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How to Swap Out and Upgrade a PS3 Hard Drive

gamepro.com — The stock 20GB or 60GB PS3 hard drive not enough storage for your massive saved game and video archive? Here's the simplest guide on the net on how to upgrade your PS3 hard drive. It's easier than you think.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 2, 2007

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  • davidmcraney, on 10/10/2007, -12/+144Honestly people, the PS3 is insane.

    Blu-Ray, 1080p output, easily upgrade hard drive, DVR, digital TV reception, install Linux, wireless Internet reception, web browser, plays movies, music, photon editing, stream media through your network, etc.

    The 360 and the Wii are both good and have some great games, but you can't get half of all of this for $500.
  • FireStrife, on 10/10/2007, -5/+51the price dropped and people still complaining even the 360 doesn't have the said wifi, bluetooth, and HD-DVD.
    Some people are just too caught up in their own prejudices to see these things.
  • Nobiting, on 10/10/2007, -3/+45That makes no sense... Xbox 1 with XBMC = $200, Xbox 360 Elite = $479. 200 + 479 = 679That and no HD-DVD or WiFi.
  • baldr, on 10/10/2007, -10/+45Photon editing?!? awesome :P
    Seriously though, yea it is a great value, but it is still wicked expensive. Once another (aka a real) price drop occurs and some more good games come out, I am all over it.
  • nreynolds, on 10/10/2007, -3/+37its $500. With free online play. And a fairly cheap Blu-ray player.
  • DoTheFandango, on 10/10/2007, -2/+33Where can you get a PC that's under $300 that does all that?
    This is not a rhetorical question, I wanna know.
  • coheedcollapse, on 10/10/2007, -9/+31"they don't have the big games that the wii and xbox have."

    You freaking blind? Go to Metacritic. Right now. Look up Wii. Look up PS3. Now tell me that the games on the PS3 are lacking.

    (To clarify, all but two of the PS3 top twenty are above 80 percent in score, while the Wii has only 7 games out TOTAL above 80)

    Fanboys are delusional.
  • JayD16, on 10/10/2007, -9/+29You forgot the fact it LITERALLY cures cancer. I remember when I used 'and it even cures cancer' as a joke. Those days are long gone.
  • coheedcollapse, on 10/10/2007, -4/+23Yeah, but does it play games?
  • Tunguska, on 10/10/2007, -5/+23Been laid? Neg.
  • SirDiggalot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17Well, it's useful to me because it might affect my PS3/360 buying decision. Seeing how easy this is, the PS3 scored another point.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+19I hate to say, xbox fanboys hate ps3. Reasons!!! PS3 is far superior than xbox and has much more things. Then the fanboys be saying, "its too expensive, all I want is a gaming system". Hey *****...if its too expensive, then how do you compare buying a game for 60 bucks. Ever think about that. All your stupid whining makes no sense. If you can afford to buy a 60 dollar game, then you can invest another 100 and get a computer, bd player..etc.. so grow up.
  • LiquidChimera, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17I actually just did this a week ago, and the hardest part was unscrewing the metal shield.
  • inactive, on 02/25/2009, -2/+17Any PC has Cell processor with 8 additional SPEs and custom and proprietary nVIDIA RSX graphics card? Neg. Any developers interested in developing true and rich next-gen games for the PC even after knowing that a game developed for the PC is a game pirated a billion times? Neg. Do you have common-sense? Neg. Do you have a real job to afford a PS3? Neg.
  • iownsomuch, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17Definitely gonna try this. Dugg.
  • supperman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15I can't believe people can be proud of being a scamming low-life.

    For your info, you need to to have another computer to do all your PVR stuff, whereas with Linux on the PS3, you don't need another PC. Oh, and while you're swapping your HDDs on the 360, you can actually connect another external USB HDD to the PS3.
  • ntbnnt, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15Ya, its in the manual, but the fact that you can do this is awesome. This definitely makes the PS3 good for those of us who are power users - combined with Linux, nothing can beat this media center!
  • driftwood07, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15thank you for finally pointing out that the ps3 is not a piece of ***** and the high price is more than justified.
    just to get HD on a 360 by purchasing additional drive would make it cost /more/ than the ps3.
  • nobiology, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13does the 360 have the ability to add non microsoft hard drives, or are you seriously bragging that the fact that you can swap 120gig hard drives that cost 170 bucks. Even for a 2.5 hard drive thats a huge rip off.
  • Cyber_Akuma, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13Dosent the PS3 manual describe exactly how to install your own bigger 3rd party HDD on the PS3? It's not like it's a big secret/hack or anything...
  • djSyndrome, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14Not our fault you're still running IE 4.0.
  • BattleScars, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12So this guy links his 360 up to a Media Center PC that probably cost hundreds of dollars and claims that he got a better deal than just buying one device for $500.
  • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12The PS3 hooks upto Media Center PCs as well. You are really full of crap. For less then the price of one of those 120 gigs ($179.99) I can get a 200 gig cheap.
  • samdu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11And two from people that know that you don't need Ghost to swap a PS3 hard drive.
  • kylesellers, on 10/10/2007, -15/+26Yeah, real tough. Take out hard drive, put new one in. I did that to my PS3 (which I later sold) and it took about a minute and a half. Does this really warrant a How-To guide?
  • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Certain types of nail guns that use a .22 shell to shoot a nail into a concrete slab have to put a warning sticker on them saying do not rest on foot...

    So yes I think a how to video for this is needed as some parents aren't that tech inclined.
  • BattleScars, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Remind me what this guy's argument was again? He has a PC that likely cost him more than $500 and is arguing that it is better than a device with similar features but with the benefit of a Blu-ray drive for the same price.
  • MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Not to mention that the PS3's filesystem isn't supported by Ghost.
  • newdigger, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Asking this in a comment on Digg is faster then just searching yourself? You lose.... Im not even gonna tell you.
  • kyrre, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Plug in an USB-drive. Backup your system with a selection on system preferences. Unplug. Replace hard drive. Restore. Pretty simple really.
  • modestmouse, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Does anyone know if there's a size limit? Will the PS3 (or the xbox360 for that matter) recognize, say a 1 TB HDD?
  • apoc06, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8oddly enough, i find the game selection to be wider for my ps3 so far. its very true; outside of xbox live arcade, most of the games available are shooters. if you break it down to what are the "better" games, they are almost exclusively shooters. the ps3 has a wider range of variety.

    i like an FPS, or a third person shooter every so often. thats part of the reason i own a xbox360 as well, but sometimes you want to branch out and play other genres. the only genre i find the ps3 lacking in so far is RPGs and SRPGs. but the FFXIIIs are coming, and with the recent announcement of disgaea3 being exclusive, im a happy camper.

    the xbox has more games quantitatively, but that doesnt take into account the lack of variety, the number of first year upscaled ps2 ports or the horrible ratio of gems to crap.
  • mywhitenoise, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I was convinced that the 360 had more games, based on all the people online praising it, but what games does it have? I'm serious, i'm not trying to be a prick or anything.
    Because the PS3 has the whole PS1/2 library, with Resistance, Motorstorm, Ninja Gaiden, The Darkness, Oblivion, and Rainbow 6 out right now. Those last 3 mention I don't give a ***** about, but those are some of the titles 360 fans brag about, along with Gears Of War (which looks cool, but not enough for me to buy a faultly console). What else does the 360 have? Dead Rising, and Lost Planet were complete ***** when I played them, Viva Pinata looks entertaining...but not sure if it would fit my taste, and I don't know much about Crackdown. On the other hand you do have Mass Effect coming out, but the exclusives coming to the PS3 look a lot more promising in my opinion.
  • fuzzynyanko, on 10/10/2007, -5/+12That's one feature I wish the 360 had. However, I guess it could get messy with content protection...
  • smacksaw, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11We just ordered a PS3 for the HT setup in this house (to sell the home). It's funny, the games don't really even matter. I'll put Yellow Dog Linux on it and wait for it to get up to spec using the full potential of the system, but in the meantime it will be an amazing internet computer pushing a 47" 1080p display. We also ordered a nice Dell with 2GB and 320GB RAM for $399, but after I add a proper 8600 video card to it, it will surpass the PS3 in price...just to output HD content.

    I think it's an extremely expensive game system and I can't imagine playing anything else since Wii came out, but it's a bargain as a computer. It's going to be amazing when people figure out how to use the ultra-high speed Memory Stick for virtual memory, harness the power of the extra Cell processors and unlock what the nvidia gfx can do.
  • Cyber_Akuma, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6RPM has nothing to do with supported or not, that's an internal function of the drive itself, not something the system it's installed in normally controls.
  • tanto, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8All you need to do it is a couple of screwdrivers and the right kind of hard drive to put in. The PS3 will take any 2.5 mm SATA hard drive. Those who have upgraded already warn that it will not take the regular IDE Notebook hard drive, it needs to be a 2.5 SATA. The PS3 has a 5,400 RPM hard drive, so that speed will work best, although other speeds have been successfully used.

    Upgrading The Hard Drive In Your Play Station 3
    http://customerdataplus.com/blog/?p=82
  • MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Looks like you're stuck with boardgames.
  • samdu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6That said, spindle speed has been shown to have very little effect in the PS3. Cache is a significantly bigger performance booster. Plus, the higher rotational speed drives generate more heat. May as well avoid it if it's not necessary.
  • ChildeRoland420, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6The PS3 doesn't have its own filesystem. At least not for external drives. Any FAT32 drive should work.
  • D1lux, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6I agree with you kylesellers. I haven't upgraded my PS3's HDD yet, but there are instructions on how to do this in the PS3's instruction manual... so I don't see why we need a How to guide either.
    Another plus is that swapping hard drives does not void your warranty on the PS3.
  • DarkShroud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6It should be able to read them. But the internal only takes 2.5" HDs. And the stock 20/60 gigs run at 5400rpms, not 7200rpms. If you want to try a 1TB then plug it into the PS3 via USB to be safe.
  • optikalblitz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Maybe it's not too relevant to the more savvy user, but this How-To is good for 2 reasons:

    1. Brings deserved attention to the fact the PS3 might in fact be worth buying

    2. Allows the less technically inclined to get in the game.

    Like DarkShroud said, you might not *need* a set of instructions on how to put a CD into a Playstation but you'll surely find them included with any game you buy.
  • piper999, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Read. The. Article.
  • mywhitenoise, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5The price just ***** dropped, god damn you kids are greedy. When it hits $400, you bitches will still complain that it's too expensive.
  • ptaylor, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Why are you comparing your PC to the PS3? The PS3 was made to have all these features work together for the life of the machine without having to buy significant upgrades. It seems that anytime you think of upgrading your graphics card, you have to buy a new PSU and motherboard, go through he hell of upgrading drivers and other software to make everything work nice. By the time you did all of that (~$1,500 and hours 'n reboots later), something new comes out. WTF? I'm not going to take a bus or F150 to mod it into a racer, I'll buy a damn M5 or G35 nicely equipped. I never can see the PC as being a gaming machine that will rival an XBox, Wii, or PS3. Once you fill it up with so much shyt, it becomes a pain in the azz to just turn the GD thing on and you'll want to throw it through the window! If I want to play Resident Evil, I'll play it on the console. If I want to surf the web, I'll do it on a PC (Don't surf the web on you console people, for what? If I find a program I want to use or demo, the 360 or PS3 cannot do shyt with it, so what's the point?) or Mac. If I want to watch movies, I'll do it on a PS3 or 360 (PCs are annoying to show a movie with. All you need is a bunch of warning messages or IMs to mess-up your whole "movie" experience. With a console, just put in the disk, press play and adjust the volume. How simple is that!?). If I want to record, edit, and create discs with media, that's what a PC is for. Consoles and PCs/Macs should be used together, not pit against each other. It's so stupid to do so!
  • kylesellers, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"you might not *need* a set of instructions on how to put a CD into a Playstation but you'll surely find them included with any game you buy."

    These instructions ARE ALREADY INCLUDED IN THE PS3 MANUAL, thus making this even less necessary.
  • triplehelix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4you must be thinking of the official microsoft hdd. sony lets you use any off the shelf 2.5" SATA drive.
  • TheTjalian, on 10/10/2007, -6/+101: Take out PS3 Drive
    2. Put in New One
    3. ???
    4. Profit!
  • Days, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Just curious, Does it support higher than 5400 rpm?
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