Ravings on CS, OSs, PLs, SF, and other things geeky...
Since I’ve been neglecting my humble blog for some time now, it’s time for a few rants. First off, replacing PS3 hard drives…
I bought a few hard drives the other day, one of which was for my laptop. It was easily replaced by a simple cp --archive copy of data from old drive to new and then pop a cover, switch drives, replace cover and boot up. Very nice. Left me with a spare drive so I figured I could use it to upgrade my PS3.
PS3 was also supposed to be quite easy, various articles saying it took just about 10 minutes or so. In principle it’s quite easy.
- Get a new drive.
- Open the hard drive cover, unscrew the tray and the drive from the tray.
- Screw in new drive and replace.
- Boot up, get system to format new drive.
This by itself can take about 10 minutes or so, indeed.
But things aren’t that simple. Most users will have a bunch of data they want to move from the old drive to the new. So here’s what you need then:
A second media for backup, most liklely 20GB or more so usually that comes down to a hard drive. For me I had a meager 24GB of data to backup and after connecting an old 3.5 80GB drive I had it took all of 44 minutes to back up. So, let’s revise the procedure:
- Use PS3 system backup utility to make a backup to HD connected via USB (let’s call it drive A)
- Get new drive (B)
- Open the hard drive cover, unscrew the tray and the drive from the tray.
- Screw in drive B and replace.
- Boot up, the system should detect and format the new drive.
- Connect A via USB and restore backup.
I made it to 4 without incident, but then the PS3 refused to initialize the new drive (B), saying that it needed Firmware 2.60 to set it up with. Of course we can’t have the PS3 just starting off with version whatever it was. Nope, gotta have the latest… So the only thing to do, get another drive (let’s call it C, could be a CF card or just drive A again), download the latest firmware from the Sony homepage and place it in a folder called /PS3/UPDATE on this drive (C).
Ok, did that. Now picking up from step 4 it takes a good while to scan my media (C) to find the update but eventually it does and starts installing. Some 10-20 minutes later it’s working. PS3 loads up at last. But no data, have to create a new user and all. A bit bothersome but better get through it and restore my backup. Step 5 now, and that’s going to take another 45 minutes or so… and guess what, it gives up. Corrupt data it says, well know what? Not only can I not put a new drive with my old data in but all backups are basically useless.
It’s days and countless drive swappings later and I’m still at it. Oh, and apparently I have voided my warranty, but just replacing your drive will do that.
Why did I want to do this again? Well I thought it might be cool if I could have some space to install Linux or something. In the interim however I found out that Sony disables many hardware functions and downgrades graphic card performance via a hypervisor. This was kindly added during a firmware update, along with other “cool” features. Now it’s almost impossible to get 1080p video to play off it from Linux. Why? Sony feels I didn’t pay enough for my PS3 but I tend to disagree. Just what I needed today, less ways I can use my PS3…
