Advice needed about PS3 hard drive upgrading.

Son has had me order a new internal hard drive for PS3. Now he informs me that his external hard drive is not recognised in his PS3 and that I have to get an external hard drive that his FAT32 so that he can backup what’s on PS3 before changing the hard drives

I’ve done a little research and it says with the right software I could turn the external hard drive into FAT32 but this is not good as he will have to clear his research so does anyone know of an external hard drive that I could purchase that is already set to FAT32 to make my life easier?

I am so unsure about doing this, I’ve been watching YouTube videos it seem easy but it seems too easy. Has anyone changed their PS3 hard drives any advice you can give us?

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/

a quick google and you will find how to format any hardrive of any size to FAT32. you connect the external drive to your pc and format to FAT32, then connect to the ps3 and you can backup

if you want to replace the internal PS3 drive you need a 2.5" HD that's 9mm high (the standard height of 2.5" drives - some larger capacity drives are non standard 12.5mm high). the ps3 formats drives when you put them in. if you put in a new drive and change your mind and put the old one back, it will format and wipe the old drive, so you have to backup to an external drive before upgrading internal drives

there are plenty of guides you can google to tell you how to do this, i wouldn't bother with youtubes, find a guide with text and screengrabs instead

unique said:

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/

a quick google and you will find how to format any hardrive of any size to FAT32. you connect the external drive to your pc and format to FAT32, then connect to the ps3 and you can backup

if you want to replace the internal PS3 drive you need a 2.5" HD that's 9mm high (the standard height of 2.5" drives - some larger capacity drives are non standard 12.5mm high). the ps3 formats drives when you put them in. if you put in a new drive and change your mind and put the old one back, it will format and wipe the old drive, so you have to backup to an external drive before upgrading internal drives

there are plenty of guides you can google to tell you how to do this, i wouldn't bother with youtubes, find a guide with text and screengrabs instead

I had to replace my PS3 hard drive last year. The PS3 manual shows you how to do it.

I know nothing about PS3's but my neighbor I think had some of the sames issues you had. Anywho, he said this link was very helpful in aiding him.

http://vgstrategies.about...rade_9.htm

[Edited 10/22/10 14:51pm]

TypoQueen said:

Brand:	Western Digital
Mfr Part Number:	WD5000BEVT
Hard Drive Size:	500 GB
Hard Drive Interface:	Serial ATA
Hard Disk Rotational Speed:	5400 rpm
Data Transfer Rate:	300 megabytes_per_second
Buffer Size:	8 MB

Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.9 cm ; 118 g

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/W...=de_a_smtd

Hope it's the right one Will check out that website link uni, thank you.

that will work internally and it's not a bad price either. you can get bigger drives that are 640gb and the max currently is 750gb, but the price jumps up a bit for the higher capacity, and you need to make sure the bigger drives are 9mm thick not 12.5mm. ther are 1tb 2.5" drives but none are currently 9mm thick

you backup your data to an external drive first, the external drive is formatted to FAT32. i think you need to have the drive blank (ie. no data on it) first, i wouldn't take the risk of losing data by sharing it. once backed up (and this can take AGES, it took me nearly 24 hours to backup a 160gb drive that was full) you can remove the old internal drive, put in the new one, and then restore the data (which might take ages to copy back)

For easy and quick transfers and formatting of out-of-the-machine hard drives, I always have one of these USB to IDE/SATA adapters around: http://www.newegg.com/Pro...6812232002 .

They're plug-and-play with Mac and PC, as well as gaming systems. Most will interface with all 3 standard drive sizes and IDE(PATA)/SATA.

You can pick one up for around $15.

Thank you everyone for the advice and links.

Purchased a hard drive got the store to turn it into FAT32 for us brought it home, one minute PS3 could see the drive then the next an error cannot find the drive, tried on two different PS3 with same problems. The hard drive also made strange loud knocking noises so took it back and got a refund.

This maybe a strange question but I’ve noticed in Google that it seems that only windows users have the problem of turning external hard drives into FAT32 so does this mean that Mac’s do not have a problem? I got my daughter a MacBook months back, I haven’t got a clue about Macbooks and she is a newbie to them so no point asking her if it does

I’ve been looking at purchasing either a Western Digital or a Seagate external hard drive both seem to be compatible with windows and Mac’s, what one would you all advice is the better one?

And my son said oh mum it’s easy KIDS!!

the make/model of external drive shouldn't really matter. it sounds like the drive or something is maybe faulty from what you say

you can format a drive to FAT32 in osx, the option is called "ms-dos". you have to use the disc utility program in the applications folder. apple expect all users to be retards so they don't name things properly and hide any less than basic options away so the OS looks like it was written by fisher price

or just format in windows instead. the whole drive needs to be blank and formatted for the ps3 backup thing to work as far as i recall