Hardware PS3 Slim Hard Drive Upgrade

Mariko

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2009
Messages
190
Trophies
0
XP
282
Country
So, I'm finally running out of space on my stock PS3 hard drive, and I feel I need to upgrade instead of endlessly moving stuff around to make room. I have a slim PS3 with two PSN accounts, tons of games, saves, images and videos on it. What do I need to do to swap the original drive out, but keep everything as is?

I'm on the latest official firmware, and all I'm interested in is a move to, say, a 1TB drive. I know there's a "backup" option in the settings menu, which urges you to synchronize your trophies, as they will not be backed up. I haven't done a backup yet, since I don't have a HD at the moment, and before I buy one, I wanted to know how the backup process works.

I want it all moves. My settings, my wallpapers, my games, saves, any and all downloaded files, everything. Ideally, this would be like making a drive image, but with the option to flash it onto a bigger drive. So, how does the backup process work and is it separate for each account?

At the risk of sounding like a complete douche, please, do not answer if you haven't done it, or if you're not sure how the process works. My data is important to me, and answers like "I might possibly have heard about a friend of a friend, who has heard that maybe this is how it works" will be ignored. No maybes. I'm looking for a solid and proper answer.

Also, once I swap out the drive, is it possible to re-insert the old one and use it as before in case something goes south? I think I read about someone losing all of their stuff, because the migration process failed, and the console asked to format the original drive upon re-insertion.
 

rdurbin

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2006
Messages
514
Trophies
1
Age
46
Location
US
XP
828
Country
United States
are you using the new slim? the one with the small hard drive? if so all you need to do is add a internal drive and it will copy everything for you. If your using a normal slim with an actual hard drive in it, you can use the backup option to backup everything to a USB hard drive or other storage device. Once you get a new internal hard drive you can restore the backup data from the usb device. Yes trophies will not be saved. Everything else should work just fine. if you want to reduce the size of the backup you can safely remove the gamedata for games that you do not play often, this will not delete the games but the files that many games install to your hard drive to improve load times, this will also delete any updates to the game that you installed. the amount of space from some games can be quite huge, so can make your backup go alot quicker. the backup copies all user accounts that on are on ps3. Copy protected files may or may not be copied, this i am not sure on. If you have psn plus, copy protected files can be backup'd and restored. Once you insert a drive, ps3 will ask you to format it, it treats your drive and system as one. you cannot use your drive in any other ps3 without reformatting and losing all data. you can however switch between your old and new drive for whatever reason.

There is one last thing you need to know, download a copy of newest system version and stick it on another usb drive, once you stick in a new drive it will format the drive and requires the firmware to be on it, since it is not, it will ask to copy it from a usb drive. you can download the firmware on sony ps3 site, make sure to read the help files, it will explain where to download the file to, it needs to be in a certain folder or the ps3 will not find it when you format your new drive.

I have done this several times, due to my bad luck with ylod ps3s and because i like to upgrade to bigger hard drives.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    BigOnYa @ BigOnYa: I feel like I spent the night with Ancientboi +1