Thread: GamePro guide makes PS3 hard drive install easy

Is 60GB (or 80GB) simply not enough space for your PS3? We know it's easy to swap PS3's hard drive ... but GamePro's picture-by-picture guide makes the process even easier. The tools required are simple: Husky Precision Screwdriver, external hard drive or USB thumb drive (for copying over files), and a 2.5" SATA laptop drive. Thanks to the XMB's easy to use interface, the process of copying over files and formatting the new PS3 drive is a cinch. Maybe you'll want to throw in a new 160GB hard drive into your PS3? They only go for about $100 these days.
link



Maybe sticky me?

Very nice, Brew! Thanks for that! Someday soon I'll venture to try this!

Heh, might be perfect for those waiting for the 80 gig rather than buying the 60 gig because of space. It is pretty easy to do overall but I wonder how large downloadable games, like Warhawk, will be to justify the upgrade. I mean what is the point of the upgrade if you will never use it?

Originally Posted by Gordon

I mean what is the point of the upgrade if you will never use it?

Music, video, games, and soon a DVR.

how much space do games take? are you referring to game saves or game downloads brew?

Game downloads, and full downloads (like Warhawk).

DVR functionality is gonna rule! My Cable DVR doesn't allow PC transfers.

I still have 14GBs free on my stock 20GB HD. Maybe when they launch their DVR service I'll think about it.

-Brad

I finally had to delete a bunch of my trailers off my hard drive... I've got all my music and I transferred a lot of my Quicktime trailers to my system, so it was eating a lot of hard drive space.

Now I have a little over 10GB left on my 60GB.

Nice find and instructions Brew. Thanks! I may do this eventually when I get close to running out of space. Nice to see how easy it is!

Why are they copying the game data? The PS3 has a backup utility. I used it when I upgraded to my 160GB drive. You take the USB drive and go to the PS3 utilities and can do a backup. It will backup the entire PS3 drive contents on the USB drive. Then after you install the new drive you use the restore function. And you end up with the exact same contents only more storage space. If you do it they way they described you can't copy everything and would have to download or reinstall some of the content.

That's good to know wormhole. Can you post modified step-by-step instructions for us?

Awesome stuff, Wormhole! Useful information which may help me to try swapping hard drives sooner than I anticipated!

Originally Posted by Peench

That's good to know wormhole. Can you post modified step-by-step instructions for us?

It's pretty straight forward. the main thing is the USB drive needs to be formatted with FAT32. But I just remember connecting the drive and going to the Utilities section for the backup. I'll need to take a look at the menus when I get home so I can write it down but I didn't have any problems with it. It did take around 30 minutes to copy the 20GB drive if I remember correctly. And the same amount to restore it to my 160GB drive. It was definitely a nice feature.

Thanks Worm! Whatever info you can post is appreciated!

yeah i know that this thread is like two years old but i actually just installed a new hard drive, oh my god was it easy. I went on ebay and got a 320 GB for sixty bucks and installed it in like 10 minutes. I would recommend this for everyone with how easy it is

Originally Posted by WormholeXtreme

It did take around 30 minutes to copy the 20GB drive if I remember correctly. And the same amount to restore it to my 160GB drive. It was definitely a nice feature.

If anybody else wants another frame of reference, I have about 45GB on my 80GB. I ran the backup utility to a WD 160GB USB HDD recently. When I started, it said it would take about 1hr and 17m. I think it finished in less than an hour. What a great utility for a console. I'll probably do this once a month since I found out how easy it is to do. Gives me some peace of mind having all my PS, PS2, and PS3 game saves backed up. I actually have those backed up separately to an SD card also. Thank you Sony.