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View Full Version : Formatting a PS3 hard drive


TrakMastaTom
02-10-2011, 02:50 PM
So I got a PS3 that wasn't working from a friend of mine who works at a game store. He thought the only thing wrong was that it wouldn't read discs. While that is true, it also had a bad hard drive. At first it just wouldn't save things on it and would get confused and shut down. Then it stopped booting at all and said "Can not read hard disc" or something like that.

So I figured no big deal, and bought a cheap laptop drive. 80 GIGS (twice the capacity of the original) 5400 RPM laptop drive. Western Digital. I got it and stuck it in my PS3 and got the same message. I have been trying everything to get it to work, and I am trying to format it FAT32 or whatever on my PC. I plugged it into an old enclosure I had sitting around. I can't get my computer to even recognize it. I hear the hard drive working, and the light on the enclosure is coming on, but nothing.

Any help on getting my computer to read it would be appreciated. I put the rest of the info in here in case anyone else has PS3 hard drive experience as well. I don't even know that formatting it will help, but it's worth a shot I suppose. I'm really starting to get mad, I have spent so much time of this freaking Playstation and even if I get the hard drive going I won't have a fully functional machine...:teeth:

Seahawk
02-11-2011, 12:39 AM
How did you hook it up to your computer?

If it is a SATA connection: Most computer ship with all unconnected SATA ports disabled. You have to enable the appropriate SATA port on your computer's BIOS (usually F2 or something on boot up) before you can use it.

If it still doesn't work then either you have a PATA drive (not supported on PS3) or the drive is bad.

And then these might help:
How to upgrade your PlayStation 3 hard drive - Features at GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com/features/6176090/index.html)
** How-To Guide to Upgrading Your Hard... | PlayStation® Community Forums (http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/2296642)

TrakMastaTom
02-11-2011, 01:24 PM
I hooked it up with an enclosure. Trying to do the external hard drive thing. Does that make a difference?