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User avatar
By Ali
#2133735
Right, having been through this process a few times and made some mistakes, I thought I'd put together a little guide for anyone following me into the abyss to avoid the same errors! I'll split it into two sections, the first is just upgrading your hard drive in the same machine, the second is the pain in the ass of moving your data to a new machine if you have to get a replacement.

1. Upgrading your hard drive

You will need:

-a new internal hard drive, 2.5" SATA with an rpm of 5400rpm (7200 does work but offers no benefit in read speed, costs more and causes more heat) 320Gb is the safe maximum as some 500Gbs are too thick to fit the internal chassis.
-an external USB hard drive in FAT32 form. This can be an iPod with hard drive enabled if it was created on a PC. Mac formatted iPods don't work!
-a good quality selection of small Philips screw drivers.
-a kettle, some tea bags and 2 DVDs.
-optionally, a Dremmel (or similar) with a small drill head!

1. Connect your external USB hard drive to one of the USB ports on the front of the machine.
2. In the XMB, go to [System Settings] and then go down to the option that says [Back Up]. This will bring up 3 choices and you want to select [Back Up]. This should then ask you for the destination and show you [USB blah, blah] to select. The back up can take anything from 1-3 hours depending on what you have stored on your PS3. Time to use the kettle, tea bags and sit down and watch that DVD...
3. Once the back up is complete, disconnect your USb hard drive. You might want to save the folder marked [PS3] on your PC or Mac as a second back up in case the restore doesn't work. It won't be a massive file as it's heavily compressed, hence it took so long to transfer.
4. Disconnect your PS3 completely from all the wires, including the power!
5. On one end of the PS3 (the thickest) there's a flap that's easily removed by inserting a thin flat screwdriver or even credit card into the slot and flipping it up.
6. Check your screwdrivers and select the one that fits the blue screw you can see best. You don't want ANY slack in case you chew up the head. Remove that screw. Then flip out the small metal handle and slide the metal chassis to the front of the PS3. It slides about 1cm then you can lift it out completely.
7. Time for care. The original HDD is held in with the 4 small cross headed silver screws you can see on the sides of the chassis. These, from the factory, are held in TIGHT. Undo them with care, using slight pressure into the screw to avoid stripping the head, otherwise you'll need to use a small Dremmel drill to get the screw out!
8. Make sure you note which way round the original HDD is in the chassis, slide it out and put the new HDD in the same way. Then put the screws back in, ideally nowhere near as tight as Sony do! Pop the chassis into the PS3, HDD label side up, and slide it to the back of the console until you can see the hole for the blue screw through the chassis. Put that back in, flatten the handle and pop the cover back on. Easy!
9. Connect and start up the PS3 again. It'll immediately want to format your HDD. Let it do this and then restart when it asks you to.
10. Connect up your USB external HDD and go to the same [Systems Settings] followed by [Back Up] now. Do NOT go to the option that says [Restore PS3 system]! In the menu in the [Back Up] option, it also gives the option to [Restore]. Select that, tell it which device your external HDD is...go and make another cup of tea and watch that second DVD!

You should now have a PS3 that's exactly the same in every way as your original. Nothing gets lost in this process. All your saves, trophies, PSN downloads, music, photos, system settings etc etc will all be intact.




2. Transferring data to a new PS3

You will need:

-an external USB connected hard drive as above
-a pen and paper

Most PS3 failures are due to the BluRay drive failing so the unit is still completely functional bar being unable to read discs. If this is the case, you can retrieve SOME data to transfer. It's worth occasionally backing up the internal HDD just in case you get one of the rarer complete failures. What type of data can you transfer across? Not a lot! Your user accounts will transfer, as will your music, photo and video files, but your system data and preferences won't, nor will Play TV's install (you need to do it again on the new console via the disc) and nor will any of the virtual PS1 and 2 memory cards you've set up or any PSN downloads, whether that's game add ons or stand alone games. As for game saves, most will transfer if you do it the following way, but some games are, strangely, copy protected. So far, I've found this applies to Street Fighter 4, Street Fighter 2 HD and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, but not the original Motorstorm! None of your installed game data will trasfer either, so get ready to add GT5P and Warhawk all over again...

Right, off we go:

1. follow steps 1 and 2 above to back up your HDD. As I say, very little of the backed up data is usable, but it's still easier to do it this way. MAke sure you back up externally as well. Unlike the 360, you can't plug in an HDD from one console and get it to work straight away. Any new HDD put in your PS3 that it hasn't encountered before will be formatted straight away. You need to back up!
2. Go to [Trophies] and let the synch operation complete itself. Do this for all user accounts. The trophies are held in the PSN account this way and can be retrieved later.
3. Go into each user profile and, next to the name you've used for each one, write down the e-mail address you used for it and the password. The online ID is irrelevant. You can retrieve the e-mail address from the [Account Management] as long as you can remember your password! What you DON'T need to write down is a list of your downloads or saves. It takes ages to that and you don't need to!
4. When you get the new PS3, start it up,connect a controller via USB (remember, it's paired to your old PS3 until then) go through the initial set up instructions and then make sure you create the main accounts and the other user accounts using the same name as the old ones. Go into each one, go to [Sign Into Playstation Network] and select [Existing Account]. You just need to put in the e-mail address and the password, that's all.
5. Once you've done that, now [Restore] your backup as mentioned in step 10 above. You will be informed that not all the data can be backed up and you'll find the restore is suspiciously short lived!
6. Once complete, go into each user account, select [Trophies] and wait for the synch to finish (it takes longer than usual).
7. Go into the Main user account, go to [Account Management] then [Transactions] then [Download History]. From here you can see all your old PSN downloads and can start to download from this menu, rather than hunting them all down on PSN Store. You can only download 16 queued files at a time though. The PS3 you receive should already have Home and the most up to date system pre-installed so that shouldn't be a concern, but remember all those games you bought where an update patch has occured? You're going to have to do ALL those patches again! Good luck! You'll also need to pair up your BD Remote and any other Blutooth accessories you have to the new PS3 as well.
User avatar
By mikegsi
#2136144
is it not possible if you get the bluray failure and have upgraded your hdd to put the standard drive back in before you send it off, then when it comes back put your upgraded hdd back in with all the info on it and so have no downloading/transferring to do?
User avatar
By Mark
#2136161
mikegsi wrote:is it not possible if you get the bluray failure and have upgraded your hdd to put the standard drive back in before you send it off, then when it comes back put your upgraded hdd back in with all the info on it and so have no downloading/transferring to do?
thank god you asked that question, ive been holding myself back for days now
User avatar
By Ali
#2136210
You can happily put the old drive in before you send it off, that's what I did. But the machine you get isn't your original as they're swapped by the courier. If the HDD wasn't formatted by the machine you put it in, it immediately asks to format it and won't go any further if you don't! I was hoping the same thing as you Mike, but no. You have to back up the data externally, watch the PS3 wipe all your data out, then put it back with most of it missing. DRM FTL :evil:
User avatar
By Ali
#2136414
Tell me about it! I've had to trawl through 163 downloads deciding what I want to get back. Got the console on Monday and it's been downloading 8pm to 8am every day since!!!
User avatar
By Ali
#2275064
Bump, because I need to refer to it for another forum.
User avatar
By Ali
#2339268
obbzi wrote:Can you not just use an external USB HDD?
Nope. They will only read from the internal HDD for things like DLC, downloaded games, game saves etc. You can have music or movies on an external HDD though.
User avatar
By karl
#2361772
my 80gb PS3 HD is full now, I have a 1tb external drive, and created four 32gb FAT32 partitions on it

how do I back up my HD if it's over 32gb though as I get errors due to size?
User avatar
By Ali
#2361873
Haven't the foggiest dude. I used a Western Digital 320Gb external HDD and it was fine.

BTW, if you're shifting data to a new PS3 and still own the old one, there's a FAR easier way. Go to System Updates and make sure you get 3.15. This has a new option in the System Settings menu for Data Transfer. All you need do is connect the PS3s with an Ethernet cable and it does it for you, and it does it completely as well. It does wip ethe old machine's HDD though.
User avatar
By karl
#2361913
you must have had less than 32gb worth of data then as that is the limit for a FAT32 partition, which your drive would have had to have had for the PS3 to access it

I'm not swapping to a new PS3, it's a new drive, so I guess it's back to the drawing board :lovl:
User avatar
By Ali
#2361949
dude, I currently have something stupid like 210Gb on mine :shock:
User avatar
By karl
#2362376
I meant on your original drive, when you moved to the larger one :smile:
User avatar
By Ali
#2362412
I had about 50Gb at that point. I was running out of space so needed to upgrade. Is there more than one format type that could be used? Or could you move your saves to the drive in a different folder and then delete them to free up space? They can be moved wherever you like. Same with any photo, music or video media. It's a pain because you have to do it manually, one by one, though.
User avatar
By Ali
#2578080
Just to let you all know, the Data Transfer Utility is sh1te. It persistently fails if you have so much as one corrupt file, usually a game save. It won't repair it, it won't skip it and it won't tell you which one it f**king is :bad-words:

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