PS3 Hard drive clone?

[MidnightDistort]

I am not sure if this is in the right spot...

So i am looking to upgrade my 60GB hard drive on my Ps3 and im confused on how to do this. I have Acronis so i could just pull the drive out of the system and clone the drive, placing it on a larger capacity drive. Would this work? I have several games on it, a couple i had paid for to download as well as saved data.

There is also a backup function on the system itself but i have not familiarized myself with it yet. I'd like to preserve the data on the drive to place on a new hard drive and start a regular backup of the data.

 

[Hawkeye22]

The PS3 uses a proprietary format and can't be read in a PC. Also, whenever you put a new/different drive in the PS3, the first thing it wants to do is format it itself.

If you purchased games off the Playstaion Network, you can redownload them at any time from the playstation store.

The esiest way to upgrade drives without losing anything is to use the PS3's backup function to back up to an external drive. Once the backup is done, insert the new drive and let it format the disk. You may be forced to install the firmware at this point too. You can download the firmware off their site and stick it on a USB key to install onto the PS3. Afterwards, just restore your backup and all will be good. All that is left is to resynchronize your trophies since they don't get backed up.

Check out some video's on youtube. Other than backing up/restoring, the process only takes like 10 minutes if even. The backup/restore takes longer depending on how much data is on the drive.

 

[youngblood97]

If you youtube it there are plenty of videos that show you how to do it. I just did mine a month ago adding a 300gig drive replacing my 60gig.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Yeah i kinda figured that, i need to back up my data on that anyway. For the purchased games, i shouldn't run into any trouble with re-downloading them?

 

[twstd1]

I have a friend with a PS3 and he ran into trouble with re-downloading maps for his COD games. Apparently you only have 5 times(on any console) to re-download your purchased items. If your only planning to do this once or twice then you shouldn't have a problem. As far as cloning your drive, there are programs out there that you can download to clone the drive using your PC. My friend asked me about it a long time ago and we hit up youtube for some help.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Well i got no problems with cloning but as others mentioned it won't work with the PS3 format, unless there are special programs that enable you to do this which then i'd have to research and find out a reliable program.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I have yet to see any PC program that can read or clone a PS3 disk. As I said, just backup to an external USB drive. It will need to be formatted as FAT32 as the PS3 can only read FAT partitions on external drives. If you do the backup/restore, you don't even need to redownload your games as they should get backed up.

 

[yugiboy]

just use the back up funtion it works and saves all of your data did mine months ago
was easy as hell but takes a lot of time. also shut off you power saving funtions during it