Any idea how I can transfer everything from my 40GB HDD to a newer, bigger and better HDD? And I mean all my downloads etc, not just the backupable stuff. Is an external USB HDD a valid possibility? (Please say yes!)
Barc0de I am not sure whether your second question about external USB HDD is a general question or not, as you can use an external drive. Whether you can transfer anything / everything over, I have never attempted it! Let me know how you get on. At the moment I am at work, so can't even test it!
The PS3 won't read any external driver that aren't formatted in FAT32, Microsoft probably trying to promote NTFS won't allow drives to be formatted greater then 32GB with FAT32. However you can download a program called FAT32FORMAT it is a command line program but works with XP and Vista. http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/FAT32format.shtml Get an external USB drive and format it to FAT32 with the above program, you can get away with formating the drive in 32GB partitions but it takes ages. Alternatively if you have another laptop SATA drive then get the Playstation 3 to format it. As backing up takes an age, I would delete everything you may not need from the PS3. I would also write down the Usernames and passwords of all your user accounts just in case. Plug USB into the Playstation 3 and goto the System, System Settings and Backup Utility. Back up the drive on the the external drive. Go find something else to do. Come back, unplug USB drive, replace internal drive, etc. Format new drive. Goto backup utility and restore from storage medium. Go find something else to do. I have had the Playstation 3 say that the backup could not be restored, if this happens then try again, happened to me once but worked second time around, although it was annoying as it took 3 hours to restore... >_<
my main concern lies with downloaded games that say that they can't be copied. To my knowledge, these games have a limited amount of "downloads" you re allowed to do (5 by license) - which would mean that each time that I change/update an HDD i m losing my money's worth, because when the license count goes from 5 to zero, then I ll have to RE-purchase the item for download anew. This is utter bullocks ofcourse, and I d rather have my games linked to my username or other unique identification method. JAMTEX,were u able to backup games like GT5 or Tekken?
You can backup and restore games using the backup method however it does check to make sure that you are restoring them to the original machine. I didn't lose anything when I backed up and restored.
I have 2 HDD's (40gb and 100GB) formated in FAT32 in a single partition, I never had a problem formatting them.
The disc needs to be in FAT32, the PS3 won't format external drives or read NTFS drives. If the external drive you want to use is a SATA laptop drive then you can whack it into the PS3 and format it internally. I used an old 100GB laptop EIDE drive in a cheap hard drive caddy, the PS3 even powered the drive. If in Windows XP / Vista then you'll need an external program to format the drives (see my first post, also if you don't like command prompts then use this program http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm). If you have Mac OSX then you just need to plug it in and tell it to format to FAT32.
Untrue. I have a single 160GB (partitioned as one 160GB lump) hard drive formatted in FAT32 with Windows XP (for unimportant reasons). I think I even formatted it externally via USB.
As long as you are restoring the backup to the same PS3 then it will let you transfer the protected downloads. It will only stop you if you're trying to pass them off to a buddy or something. My external 120GB USB drive is formatted to FAT32. I've never tried reformatting it as it came that way. I think all are formatted for FAT32 when you purchase them so that they are compatible with all OS. You'll probably want to stick to 5400 RPM drives. The 7200 ones get pretty hot. I'm sure they'd work, but it's not a variable I'd want to risk myself.
