Hardware What is the size limit for external usb hard drives?

[ineverwipe]

Like the title says, I'm looking to get a bigger external drive for my cfw ps3 (my current external is a 1tb). I've googled already but I get mixed answers saying:
-Only 2tb and below
-Only 3tb tops
-4tb wont work
-4tb will work but you have to format 2x 2tb fat32 partitions, etcetera lol

I'm looking to get this one: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-STBV3000100/dp/B00834SJU8/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1377913400&sr=8-2&keywords=SEAGATE 3TB&tag=01u-20

I read a forum post that says this one works on ps3. But I want to know if I can get the 4tb model instead. - http://www.ps3hax.net/showthread.php?t=61432&page=3

I don't want to buy it then find out it doesn't work lol.

Thanks!

 

[Foxi4]

The PS3 accepts FAT32-formatted USB drives, and the limit of FAT32 in terms of capacity is aprox. 2 TB (exactly 2TiB) with 512 byte clusters and up to a theoretical aprox. 16 TB (16 TiB) with 4096 clusters (as long as you don't exceed the maximum number of clusters), although I'm not sure how the PS3 would react to such a cluster format.

More info about FAT32 in Microsoft's Knowledge Base here.

 

[trumpet-205]

What Foxi4 have said, and PS3 only accepts one partition per USB drive. Multiple partitions are not allowed.

 

[ineverwipe]

Dang so I have to go with a 2tb then? I don't know anything about clusters lol so I wouldnt want to try and mess around with that

 

[Foxi4]

Dang so I have to go with a 2tb then? I don't know anything about clusters lol so I wouldnt want to try and mess around with that

2TB is still an obnoxiously large amount of storage. Even assuming that you'll use it solely for clean, untrimmed rips, you'll fit about 81 games on the drive, and that's assuming each and every one will be 25GB large. In a real-life scenario the games are going to be far smaller, ranging between 4 and 16GB or so, so we're talking about 200+ games on the drive. You'll be swimming in games, essentially.

 

[ineverwipe]

2TB is still an obnoxiously large amount of storage. Even assuming that you'll use it solely for clean, untrimmed rips, you'll fit about 81 games on the drive, and that's assuming each and every one will be 25GB large. In a real-life scenario the games are going to be far smaller, ranging between 4 and 16GB or so, so we're talking about 200+ games on the drive. You'll be swimming in games, essentially.

Ok many thanks!