External Hard Drive?

[jono_0101]

i had a question for everybody, my 40GB PS3 has recently told me that it is running low on disc space and i am now unable to start up games because it lacks the space to run them, so i went out and bought an external HD rather than a new internal one, so my questions are:

1. will the external HD work with the PS3? because i have connected it and the PS3 recognizes it, but i cant figure out how to set the PS3 to begin saving game data into the external HD, it keeps trying to install on the internal and tells me there is not enough disc space to do that

2. If it does work with the PS3, will i also be able to connect the external HD to my PC and use it for extra storage on there as well? I bought a 500GB external HD with the thought that if it would work with both devices, i could just keep a lot of my music and video on there as well as game data and free up a lot of space on both devices

any help is greatly appreciated!

[jamclaur]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

i had a question for everybody, my 40GB PS3 has recently told me that it is running low on disc space and i am now unable to start up games because it lacks the space to run them, so i went out and bought an external HD rather than a new internal one, so my questions are:

1. will the external HD work with the PS3? because i have connected it and the PS3 recognizes it, but i cant figure out how to set the PS3 to begin saving game data into the external HD, it keeps trying to install on the internal and tells me there is not enough disc space to do that

2. If it does work with the PS3, will i also be able to connect the external HD to my PC and use it for extra storage on there as well? I bought a 500GB external HD with the thought that if it would work with both devices, i could just keep a lot of my music and video on there as well as game data and free up a lot of space on both devices

any help is greatly appreciated!

you can't run the OS from the external... what you need to do is back everything up so nothing is lost. Then install a new internal HDD, format it to work with the PS3, reinstall all your saves and you're done.

BUt no, you can't work from the HDD...

You can probably partition the HDD into segments, which means it's basically running as 2 HDDs... Use one for the PS3 and one for the PC.

[slaizer2000]

if you have non game data on the ps3 you can move those to your external drive. Things like trailers, pictures and stuff. That may free up enough space to run your games depending on how much non game files on your system.

The external drive should be recognized by your computer as well.

[SkantDragon]

Some of the information in your replies so far is flat wrong. Beware.

To answer your question, an external hard drive isn't going to cut it for what you're trying to do. Only certain operations will work with an external hard drive at all, and all of those are from the XMB, not from within games.

Pretty much, you can offload unprotected videos, pictures, and music to the external HD and that's about it. Game saves can be manually copied to it, but this is a transport or backup mechanism. Games don't save directly to an external HD.

PSN video store movie downloads are protected and can only be stored on the internal hard drive.

If you do want to work with an external HD, it can be shared between a PS3 and a PC. All of the PS3 operations just create normal directories and files on the HD. It doesn't use special partitions or anything like that. Note that the PS3 only works with FAT32 format partitions. It can't read Microsoft's proprietary NTFS format. This can create some difficulty since modern Windows typically won't offer the option to format a large external HD in anything other than NTFS. Since the drive probably comes preformated with FAT32, just don't format it in Windows and it will be fine.

At this point, I would recommend that you purchase a new internal hard drive for your PS3. Research it. Most, but not all 2.5" drives work well in the PS3. Some are physically too tall to fit into the drive bay. And some will function, but do not perform adequately. I was going to get a 500Gb Seagate for mine, but my research showed that a lot of people were complaining about poor performance with that model. I went with a 500Gb Samsung instead, and it's been working very well.

Since your external HD is already working with the PS3, I would recommend that you keep it for just a little longer. Use the backup utility under System Settings in the PS3 to backup your internal 40Gb drive to your external HD. Then install your new internal HD in the PS3 and restore from the external HD. You'll end up with all of your settings and files exactly as before, but just a bigger hard drive. It's easy and it works really well.

After you've done that operation, then go ahead and return the external HD to the store if you still want to. Just basically... you need an external HD to facilitate the internal HD swap without losing your existing data. So it's convenient that you just happen to already have one on hand.

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by SkantDragon

Some of the information in your replies so far is flat wrong. Beware.

To answer your question, an external hard drive isn't going to cut it for what you're trying to do. Only certain operations will work with an external hard drive at all, and all of those are from the XMB, not from within games.

Pretty much, you can offload unprotected videos, pictures, and music to the external HD and that's about it. Game saves can be manually copied to it, but this is a transport or backup mechanism. Games don't save directly to an external HD.

PSN video store movie downloads are protected and can only be stored on the internal hard drive.

If you do want to work with an external HD, it can be shared between a PS3 and a PC. All of the PS3 operations just create normal directories and files on the HD. It doesn't use special partitions or anything like that. Note that the PS3 only works with FAT32 format partitions. It can't read Microsoft's proprietary NTFS format. This can create some difficulty since modern Windows typically won't offer the option to format a large external HD in anything other than NTFS. Since the drive probably comes preformated with FAT32, just don't format it in Windows and it will be fine.

At this point, I would recommend that you purchase a new internal hard drive for your PS3. Research it. Most, but not all 2.5" drives work well in the PS3. Some are physically too tall to fit into the drive bay. And some will function, but do not perform adequately. I was going to get a 500Gb Seagate for mine, but my research showed that a lot of people were complaining about poor performance with that model. I went with a 500Gb Samsung instead, and it's been working very well.

Since your external HD is already working with the PS3, I would recommend that you keep it for just a little longer. Use the backup utility under System Settings in the PS3 to backup your internal 40Gb drive to your external HD. Then install your new internal HD in the PS3 and restore from the external HD. You'll end up with all of your settings and files exactly as before, but just a bigger hard drive. It's easy and it works really well.

After you've done that operation, then go ahead and return the external HD to the store if you still want to. Just basically... you need an external HD to facilitate the internal HD swap without losing your existing data. So it's convenient that you just happen to already have one on hand.

great, thanks for the help, thats what it was looking like to me since i didnt see any option to switch what drive game info is saved on, those initial game installs take up a lot of space, i dont have much else on there besides a few PSN games, i was just hoping an external would be easier since its pretty much plug and play and didnt require opening anything up, but ill probably try swapping out the internal HD today then


EDIT: does that mean after restoring the new internal with all the info from the old one, will i have to reinstall all the initial info for each game onto the new HDD?

[Marquoz]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

EDIT: does that mean after restoring the new internal with all the info from the old one, will i have to reinstall all the initial info for each game onto the new HDD?

The restore should put all the game data back where it was.

[jamclaur]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

great, thanks for the help, thats what it was looking like to me since i didnt see any option to switch what drive game info is saved on, those initial game installs take up a lot of space, i dont have much else on there besides a few PSN games, i was just hoping an external would be easier since its pretty much plug and play and didnt require opening anything up, but ill probably try swapping out the internal HD today then


EDIT: does that mean after restoring the new internal with all the info from the old one, will i have to reinstall all the initial info for each game onto the new HDD?

but movies will be lost from what I hear. You can redownload all the games... I'm not sure if the movies will go to the external HDD. If not they're gone. You only get 1 download on those.

But the guy above is correct. You CANNOT load games from the HDD.

[Stephie_is_a_dork]

Is your external drive 2.5"? I read somewhere that you can back up all your data on a 2.5" passport-type drive, then just open up the PS3 and the passport and swap them, then use the PS3's original drive inside the passport. Sounds a lot easier than backing up files on a small USB drive, installing an internal drive, and re-installing data.

Can anyone provide more info on this?

[SkantDragon]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

does that mean after restoring the new internal with all the info from the old one, will i have to reinstall all the initial info for each game onto the new HDD?

No. After the operation is done, it will be exactly as if your old hard drive suddenly grew more sectors.

When I did the operation with mine, I was amazed that it even remembered what point I last stopped at in each of the various videos I have on my PS3. I searched through everywhere on my PS3 and found not a single hair out of place.

The whole operation including the physical swap was surprisingly painless and worked perfectly. This kind of operation is hair pulling and accident prone on a PC, but Sony clearly put effort into making it stupid easy to do on the PS3. And they really succeeded with that. Seriously. Your grandma wouldn't have trouble doing it. It's that easy.

It does take time however. It takes an hour or two to do the backup of a full drive, and then again to do the restore.

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by SkantDragon

No. After the operation is done, it will be exactly as if your old hard drive suddenly grew more sectors.

When I did the operation with mine, I was amazed that it even remembered what point I last stopped at in each of the various videos I have on my PS3. I searched through everywhere on my PS3 and found not a single hair out of place.

The whole operation including the physical swap was surprisingly painless and worked perfectly. This kind of operation is hair pulling and accident prone on a PC, but Sony clearly put effort into making it stupid easy to do on the PS3. And they really succeeded with that. Seriously. Your grandma wouldn't have trouble doing it. It's that easy.

It does take time however. It takes an hour or two to do the backup of a full drive, and then again to do the restore.

right, i did the backup last night, took about an hour, and was planning on doing the swap out of the internal HD tonight, thanks again for all the info, i was really hoping i could just keep all the game install data on the external HD so i wouldnt have to mess with removing the old internal and replace it and everything, but oh well, i am glad that i wont have an extra piece of equipment on the table and ill keep both my usb ports open

[chnandler_bong]

Originally Posted by SkantDragon

Some of the information in your replies so far is flat wrong. Beware.

To answer your question, an external hard drive isn't going to cut it for what you're trying to do. Only certain operations will work with an external hard drive at all, and all of those are from the XMB, not from within games.

Pretty much, you can offload unprotected videos, pictures, and music to the external HD and that's about it. Game saves can be manually copied to it, but this is a transport or backup mechanism. Games don't save directly to an external HD.

PSN video store movie downloads are protected and can only be stored on the internal hard drive.

If you do want to work with an external HD, it can be shared between a PS3 and a PC. All of the PS3 operations just create normal directories and files on the HD. It doesn't use special partitions or anything like that. Note that the PS3 only works with FAT32 format partitions. It can't read Microsoft's proprietary NTFS format. This can create some difficulty since modern Windows typically won't offer the option to format a large external HD in anything other than NTFS. Since the drive probably comes preformated with FAT32, just don't format it in Windows and it will be fine.

At this point, I would recommend that you purchase a new internal hard drive for your PS3. Research it. Most, but not all 2.5" drives work well in the PS3. Some are physically too tall to fit into the drive bay. And some will function, but do not perform adequately. I was going to get a 500Gb Seagate for mine, but my research showed that a lot of people were complaining about poor performance with that model. I went with a 500Gb Samsung instead, and it's been working very well.

Since your external HD is already working with the PS3, I would recommend that you keep it for just a little longer. Use the backup utility under System Settings in the PS3 to backup your internal 40Gb drive to your external HD. Then install your new internal HD in the PS3 and restore from the external HD. You'll end up with all of your settings and files exactly as before, but just a bigger hard drive. It's easy and it works really well.

After you've done that operation, then go ahead and return the external HD to the store if you still want to. Just basically... you need an external HD to facilitate the internal HD swap without losing your existing data. So it's convenient that you just happen to already have one on hand.

I believe it's best to keep this drive handy for as long as he has the PS3. If he has to do a repair where he sends it back to Sony, they will want an HDD in the PS3. If it were me then I would remove the larger HDD that is installed and then just pop the original one back in it and then send it off.

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by chnandler_bong

I believe it's best to keep this drive handy for as long as he has the PS3. If he has to do a repair where he sends it back to Sony, they will want an HDD in the PS3. If it were me then I would remove the larger HDD that is installed and then just pop the original one back in it and then send it off.

that is what i am planning on doing, i decided to keep the external HD for storing music and video files because my PC was getting low on memory too, and im keeping the old PS3 drive in the packaging from the new one to keep it safe, but ill hold onto that too just in case, not like it takes up much room