Tips & tricks: Upsize your PS3 Hard drive

Soon or later you will run out storage capacity on your PS3 with all that downloading, upgrade firmware stuff.
And eventually you want to change your PS3 hard drive. This is how:
1. Get your new hard disk. PS3 is compatible with any 2.5 inch SATA notebook HDD, but please do note that PS3 is using Seagate momentus as its HDD. Personally I prefer and already used the same brand just to be safe, but it is really up to you. I recommend that at least you get 320G or more.
2. Back up your data. PS3 can back up to any external storage, such as USB thumbdrive, memory stick, or External HDD. Just find the option in you XMB. FYI it can only read storage that is formatted in FAT 32. Just in case your storage is formatted in NTFS, you can reformat using Disk management utility in Windows.  For larger HDD, you will need to create a partition because FAT 32 can only read up to 32G.
What if you don't do partition? Then whatever your storage size is, it will only read up to 32G.

 

Save you data using PS3 back up data utility

Your PS login, system setting, and all your download content will be saved in this process. 

3. Hard disk swap.You will need a phillip head screw driver for this process. Turn off your PS3. Remove the HDD panel on the side of your PS3.

Remove the blue screw.

 

Open the metal latch, move the hard drive tray to the right, and pull it out.

Remove the four screws that hold the HDD. It is extremely tight. 

 

Swap your HDD and screw in.

 

Put the HDD tray, replace the blue screw. snap back the panel.

Turn on the console and let the system format the new drive. Then load up the PS3 backup utility to restore data from your external storage device back onto the PS3 hard drive.

Viola. Its done! Now you have a spare HDD from your PS3. You can either sell it or make it an external HDD for future back up need. 

Source: Cnet 

 

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