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Sony on upgrading your PS3 hard drive: OMG, do it!

10:19 PM on 12.29.2007, Nick Chester 46 comments

Sony on upgrading your PS3 hard drive: OMG, do it! photo
     Sony

Those who have found that 80 gigs is simply not enough to house all of those PlayStation Network games and hentai videos know the deal -- it's simple to replace the PlayStation 3's hard drive.

Surprisingly, Sony seem to be all for the system modification. In one of the latest posts on their official blog, Sony's "Social Media Manager" Jeff Rubenstein links to a CNET Asia tutorial on the process. He even gets a little cheap shot against the "competition" in.

"Fortunately, the PS3 doesn't require some hard-to-find proprietary HDD," he writes.

Ooooh, burn! Who's had success with upgrading their PS3 HDDs, and on a scale of "I can't figure out how to upgrade my RAM" to "I build rocket ships in my spare time," how hard was it?


Next page: More PS3 stories




Anemone's Avatar
Anemone at 12/29/2007 22:20
Takes nearly no time at all. It just goes in a HD carrier that slides into place. A screwdriver is all you need as far as I remember. It requires a format if I remember correctly.
HawtPawkitHero's Avatar
HawtPawkitHero at 12/29/2007 22:23
I haven't done it but I've read how. Pretty much as easy as doing it in a computer.
MrSadistic's Avatar
MrSadistic at 12/29/2007 22:23
Yeah you need to reformat it. I have a PS3 and I don't think I'll ever need anything greater than the 80 gig drive. Unless I ever get into animal porn and I become so obsessive that I need to store all of it on the hard drive of the PS3.
Elrando's Avatar
Elrando at 12/29/2007 22:30
@MrSadistic
"Unless I ever get into animal porn and I become so obsessive that I need to store all of it on the hard drive of the PS3."

Hmmm, I don't have a PS3, but it appears you have found a suitable solution for keeping all my animal porn off my main desktop, yet still readily accessible.

My hat is off to you good sir.
l0cke's Avatar
l0cke at 12/29/2007 22:32
If it was any easier to install the hard drive you could just shove it right into the PS3 and it would absorb it.
BS3 Owner's Avatar
BS3 Owner at 12/29/2007 22:39
I've got "52" PS3 titles... I don't have any demos on the HDD... Own a stock 60 GB & I'm still fine!

I believe I will get the largest stock GB'ed BS3 model whenever my BS3 craps out. Unless they make another game like Ratchet & Clank, that tells me I don't have enough HDD space again!

I'm not into beastalities... Like Chad is with his Dolphin on Dolphin Porn!
seamonkey420's Avatar
seamonkey420 at 12/29/2007 22:48
-upgraded to a 160gb seagate 5400rpm sata150 drive

-installation was cake, unscrew a screw, pull drive out, remove cage, put on new drive, format via ps3 and restore backedup data from ext; good to go! all done in under 20 mins

-pc knowledge: uber geek; i like to take things apart or like the thinkgeek shirt i wear, 'i void warranties' hehe..
frozenbabylon's Avatar
frozenbabylon at 12/29/2007 22:49
I only have a 60 gig. But I really wanna do this.
vexed alex's Avatar
vexed alex at 12/29/2007 23:00
@ BS3 Owner

You have 52 games for the PS3? Do you have repeats because I've never even seen half of that at my local Best Buy.
vexed alex's Avatar
vexed alex at 12/29/2007 23:01
Take that back. Maybe half of that.
brainderailment's Avatar
brainderailment at 12/29/2007 23:14
if you know how to drive a car, you should be competent enough, take out screw, pull, push, put in screw. Just buy the right drive.
BluDesign's Avatar
BluDesign at 12/29/2007 23:20
I'm waiting till I can buy a 200GB or larger drive for less than $100. Shouldn't take more than another 6 months. I could do this blindfolded. I've built over 500 PC's in my lifetime, so a screwdriver and a drive tray's a push over.
brainderailment's Avatar
brainderailment at 12/29/2007 23:20
@Vexed, you'd be surprised, but yeah, the stores don't carry them all, not even game stores. Wal-mart has a lot though. And I think he's counting PSN games.
vexed alex's Avatar
vexed alex at 12/29/2007 23:32
@ brainderailment

That must be true. My local Best Buy might as well be called my XBOX 360 store because that's all the video game section carries. The Wii, PS2, and PS3 stuff are all bunched up into one isle. The PC gaming is in the rear next to the PCs.
brainderailment's Avatar
brainderailment at 12/29/2007 23:40
yeah it's always a clusterfuck over there, and you have to push past little pissypants kids and their hot moms. Goddamn milfs and their money tits.
Y0j1mb0's Avatar
Y0j1mb0 at 12/30/2007 01:37
Got the 60 gig and replaced with 120 gig in ten minutes..just make sure to back up saves in USB hub for when you reformat and presto. Too easy.
cjpkiller's Avatar
cjpkiller at 12/30/2007 01:40
........
I have been a proponent of ps3 self upgrading hdd's from day one. had the 20 gigs not been totally sold out I wouldve gotten one, however, since my ps3 gets used about as often as my left hand for masturbation (rarely) I haven't filled up my 60 gig just yet.
one day when I decide to reformat my comp hdd and transfer all my movies and music to my ps3 media hub I will probably get a nice 120 gig laptop hdd. time will tell...

also upgrading is as simple as unscrew a few screws, change hdd's and rescrew it in, followed by reformatting which is automatically prompted.
I reccomend leaving a bit for linux if anyone does reformat. its pretty cool having a basic computer to use at the sofa.
especially with a wireless K&M
360's need self upgradable hdd's so bad its a joke... but its got the games so I'll just eat my complaints while sucking off the massive microsoft tits.
thisissami's Avatar
thisissami at 12/30/2007 01:58
@DVDdesign

http://ramjet.com/sata.asp 250 GB for $89 :) or 320GB for $109...

i used this website to upgrade my computer's memory, and they delivered well... i'm gonna use them when i upgrade my PS3..

i have a question about the PS3s OS. does it run off the harddrive or off the RAM? if you take out the HDD and put in a new one, will the OS still run normally?
Necros's Avatar
Necros at 12/30/2007 02:16
In the next year, I'm going to try and hunt down a 60GB unit because of backwards compatibility. Once I get it, I'll likely upgrade its HDD to the biggest one I can afford.
glitched's Avatar
glitched at 12/30/2007 02:23
@thisissami

except those drives are 3.5in drives and wont work in the PS3. you need a 2.5in laptop drive.
BlackbeardonGuitar's Avatar
BlackbeardonGuitar at 12/30/2007 03:45
Did they use laptop drives in the ps3 just to make it smaller, if they did in that case...it didnt appear to work.
Emrah's Avatar
Emrah at 12/30/2007 03:47
Also I read that the drive needs to be 9.5mm in height, in the rare occasion that if it isn't, it wouldn't fit the drivebay (Majority of notebook drives should be 9.5). But there's even a video of connecting a 3.5 inch drive to ps3, if you can let the harddisk hang out of your Ps3.
Samit Sarkar's Avatar
Samit Sarkar at 12/30/2007 03:56
Well, considering my 60 GB PS3 (whose hard drive only has, like, fifty-five usable GB of space in all) has over 30 GB of free space, I won’t have to worry about this for a while, even if Devil May Cry 4 loads 5 GB of data onto the drive. But it’s great that Sony allows (and even suggests) this, and I’ll be sure to take advantage of it if I ever need to upgrade.
tanuki's Avatar
tanuki at 12/30/2007 08:16
I'm really surprised more people don't know the PS3 can do this. My fellow Gamestop employees thought I was voiding my warramty by doing it - it gives you instruction on how to do it in the fokking manual.

Since I have the 20 gig, upgrading the hard drive made a whole lot of sense.
Holyetheline's Avatar
Holyetheline at 12/30/2007 08:34
That's efficient, but I don't really care.
catsithx's Avatar
catsithx at 12/30/2007 09:17
That will cool to do to A ps3 when I buy one in 2 years
Crapsh00t's Avatar
Crapsh00t at 12/30/2007 09:42
@seamonkey420: Why would you use a 5400 RPM drive instead of 7200?

The PS3 hard drive upgrade sounds about the same as the average HDD installation in a laptop.
mistic's Avatar
mistic at 12/30/2007 09:45
what's so new about all this? I changed the HD in my xbox (not the 360 :p ) years ago! :-)

no seriously, great that Sony 'supports' it :-)
JonDarkwood's Avatar
JonDarkwood at 12/30/2007 11:14
They're probably desperate for selling points now. I'll never use more than the 40gb on mine, since i've got a 1TB media PC sitting right next to it on my shelf.
xfu's Avatar
xfu at 12/30/2007 11:38
I recently upgraded as I was lucky enough to get a 250gig wd scorpio hd for xmas. It seriously couldn't be any easier to upgrade, I knew very little about hd replacement but it took me about 25 minutes in all, thats with the backing up, formating and switching drives. I should add that the ps3 will display 232gigs of the 250 but after some searching on the interweb its to do with the manufacturer counting 1000mb as a gig, and the ps3 counting 1024 mb as gig or something similar.
ZMTToxics's Avatar
ZMTToxics at 12/30/2007 11:53
Does it void your warrenty? The ps2 was void as soon as you opened it.

I just got the 40 gig on not 3 days ago and only have 25 gigs free with 3 games. :\

I am tempted to do it some day.
ScottEFresh's Avatar
ScottEFresh at 12/30/2007 12:06
Pretty sure it doesn't void the warranty...there are instructions on how to do it in the manual.
Simmy's Avatar
Simmy at 12/30/2007 12:44
I did see that method of using a regular 3.5 Inch SATA drive instead of the 2.5 Inch notebook sized drive that the PS3 uses.
The largest possible drive is nearly 1 TB (or something close to that). I guess all you'd have to do then would to put the drive in a caddy and there'd be more than enough space for all those 1080 films. Hell I'd even mold some black plastic into a PS3 shape and use that as the caddy. But then I'm probably too lazy to do that.
qo_op's Avatar
qo_op at 12/30/2007 13:23
@vexed, your unadulterated hate for the ps3 makes me lol
thisissami's Avatar
thisissami at 12/30/2007 13:30
@glitched

thanks for noticing that! i didn't even know there was a difference between laptop and desktop harddrives... up until now i've only heard "2.5 inch" hard drive, but this is the first time i've heard of 3.5 inch... had you not told me i probably would have went ahead and ordered one of those in a month or two after they got another price drop... so i'm guessing the 2.5 inch ones are more expensive?
delriego's Avatar
delriego at 12/30/2007 16:57
Wasn't the xbox very criticized for being like a PC?
Samit Sarkar's Avatar
Samit Sarkar at 12/30/2007 18:25
@thisissami: Yeah, the 2.5" (“notebook”) drives are significantly more expensive than their one-inch-larger (“desktop”) counterparts. For example, on Newegg.com, you can get 500 GB of space on a 7200 RPM 3.5" internal hard drive for $105. But $110 in the laptop hard drives section only gets you 120 GB at 7200 RPM. (Both are SATA drives, of course; that’s the connection that the PS3 uses.)
cjpkiller's Avatar
cjpkiller at 12/30/2007 22:08
you only need 5400 rpm.
its pointless to go larger since the ps3 wont write to the disk that fast, the drive it comes with is 5400 rpm.
Burnt Meatloaf's Avatar
Burnt Meatloaf at 12/31/2007 00:25
*cjpkiller: "its pointless to go larger since the ps3 wont write to the disk that fast, the drive it comes with is 5400 rpm."

Can you provide a reference for that? I seriously doubt there would be some intentional throttling of the SATA interface.

Of course, the 60GB drive I have is big enough for me. Yay for the "real" PS3. :)
robcat09's Avatar
robcat09 at 12/31/2007 06:49
@meatload - cjpkiller was just talking out of his ass.
I can't remember where i saw it, but it HAS been proven that a faster harddrive does indeed load things faster (surprise!) at the expense of the PS3 getting a little bit hotter. You may shave a few seconds off here and there, but the 5400's are cheaper so I would think it's not worth it.
Fading Star's Avatar
Fading Star at 12/31/2007 18:40
Cool.
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