Sorry about the delay, DN, I didn't get my new drive until yesterday.
No worries, I was just making sure your questions were not getting lost in the shuffle. 👍
Today I tried the copy thing, and it didn't work at all. It seems that they're using a proprietary file system on the drive, and nothing else but a PS3 can read it. I hooked them both up to a PC at work, and the system saw both drives, but recognized them only as "unallocated space", and asked if I wanted to format them. I thought it might be a Windows thing, so I tried booting it into Linux, and no joy there, either. DSL wouldn't even start because no Linux-compatible file system could be found. I stopped there, because it would have taken some hi-fi tweaking and hacking to get further into the drives from that point.
Thanks for sharing this experience. I was afraid this would be the case, and that removing the original HDD and making an exact copy to the new HDD wasn't possible due to various copyright protections.
So, I ended up reinstalling the 20GB drive temporarily, copied off all of my game-saves and a few videos that would fit on my USB stick, then popped the new 160GB drive back in and brought my stuff back onto it. I'll have to redownload some other videos, demos, games, etc, that I had before. Couple days worth of downloading, which I was hoping to avoid. But oh, well. You win some, you lose some.
Pako gave me some good advice, and that is to use the PS3's
Backup Utility. If the new HD isn't already formatted for FAT32, you can do that with the PS3 as well with it's
Format Utility.
I'm still looking at getting a 500-750GB external drive with both USB and SATA so I can use it with my DVRs as well, but in the meantime I used an old external drive that I had long forgotten about. It's a three year old 160GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 drive from Buffalo, model HD-HB160U2. It came preformatted for FAT32 so I didn't have to format the drive.
I have the 60GB PS3
(which actually has just 47GB for all content; games, videos, music, pics). Selecting
System Information it said I had 1.3 GB of free space out of 55 GB.
When I started the backup, it first gave me the following warning:
"If you restore on a different system some data will not be restored."
This is basically what it says in the manual as well:
Some types of backed up data can be restored on another PS3 system. The types of data that can be restored on another system are as follows:
- Saved data from PLAYSTATION 3 format software *1
- Image files under (Photo)
- Music files under (Music) *2
- Video files under (Video) *2
- Bookmarks added under (Internet Browser)
- Terms that were added using (Settings) > (System Settings) > [Add/Edit Term], or predictive terms that were "learned" by the on-screen keyboard *1
*1 Copy-protected data cannot be restored. Also, saved data that has been restored may not be usable in some games.
*2 Does not include copyright-protected data.
Reading all this I assumed that meant if you ever want to replace your PS3 with a new PS3, you can only restore none copyright-protected files, which I suppose means no games will be able to be restored, and you would have to re download them from your "Download List" in each PS Store... and for each user on your PS3.
For instance, my wife has purchased and downloaded PSN games, so to get those reloaded, I'd have to switch to her user account t se those games on the "Download List"... which of course makes sense, but I suspect some may not realize this and wonder where some of their games went from the "Download List".
As I will be using the same PS3, but with a new HDD, the back-up will make copies of all the content on my PS3's HDD including the games. So this warning didn't Apply. 👍
When I started the back-up it first said it was going to take 2 Hours and 29 Minutes, but just a minute later it recalculated it to 1 Hour and 40 Minutes, which is exactly how long it took. 👍
As expected, the back-up was 46GB
(47GB - 1.3 GB) so that works out to be about 2 minutes per GB, but best of all not only are you saving time by being able to copy the games, but that it was just a one step process. 👍
Now after the back-up was completed, I got another warning alert, but this one seemed odd to me:
"If you will be restoring copyright-protected video titles, you must do so now."
It suggests that there is some kind of time limit for you to restore copyright-protected content. If so, this is the first I've ever heard of something like this.
Also there is a warning in the manual about how changes to your PS3 before restoring the back-up may cause problems:
If you perform any of the following operations after backing up, the backup data may not restore correctly:
- Format the hard disk
- Restore the PS3 system
- Move copyright-protected video
- Download copyright-protected video
I have not yet decided what new internal HDD to get for my PS3, so I guess to play it safe, I'll make a new back-up just before switching internal drives.
OK, so that's my current experience with the back-up utility, and seems to be pretty solid, and the quickest and best solution for those wanting to replace their internal HDD and copy all their content over.
But here is where I might suggest a different approach. As a precaution, I also used the "Copy Multiple Files" option and made copies of all my pics, music, and videos off my PS3 to the 160GB USB drive.
The pics and music files were minimal, but I still had 171
(24GB) video files on the PS3, which took about a minute per GB to copy over... about ten times faster than re-downloading them off the PS Store. 👍
Now that I had all this extra space, I could also copy over the +10GB worth of video files I had been forced to remove from the PS3 and copy them to my laptop as the PS3 HDD has been full for some time now.
Now that I not only had a back-up, but I had copies of all my content on the USB drive, I discovered there are some big advantages to keeping your content
(pics, music, and videos) on an external HD rather than on the HDD:
ADVANTAGES
- I have a lot more space!
- I can create custom multiple folders and hierarchic folders making it very easy to organize and find similar and specific files. This means instead of all the pics being lumped together or in dated folders, I can have custom folders for each "album". This means I can also create custom folders and organize my songs exactly how I like. This also means instead of having all the video files lumped together, I can have a folder for game videos, system videos, movie trailers for upcoming films, movie trailers for films currently released, youtube videos, home movies, full feature films, etc. 👍👍
- By selecting Information, you can now find out exactly how many files and memory used on the USB as well as each individual folder you create... something the XMB has yet allowed users to do.
- I can easily unplug the drive and connect it with other PS3s and PCs to share and view the same content. 👍
- When connected to a PC, not only can you easily organize your files, sort them by more than just name and install date, and easily search for specific titles, but you can also change the file names much quicker than you can with the PS3. 👍
Unfortunately, as with most things, along with the advantages there are also some noteworthy disadvantages:
DISADVANTAGES
- If you have more than one level of folders (in other words, if you create a folder, and then create more folders inside that folder), then it will not generate thumbnail folder & file picture icons and must always select "display all" each time you select the USB drive in order to see all the folders... which some might consider an undesireable inconvenience.
- Also, unlike when a video file is on the HDD, you cannot create a 15-sec preview video loop icon for a file. I never found those to be terribly useful so it isn't a big deal to me, but it might be for others.
BTW: I found that if you copy a video file from the USB drive to the HDD, it automatically creates the 15-sec preview video loop icon. So for those that do like to have that preview icon, but don't want to go through the multiple step process for every file, a quick way of doing that is to copy your video files to a USB drive. Erase those files on the PS3, then copy them right back to the PS3. Voila, they will now all have 15-sec loop icons.
- Because there are no sort options for files off an external drive, all folders and files will be sorted alphabetically. With files on the HDD, although they are all lumped together, at least the video files are, you can sort them by intalled date, which can come in handy if you are trying to remember which file you last downloaded.
Granted, you can do this with the USB drive as well, but only by connecting it to your PC. 
- Along with the missing "Sort By" option, here are the other missing features when using a USB driver to store your content:
- Delete Multiple (odd, because the "Copy Multiple" is available)
- Group Content (although I found this fairly useless, as it was just by date)
- No background downloading off the PS Store to a USB drive. (this is also not a big deal, as it is very fast to just copy files from the HDD to the USB drive. So what I would do is continue to use background downloading and save them onto the HDD, but when all the downloading is complete, simply select the "Copy Multiple" option and copy the new files to the USB, then delete them from the HDD.
It only adds one rather quick step to the process. Certainly a far better option than downloading each file from the PS Store directly to the USB drive.
So there you have it. Those are the advantages and disadvantages that I have found when using a USB drive for your PS3 content.
Personally, now that I have seen how it works first hand, I am totally sold on the idea of having all my content on an external USB drive!
For some, it may also allow you to keep your current HDD in the PS3 as you would now only need it to store your games, game demos, and game saves.
Although, if you plan on keeping all the game demos on your HDD, and or plan on buying lots of PSN games, you'll find that you'll need a bigger drive than 60GB. Currently, without downloading any of the PSN games, you'll need about 25GB of space for all the demos, and at the current pace, you'll need over 50 GB sometime next year. Once you start adding all the disc space you might need for any and all PSN titles you buy and download, then all of a sudden that 60GB HDD may not be looking so big after all.
On the other hand, it is also true you can delete and re-download games, so even those that want every single game demo and PSN game, you can still manage it on a 60GB HDD, it's all a question of convenience.
Hey, at least this will make me get off my ass and download the 1.2 version of GTHD.. hehe.
It's about bloody time! 
That's going to bite... my kids love the Japanese dialogue!
