*** HELP! *** - PS3 System Restore does not work.

[tadlock]

I have a Fat PS3 80GB (Motorstorm Edition). I've recently became a Playstation Plus member. I quickly filled up my 80GB HDD with the PSPlus free content so I ordered a 1TB 5400rpm SATA-3 HDD. I backed up my 80GB to external HDD prior to replacing the 80GB HDD. After backup, I replaced the 80HB HDD w/ the 1TB HDD. I successfully completed the system restore and was up and running... Everything looked good!

On Friday, while downloading some PSPlus games, a thunderstorm popped up and caused a power outage. Obviously, power to PS3 was not shut down properly. After restart, I got a message to rebuild file system which I did. Everything seemed ok, but a few hours later I started getting HDD error messages.

Multiple reboots and attempts at repair/rebuild later, I ended up at the PS3 Safe Mode menu. I attempted to perform a PS3 System Restore. When I select Ok for PS3 System Restore, it says "Rebuilding database.... Do not turn off the system." Almost instantly, @ 0% complete, PS3 restarts and ends up reattempting PS3 System Restore. This will continue as long as I hit Ok.

FYI. The 1TB drive can be reformatted and read by my laptop when placed in external USB drive.

My questions are:
1) Why won't PS3 System Restore work? I thought this was the fix to everything...
2) If I insert my original PS3 80GB drive back in the PS3, will it need to be reformatted?
3) If it does get reformatted, I am assuming that I can restore from backup. Correct?

What can I do? You help is appreciated. My PS3 is basically a brick right now...

 

[tadlock]

Well after trying a number of times to get the new HDD working, i gave up.

I decided to reinsert my old 80GB drive and prayed for the best... After having to do some initial setup for usernames, networking, and time/date, I appear to be back up and running with no loss of data.

I'll be buying a new HDD and trying again when I build up the nerve or run out of space (whichever comes first...)

 

[sesselpupser]

So formatting your new 1TB drive then re-formatting it in the PS3 didn't work? That's... Odd. Well, at least you had everything backed up, I recently swapped out my 160GB drive for a 320GB and the drive I had for backing up to just didn't want to work. I thought I might as well just go ahead with the swap and download everything again. Five days and 200GB later, it was up and running. I'm just grateful our data plan doesn't have a bandwidth cap.

 

[tadlock]

So formatting your new 1TB drive then re-formatting it in the PS3 didn't work? That's... Odd. Well, at least you had everything backed up, I recently swapped out my 160GB drive for a 320GB and the drive I had for backing up to just didn't want to work. I thought I might as well just go ahead with the swap and download everything again. Five days and 200GB later, it was up and running. I'm just grateful our data plan doesn't have a bandwidth cap.

Yes I formatted drive to exFAT, NTFS, FAT32 before inserting into PS3. Everytime the new 1TB drive was in the PS3, it says "Rebuilding database.... Do not turn off the system." Almost instantly, @ 0% complete, PS3 restarts and ends up reattempting PS3 System Restore. This will continue as long as I hit Ok. I'm not sure what the deal was but I'm glad I was able to get back running.