New hard drive in Playstation 3 but it will not format?

Zardon

Ok I had a PM a day or so ago from a guy new to Driver Heaven who asked me if I knew why his Playstation 3 would not accept a new internal SATA harddrive (text shows up with (no media found, hit start and select to search - this just loops). I will explain. (or skip to step 5 if you already know the normal drive replace procedure).

Ok for those of you reading this who don't even know what we are talking about, the Playstation 3 can accept a new 2.5 laptop drive by simply removing a cover on the bottom of the unit and then unscrewing one screw to remove the old drive. It is as simple as that. PLEASE BE AWARE THE 2.5 INCH DRIVE MUST BE A SATA UNIT.

This means for those of you stuck on the 40 or 60gb unit, you can quite easily upgrade to a 120-160gb (or even larger) for a small cost. For example a 160gb Samsung Spinpoint drive in the UK is currently around 35 pounds (I picked one up from Tekheads).

This means you can basically quadruple your storage for under £40. Tekheads.co.uk

Anyway, the issue I initially mentioned is due to the newest Playstation 3 firmwares being too large to fit on the internal flash memory. This means when you remove the old drive you are actually removing some of the data the system would need to reformat the new drive.

There is a simple workaround for this and ill explain it in a step by step and link the person who asked me in PM to this thread. Hopefully this will help other people who have experienced the same problem. For some reason very few if any of the google found guides on the net do not explain this or have not updated.

1: plug in a FAT32 formatted USB hard drive and use the PS3 built in system backup to copy all your saved game data etc to external HD (manually copy any movies or mp3s yourself, this is not included in the PS3 backup, you may also lose any downloads from store, however you can redownload them easily if you log in, just relog into store and check your download section, they are all tied to your account for a maximum of 5 downloads on 5 machines).

If you have a large USB2 drive (over 32gb) and are annoyed that windows will not format it to fat32 (exfat does not work in PS3), then follow this PDF guide www.driverheaven.net/zardon/fat32forps3.pdf (this guide is not my own, if you share this PDF with others please do not remove the authors name). This lets you format any sized drive to fat32 for access by PS3!

2: once you have backed up your old 40-60-80gb HD, unclip the bottom flap and unscrew the drive mounting tray.

3: remove old drive with 4 tray mounting screws

4: insert new 2.5 inch hard drive (do not turn on yet, read step 5)

5: older PS3 firmwares (prior to 2.36 did not need this step).

Download the new firmware data on your PC from this link (at time of writing this it is 2.36, but if you access this thread after Jun 2008 it may/will be newer) PlayStation.com

Copy the PS3UPDAT.PUP to a fat32 formatted flash drive or external mass storage drive - create a folder named PS3 on the storage media or USB device. Within the PS3 folder, create a folder named "UPDATE" copy the data file from the playstation site into this folder

so PS3/UPDATE/PS3UPDAT.PUP

6: plug in this drive to one of the PS3 USB ports. plug in a PS3 controller with the USB lead.

7: make sure new internal hard drive is secured (don't force too hard, it should slide in easily, not much force is needed). reseal the unit, put in HDMI or video lead and power lead.

8: turn unit on. follow format instructions and let the unit get the PUP firmware update data from external USB drive/flash card

9: once you set up with new HD, plug in the backup data drive from step 1 and reinstall all your settings and saved game data.

thats it! (or install ubuntu as well on new large drive, google this for info).

Hope this helps some people who are finding old guides via google and they are not detailing the additional steps for the newest and larger PS3 firmwares.

kris23

maybe this should be put into a sticky?

Syndicate2083

/second that. Awesome thread, thanks a ton! This is a problem my friend ran into and couldnt figure out.

-Syn

LukeK

I second that - hopefully people find this thread from google search who are having issues. I recently updated my PS firmware to the newest one and bought a 320gb laptop drive for cheap and then thought this would be easy. I followed the guides online and couldnt figure out what I was doing wrong.

Great guide Z, I have my PS3 now working with a huge hard drive and its awesome ! best upgrade you could ever do, and Sony need to make this clear, after all, they make it extremely easy to get at the HD without even disassembling the console, I think they should append their notes to let people know how to update with new firmwares.

Erroneus

Updated mine to a Samsung spinpoint m6 320gb, which is around 60£ here in Denmark, properly lower in UK and the US, plus every other freaking country

Anyway here are some small facts:
7200 RPM drives are a waste of money, they are only a tiny tiny bit faster then 5400 rpm drives, shaving almost nothing of load times. Also 7200 RPM drives get hotter, though I doubt it's a problem in the PS3, but they are a bit more noisy.

The PS3 uses a SATA1 (SATA 150) controller, therefore don't bother looking for SATA2 (SATA 300) disk, as it won't do any good. Sata 2 disks will work in the PS3 though, as they are backwards compatible.

When unscrewing the screw for the mounting tray, use a proper screwdriver which fits, as that screw is a bit "crappy". It's not unheard of people destroying the head of that screw by using a wrong screwdriver.

Good guide Zardon.

dipstick

I recently upgraded the hd while running 2.36 firmware and didn't run into the above issue. Bookmarked just in case tho, thanks much. Now if I could only find a cheap way to upgrade my hurting-for-space 360 and all will be well in gaming land.

LukeK

I think specific versions of the PS3 have different inbuilt flash memory sizes, although the firmwares are getting bigger so you might find with the to be released 2.40 that it wont fit on any of them, so above method will apply for swapping out drives.

dipstick

Yeah that makes sense. Hopefully I never have to upgrade the HD again tho. Still, that is a bad place to cut corners. Sony should be adding more memory to counter the inflating OS and consider saving costs elsewhere imho.

Robert McClelland

question would that break the warret if you do that?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

i also heard that some hard drives with anti shock sensors or something don't want to work? is this true? or can i pop in any 2.5 SATA HDD that is recent?

Zardon

Not as far as I know. as long as the drive is a standard laptop size and it is sata it will be ok. some of the 500GB drives wont physically fit in the slot. (same with some laptops too).

djgray88

Hey,

Great post.

I was wondering if anyone knew what the internal HDD is formatted to as it can't be ntfs as it's not supported and it's not fat32 as the internal supports files larger than 4gb.

Reason I ask is that i wish to play my HD files which are often 6-8gb. I have tried all the streaming/network download alternatives but my wireless isn't really fast enough to handle it.

So if i could find out the format or perhaps place an HDD which had been formatted in the ps3 into a caddy. This means I would be able to have an external drive which would support files larger than the fat32.

Cheers in advanced

Erroneus

The only known 500gb to fit is the Samsung M6, I'm using the 320gb version, works great!

I believe the PS3 uses an encrypted FAT32, which does't NOT support files over 4gb, so you are pretty much out of luck.