PS3 Hard Drive help.

[Spearmint]

First a little background....

My PS3 developed the Yellow Light Of Death which is a pain in the arse in itself but not to worry as Santa was good to me this year.

So I took the original PS3 hard drive out which is basically a Fujitsu SATA Laptop unit and installed it into an 'Integral' External HDD Enclosure.

Now it's my understanding that Windows XP can read FAT32 (Well I managed to repartition my 1TB External Drive with FAT32 using Swissknife) so it should easily recognise the old PS3 drive when hooked up via USB2.0?

I heard the old 2 tone sound that Windows makes when it detects new hardware so I tried 'Start Menu' > 'My Computer' but the drive is not shown.

I also tried 'Start Menu' > 'Run' > 'Compmgmt.msc' but again to no avail.

Is the old PS3 HDD Fubar'd or do I have any other options?

 

[Big Jock]

Have a look at the back of the drive and make sure the jumpers are set as a slave drive as opposed to a master drive. A pc/laptop will only recognise one master drive.

John

 

[Teh Wal]

The contents of PS3 HDDs are protected by a unique Sony encryption system which is footprinted to your individual PS3 hence you cant see any of the files on it. And as far as I'm aware the formatting of the PS3 HDD is not a standard FAT32 format either - I think there are some odd sized sectors thrown in along the way, probably all as part of the encryption system.

The best way to save your game progress data is to back up the gamesave file/s to a flash drive (pen drive/datastick, etc, etc) everytime you finish playing your games. It may seem like a pain in the arris but it's a whole lot better than having to replay the game all over again once you've re-installed it on your new machine.

 

[busby1971]

A couple of things to try

A couple of things to try

Easiest first, have you plugged the USB into the PS3 to see if it can read it from there.

Wang the old drive into the new PS3 copy the data off it onto a memory stick/falsh drive then replace with new hard drive, simples.

 

[Teh Wal]

Easiest first, have you plugged the USB into the PS3 to see if it can read it from there.

I don't understand what you suggesting here?

Wang the old drive into the new PS3 copy the data off it onto a memory stick/falsh drive then replace with new hard drive, simples.

Won't work because of the way Sony have instigated individual PS3 encryption - the HDDs are software locked to the PS3 that they are installed in. You could reformat them with the PS3 that you move it to but that kinda defeats the objective.

Or you could purchase the developers software which may get you access to the files on the HDD via your PC but I think it would cost you something in the region of 10 grand :S

 

[Spearmint]

Looks like I'm bolloxed then. I did try to plug the old HDD into the new PS3 which is why I purchased the enclosure in the first place but with no luck.

Ah well, looks like I'll have to play through my games again.