- 776
- Guildford
- GTP_thefraggle
Picture this, I was about to download the alien vs predator demo from the ps store and as i click download a message comes up saying there isnt enough memory left on the hdd. This would clearly normally bring any full grown adult to their knees and in floods of tears. I calmed my nerves and started ot think about upgrading it. After a while i bit myself and thought sod it and bought a 64gb usb stick for backing up the 60gb standard hdd, a new seagate 500gb drive from amazon and also a usb caddy so i can use the old hdd as a portable drive. Great thinking from myself 
The drive and the usb stick arrived this morning. The problems start there!!! The usb sticks i was expecting to arrive yesterday, the drive is 5400 and i really thought it was 7200 ( had avoided buying a 5400 drive as i wanted the faster version) Other than that I was really quite ecited about the upgrade as sad as that sounds.
Here we go!!!!
Usb stick goes in. System settings. System infomation. Backup utility. Backup.
This took about an hour and fourty minutes to do the 56gb on the disk.
I then removed the hdd and put the new one in (I am sure i dont need to say how I did that)
Booted the PS3 back up and it said there was a new hdd that needed formatting. Format away!!!!! It only took about 6 seconds to "format" the new drive so it clearly isnt a full format. I did wonder if i would get any benefit from perfomring a complete and full format.
So now we have the drive formatted and the back up on the new usb stick I had bought. My day was frankly going well so far. I went back to the backup utility and choose to restore the backup. sellect location, usb memory. My heart sank as a message cameup on the screen saying it could not locate a backup file on the selected drive. I plugged it into my laptop to make sure that the files were on the drive and they were!!! So what the hell has happened? It was at this point I started to get a bit pi$$ed off. Rather than getting annoyed properly and throwing all my toys out of my pram i started thinking how to do it without using the sticks. I swapped the drives over again so the old 60gb drive was back in the system and started again. I deleted everything off my ps3 apart from the game saves and then grabbed my Sony walkman. I checked the space available on that and found i have 22gb available on that and I only needed 13gb to do the full backup. I went down this ruit and started the backup. This time because of how much I reduced the memory needed it only took 40 minutes.
Backup finished! 2nd time lucky and with all fingers crossed. Before I swapped the drives over again I went to the backup utility and then went to see if it could find a backup on my walkman. It found one!!!! Fantastic!!!!
Once again drives got swapped over and I went through the backup restore procedure again and this time thank god it found the backup and was happy to install it. About time as to this point it has taken 3 hours!!!
I am now at the stage of having the 500gb drive installed and working on the PS3 and am now in the proccess of puting my games in the machine so it can copy the game infomation back onto the system. 30gb and counting.
Before I started this I was unsure as to how easy I would find this as i had read stories online about you having to format the drive to the FAT32 file system. This wasnt needed as the PS3 pretty much does what it needs to in order for the drive to work.. I will say the PS3 and FAT32 combination really murders the usable sapce on the drive. When it went into the system is was meant to be 500gb instantly loses close to 100gb becasue of the FAT32 file system and the PS3 wanting it's own play area too so have been left with i believe 413gb to play with. Not bad seeing as the old drive gave me 55gb.
The stage i am at now is puting my games in the machine so they can load the games data back onto the new hdd as i have to deete the old ones in order to do the backup. Fallout 3 has gone in no problem at all. GT5P has gone in and seeing as i forgot to put the network cable back into the system it didnt update and to my real horror I cant load my old save game onto the new install. This could not only see a flying PS3 but also tears before bedtime, espeiclay if i have this issue with other games too.
I could also go on and talk about the issues i have had with the usb memory but I am sure if you have read this far you dont want me to start off on something else. If you have read this far i am actually going to send out a huge thank you to you.
The drive and the usb stick arrived this morning. The problems start there!!! The usb sticks i was expecting to arrive yesterday, the drive is 5400 and i really thought it was 7200 ( had avoided buying a 5400 drive as i wanted the faster version) Other than that I was really quite ecited about the upgrade as sad as that sounds.
Here we go!!!!
Usb stick goes in. System settings. System infomation. Backup utility. Backup.
This took about an hour and fourty minutes to do the 56gb on the disk.
I then removed the hdd and put the new one in (I am sure i dont need to say how I did that)
Booted the PS3 back up and it said there was a new hdd that needed formatting. Format away!!!!! It only took about 6 seconds to "format" the new drive so it clearly isnt a full format. I did wonder if i would get any benefit from perfomring a complete and full format.
So now we have the drive formatted and the back up on the new usb stick I had bought. My day was frankly going well so far. I went back to the backup utility and choose to restore the backup. sellect location, usb memory. My heart sank as a message cameup on the screen saying it could not locate a backup file on the selected drive. I plugged it into my laptop to make sure that the files were on the drive and they were!!! So what the hell has happened? It was at this point I started to get a bit pi$$ed off. Rather than getting annoyed properly and throwing all my toys out of my pram i started thinking how to do it without using the sticks. I swapped the drives over again so the old 60gb drive was back in the system and started again. I deleted everything off my ps3 apart from the game saves and then grabbed my Sony walkman. I checked the space available on that and found i have 22gb available on that and I only needed 13gb to do the full backup. I went down this ruit and started the backup. This time because of how much I reduced the memory needed it only took 40 minutes.
Backup finished! 2nd time lucky and with all fingers crossed. Before I swapped the drives over again I went to the backup utility and then went to see if it could find a backup on my walkman. It found one!!!! Fantastic!!!!
Once again drives got swapped over and I went through the backup restore procedure again and this time thank god it found the backup and was happy to install it. About time as to this point it has taken 3 hours!!!
I am now at the stage of having the 500gb drive installed and working on the PS3 and am now in the proccess of puting my games in the machine so it can copy the game infomation back onto the system. 30gb and counting.
Before I started this I was unsure as to how easy I would find this as i had read stories online about you having to format the drive to the FAT32 file system. This wasnt needed as the PS3 pretty much does what it needs to in order for the drive to work.. I will say the PS3 and FAT32 combination really murders the usable sapce on the drive. When it went into the system is was meant to be 500gb instantly loses close to 100gb becasue of the FAT32 file system and the PS3 wanting it's own play area too so have been left with i believe 413gb to play with. Not bad seeing as the old drive gave me 55gb.
The stage i am at now is puting my games in the machine so they can load the games data back onto the new hdd as i have to deete the old ones in order to do the backup. Fallout 3 has gone in no problem at all. GT5P has gone in and seeing as i forgot to put the network cable back into the system it didnt update and to my real horror I cant load my old save game onto the new install. This could not only see a flying PS3 but also tears before bedtime, espeiclay if i have this issue with other games too.
I could also go on and talk about the issues i have had with the usb memory but I am sure if you have read this far you dont want me to start off on something else. If you have read this far i am actually going to send out a huge thank you to you.
Last edited by a moderator:
