Upgrading a PS3 Harddrive how easy??

[Blu-Boy in BKK]

I've noticed some of you guys have installed larger hard drives in your PS3/s. How easy is this to do and what exactly needs to be done after the replacement is done. I have a 60 gig model and was looking to upgrade to 500- 750 Gig as they are very cheap here in Bangkok, Thailand. Is thare a particular size/ speed i should look out for? Thanks in advance..

[iNCREDiPiNOY]

PS3 use 2.5" laptop size and support unlimited HDD storage. All you have to do is unscrew the nut bold (Should be behind the black sticker). Flick it and pull the lever slowly. Remove the HDD out of the tray. Now you can replace with any HDD that support SATA, not the IDE.

[syncguy]

I haven't done this but have read about the experience of other people which is positive. You should be able to do this easily (as explained in the previous post) if you are knowledgeable with PC and hard drives. Just be careful with heat. If the new HDD generates significantly higher amount of heat than the original, that could create issues.

[owa]

It's really easy. The only issue I had was getting the screws out of the drive cage. I ended up stripping 3 out of 4 but was able to use a pair of pliers to get the stripped screws out. So, make sure you use a screwdriver that fits it well. Mine didn't so even though I was trying to be careful, I still stripped them.

I swapped the 60 gig drive for a 250 gig drive. There might a be limit on the size of the drive it'll recognize so you might want to double-check on that before getting something over 500+ gig. I think at one point Sony recommended 320 gig or less (but don't take my word on that).

I ended up staying with a 5400 rpm drive since the one in the PS3 is 5400 rpm. The 7200 rpm drives don't seem to make a huge difference but are a little faster (usually less than 10% though).

Backup your drive to an external USB hard drive first (or if you don't have much on it, a thumbdrive/flash drive) using the backup utility. Swap the drive, it'll format it and then use the backup utility to restore the contents. It saves/restores your settings, game saves, etc.

[Marine Mike]

Originally Posted by owa

It's really easy. The only issue I had was getting the screws out of the drive cage. I ended up stripping 3 out of 4 but was able to use a pair of pliers to get the stripped screws out. So, make sure you use a screwdriver that fits it well. Mine didn't so even though I was trying to be careful, I still stripped them.

I swapped the 60 gig drive for a 250 gig drive. There might a be limit on the size of the drive it'll recognize so you might want to double-check on that before getting something over 500+ gig. I think at one point Sony recommended 320 gig or less (but don't take my word on that).

I ended up staying with a 5400 rpm drive since the one in the PS3 is 5400 rpm. The 7200 rpm drives don't seem to make a huge difference but are a little faster (usually less than 10% though).

Backup your drive to an external USB hard drive first (or if you don't have much on it, a thumbdrive/flash drive) using the backup utility. Swap the drive, it'll format it and then use the backup utility to restore the contents. It saves/restores your settings, game saves, etc.

+1

Also its not as difficult as installing Linux onto it as well, which I decided to do one day and went to bed around 3am after driving to Wallmart 2 times to get a keyboard that would be compatible.

[Zman2k2]

Here's a great link with step-by-step instructions, as well as HDD recommendations for upgrading.

http://boardsus.playstation.com/play...cending&page=1