Hacking Thinking about buying new hard drive to replace current CFW drive

spoonman54321 · Feb 26, 2020

I have CFW 4.85.1 and Rebug installed following this tutorial
It worked great, but now I realize my PS3 internal hard drive is way too small to hold all that I want on it. I'm fine with buying a new larger internal drive, but I would like to know what the process is like to get the new drive working and remain with all data and configurations.

I do own Acronis software so I can clone drives reliably, but I am not sure whether simply cloning it with Acronis from current drive to new drive will allow the PS3 to see the full space on the new drive.
If that will work, then awesome, if that will not work then.... what are my options? I definitely want to avoid re-doing the CFW install and configuration if that is at all possible.

Magsor · Feb 26, 2020

You can't get away without reconfiguring at least some of your cfw I would think. If you can, pop in a ssd it will improve overall speed....
Step 1 offload your games
Step 2 make a backup with external usb that is big enough.
Step 3 install your new drive. You will need to reinstall the firmware if i remember.
Step 4 restore your backup. Load your games enjoy
You can just change back with the old one if anything goes wrong. But it wont go wrong... It will just take a good while.

VyperS_702 · Feb 27, 2020

Magsor said:
You can't get away without reconfiguring at least some of your cfw I would think. If you can, pop in a ssd it will improve overall speed....
Step 1 offload your games
Step 2 make a backup with external usb that is big enough.
Step 3 install your new drive. You will need to reinstall the firmware if i remember.
Step 4 restore your backup. Load your games enjoy
You can just change back with the old one if anything goes wrong. But it wont go wrong... It will just take a good while.

It depends on the type of console. A NOR console the firmware is stored on the motherboard. You just pull and replace the HDD or SSD and you’re done. With a NAND console you replace the drive, then you will just have to put in a usb with your CFW. No need to do the rest of the flash writing etc. After it formats the drive it installs the firmware and you’re done. It’s pretty simple really.

spoonman54321 · Feb 27, 2020

Mine is NOR for sure..... so I can literally just slap in the empty drive and let the PS3 format it and be done? not even a need to clone the drive first?

that.... is shockingly simple. if that's true i'm buying a new drive this weekend and going nuts

VyperS_702 · Feb 27, 2020

spoonman54321 said:
Mine is NOR for sure..... so I can literally just slap in the empty drive and let the PS3 format it and be done? not even a need to clone the drive first?

that.... is shockingly simple. if that's true i'm buying a new drive this weekend and going nuts

God no. Don’t bother cloning. They were designed to be easy to upgrade the HDD. One screw locks the drive bay in place, 4 hold the drive to the drive bay. PS3s are SATA2 so they don’t get the full speed boost of a SSD but they do get some. Enough to be noticeable.

I do this all the time, literally just did it tonight for a “broken” PS3 that couldn’t read data storage. It was missing the HDD. Took a spare put it in to test, it formatted and required the firmware since it was NAND. Within 15 minutes it was done.

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VyperS_702 said:
God no. Don’t bother cloning. They were designed to be easy to upgrade the HDD. One screw locks the drive bay in place, 4 hold the drive to the drive bay. PS3s are SATA2 so they don’t get the full speed boost of a SSD but they do get some. Enough to be noticeable.

I do this all the time, literally just did it tonight for a “broken” PS3 that couldn’t read data storage. It was missing the HDD. Took a spare put it in to test, it formatted and required the firmware since it was NAND. Within 15 minutes it was done.

Sorry, I mixed up my NOR and NAND. NAND is on the motherboard, NOR is on HDD. Both are easy though.

spoonman54321 · Feb 27, 2020

Awesome thank you, just the question of how to offload the games then. I've got a mix of legit games downloaded originally from PSN and others installed via pkg files.

I've got webman set up so the ftp is running fine, accessing it isn't a problem, the question is more what to get.

Do I just grab the contents of the "GAMES" folder from the ps3? Are there other folders to consider? What about any save data? Sorry if these are obvious but I'm new to ps3 hacking specifically.

Magsor · Feb 27, 2020

It can be confusing/time consuming. There tools to repackage backupped psn folder so you don't have to download them again. Maybe do a regular backup/restore process and then go back to your old hard if you are missing something. There is not much risk here. Unfortunately you can't read ps3 hdd from anything else as it is a proprietary encrypted system.

spoonman54321 · Feb 27, 2020

yeah that's the thing, i don't even want to download them again from PSN. i don't want to risk ban as this is my main account that i use on my fully legit OFW PS4 that i don't plan on hacking anytime soon. if you can point me to a guide/tool for steps to backup everything including save data and all games i would greatly appreciate it.

VyperS_702 · Feb 28, 2020

There is a backup utility built in to the XMB under system settings. Sony included this to make it easy to upgrade the HDD and keep your info. You just need an external drive formatted to fat32 large enough to hold the info. It will transfer all your legit PSN games and game saves to the external. I don’t know if it will transfer your backup games though. It might since they’re basically stored the same way, but don’t hold your breath on it. Or you can just keep them on the old HDD and put it back in when you want to play them. It takes less than 5 minutes to hot swap hdds once it’s set to a console.

smf · Mar 8, 2020

I wouldn't bother storing ISO on the internal hard drive. Use ps3netsrv and stream them from a PC or NAS.
Only PS2 games can't be streamed (I'm not sure if that is a hard limit or just because cobra never got round to doing it). As you have a NOR console, then that isn't a big deal either.

Hacking Thinking about buying new hard drive to replace current CFW drive

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