New Hard Drive For Your PS3? Say Good Bye To Your Old One

[wraggster]

I just learned the hard way that once you install a new hard drive into a Playstation 3 that the old one will no longer be accepted and will need to be formatted to be used again.

Yesterday I bought a 250 gig Western Digital 2.5" hard drive for my PS3. I turned on my Playstation and attempted to backup my game saves and media (videos, mp3's, pictures) through the system menu. I needed 41 gigs to do so but I did not have this space available on any removable media. No problem I thought, I would just connect the drive to my computer and copy it that way.

I put in the new hard drive, formatted it and then plugged the old one into my PC. Much to my surprise a PS3 formatted hard drive cannot be read by either Windows XP or Vista - apparently it uses some sort of proprietary file system, I'm assuming to prevent any sort of illegal copying.

Anyways, I put the old hard drive back in only to be told that I needed to format it to use it. WTF?! After installing the new hard drive, the original 80 gig hard drive that it came with was no longer accepted and needed to be reformatted to use again!

http://pwnpatrol.com/2008/new-hard-d...-your-old-one/

[____anders____]

wow, that's bad sorry to hear that, so you can just buy a new HDD and stick it in? that's cool..
but i don't own a PS3 so i don't know what cool stuff it can do.. yet

[Accordion]

the Back up utility is on the PS3 for a reason.

Any demos, games, game data, videos, music, photos can be downloaded again.
All you really need to backup is the save game files.

Im sure reading the instruction manual would have prevented this.

[Triv1um]

I havent upgraded mine yet... Don't intend to in the long run.

I always keep a backup of my saves anyway, to a external HDD, but i didnt know they need to be re-formated when you put them in again.. Stinger.

Sorry to hear about it.

If i lost my oblivion save, i know i would be pissed.. 200 hours of gameplay aint that easy to get back.

[splodger15]

I had to upgrade mine due to my orginal 60gb being corrupted

[goity]

just shove it in a usb 2.5" enclosure. you'll be able to access everything that way.

[DPyro]

Uh, you clearly didn't read what he said...

[goity]

Uh, you clearly didn't read what he said...

Obviously you couldn't if it was corrupted; I meant about the original problem on pwnpatrol.

[jdnation]

Best to transfer all your files etc to an external storage first via USB, then install your new HDD and then put them back on...

[/_[][]_\2.0]

what? i have two sixty gigs one for games and the other for media. they both work fine. after i formatted the new one i put the old one back in with out any problems.