PS3 harddrive questions

[CanadianKrazyMods]

my PS3 just died I think(blinking red light). I had put a 250gb HDD in it and was wondering if I take it out and when they send out another one, I just put it in and it will be as it was or will I need to format it again and if I do... is there anyway to get any info off of it first? thanks

[Seeking_Alpha]

I had your experience about a year ago.

Nope you will have to reformat again, and there is no way to access your data. I tried putting it in an external enclosure and Windows XP, Ubuntu or Fedora can't read it. Googling the problem gave no answers either.

So basically you lose everything (like Gran Turismo Prologue game saves that you worked hard for )

Unless something has changed since a year ago, or some blessed soul has created an app that will allow you to read a PS3 hard drive in Windows.

In any case, nowadays I back up my game saves to a thumb drive every week.

[CanadianKrazyMods]

I last backed mine up a week ago... so I'm not 100% screwed I guess

[phlydude]

there are some options:

1 - if they send you back the EXACT same unit, then you can pop it in without issue
2 - from what I have read, you can get a USB enclosure for the drive and hook it up to the new PS3 - you may be able to do a back-up from the old drive (to which you back up to an external unit and then put the larger drive back into the PS3 and format it and restore a back-up)

[AikonEnt]

The only way to keep the stuff on your drive is to get your PS3 fixed. If Sony just give you a replacement it's not going to work because once you put your drive in it will be formatted. You can't put the drive in an enclosure and access the stuff using it as an external drive, believe me I tried when I got YLoD. Luckily I managed to get mine fixed for £40 and it worked perfectly afterwards (though I've since bought a Slim). And backing up to restore onto a new PS3 is almost pointless as all I retained were some themes and game saves that weren't copy protected (no Res5 or KZ2 ). I've had to re-download everything

[Sponge-worthy]

Originally Posted by AikonEnt

And backing up to restore onto a new PS3 is almost pointless as all I retained were some themes and game saves that weren't copy protected (no Res5 or KZ2 ). I've had to re-download everything

When I backed up my PS3 to an external HDD and then restored the data to a new internal HDD, it kept everything.

[AikonEnt]

Originally Posted by ryan69969

When I backed up my PS3 to an external HDD and then restored the data to a new internal HDD, it kept everything.

I kept the stuff when I restored to a new HDD in the same PS3, but when I restored to my new Slim, almost nothing was kept. It may keep pics, vids and any mp3's on the PS3 but I'd already moved them off the PS3 before I did a backup so I don't know.