

everything you need to know about 3 hard drive should be available on "upgrading your hard drive" sticky at the top.

[richieb1971]

That might be the case, but not all console owners are PC gee whiz nerds. Even with my experience in the field I have had trouble recently getting things to work. Its nice to have just one post with 99% of the information in laymens terms in it. Having a 65 page thread is quite daunting and may go into so much depth and technical terms you may get lost before you achieve anything.

I'm quite happy If I have the time to see someone reach their goal with a 1-1 tutorial based walkthrough.

[Beefbowl]

Originally Posted by richieb1971

That might be the case, but not all console owners are PC gee whiz nerds. Even with my experience in the field I have had trouble recently getting things to work. Its nice to have just one post with 99% of the information in laymens terms in it. Having a 65 page thread is quite daunting and may go into so much depth and technical terms you may get lost before you achieve anything.

I'm quite happy If I have the time to see someone reach their goal with a 1-1 tutorial based walkthrough.

I'm pretty sure if you asked your question in that thread, it would have been answered just like it would have in this one. I just don't think we need 20 different threads asking about hard drive questions when it could all be answered in the one thread we have dedicated for it. Just my 2 cents.

[moose4130]

So, I discovered the drive is formatted as NTFS. How do I change that?

[richieb1971]

Originally Posted by moose4130

So, I discovered the drive is formatted as NTFS. How do I change that?

If its smaller than 32GB you can do it in Windows. Just right click and format.

OR:

Just go to control panel : administrative tools : computer management : Storage : Disk management

It should be self explanatory there. I am using Vista though so obviously it might be different in your setup.


If the drive is bigger than 32GB then you need a 3rd party tool. I personally use Seagates Disc Wizard which can be found here -

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...ads/discwizard

Just download, execute it. Select the format option for the drive letter you want and select FAT32. It should take 10 seconds or less. Once your done the PS3 will see it.

Create the VIDEO PICTURE and MUSIC folders.

Your done.

Apparently MACS have a FAT32 format utility built in.


Oh and please be VERY VERY careful. Do not format your C: drive for Christs sake.

[moose4130]

Ok, I used the seagate wizard to re format, it worked, now the PS recognizes everything, but one question. Does it have to re-read all the files everytime I do something else? Like it stopped counting mp3 files halfway through at 3100 or so when I didn't want to wait anymore and played COD, and when I quit COD, it had to re-count all the files?

And thanks for all the help.

[quirkmanly]

Originally Posted by moose4130

Ok, I used the seagate wizard to re format, it worked, now the PS recognizes everything, but one question. Does it have to re-read all the files everytime I do something else? Like it stopped counting mp3 files halfway through at 3100 or so when I didn't want to wait anymore and played COD, and when I quit COD, it had to re-count all the files?

And thanks for all the help.

Now I could be wrong here, but I believe this is due to the lack of an indexing service in the PS3 OS. Are your files all in a single folder or in multiple sub-folders?

[richieb1971]

You can always put the files in folders in smaller sizes. Like create a folder per album etc inside the music folder.

You could of done a sort by date but because you copied everything across in one go its going to put all 3100 in the same list. But basically your going to need to put stuff in piles of 15 or whatever to stop it doing the indexing thing.

Also, I think you need to press triangle if you create subfolders because subfolders don't show up with a simple X because its not a music file.

Try pressing triangle once your in the place where the 3100 are, you will have a sort by group option, play with that.

[cembros]

i attempted to install the seagate program but when i try to run it i am prompted with a message that asks me to purchase another of the companys programs in order to run the discgate? Any thoughts

[richieb1971]

Originally Posted by cembros

i attempted to install the seagate program but when i try to run it i am prompted with a message that asks me to purchase another of the companys programs in order to run the discgate? Any thoughts

Your special then. It didn't ask me anything.

[badboi]

If you happen to have a pre Windows 2000 machine, it will format your hard drive from NTFS to Fat32. I faced a similar problem with some Maxtor hard drives that were NTFS and I needed to make them Fat32 for my Oppo. My Vista and Windows 2000 wouldn't do it, but I read that older versions of Windows would do it. I took my trusty Packard Bell out of the garage, cleaned it up, fired it up, and formatted the drive just fine. Strange how progress sometimes isn't.

[Chocolatejas]

Ive got an old IDE hardrive and bought an external enclosure for it. I want to hook it up to the PS3 but my computer won't recoginize it. It doing the beep when you plug a new usb in over and over again. It is also a Maxtor hardrive. Any suggestions?

[stenk]

Originally Posted by Chocolatejas

Ive got an old IDE hardrive and bought an external enclosure for it. I want to hook it up to the PS3 but my computer won't recoginize it. It doing the beep when you plug a new usb in over and over again. It is also a Maxtor hardrive. Any suggestions?

Try going to Disk Management in Administrative Tools in the Control Panel and see if you can see it from there (I assume you are using XP)