...what an adventure this has been, lol! ive got an original-series 60gb, which sits at about half-full, so i decided to get a nice 250gb for £40 from dabs, along with a caddy from ebuyer for £9, with the intention of using it to transfer/back up data.

 

the instructions for the caddy say to format the drive before installing, so i takes the back of my pc off, and slave the 250gb off my pc. get to the desktop, recognises the disc, but it doesnt appear in My Computer. after fiddling around, rebooting, etc, I eventually twig that i need to go into admin and activate the disc.

 

PS3 discs need to be FAT32 format, but XP only formats to NTFS, so download Partition Magic, but end up with a demo version which doesnt actually DO the things you tell it. uninstall that and get hold of SwissKnife. absolutely bloody useless and cant even see the 250gb, even though its now activated. get hold of FAT32formatter, and lo and behold it can format to FAT32 :bow: , so i format the disc, chuck it in the caddy, and plug it into the PS3.

 

PS3 recognises it, I hit 'backup the system', and it starts to backup to the 250gb. so far so good, kind of.

 

next stage is to connect the 250gb in the caddy back to my PC and copy the backup (about 30gb) onto my PC - takes about 20mins but that works fine too. unfortunately the backups are archived and so its not quite a simple straight swap - looks like I need to do a restore too, but no matter.

 

ok, then comes the next part - removing the original 60gb drive from the PS3. piece of cake, although the tiny little screws in the holder were almost soldered in, but with a careful spray of WD40, and a screw-head-shaped hole in my thumb, i manage to free the disc, and install the 250gb into the ps3. the ps3 turns on without exploding, and recognises the 250gb. still on track for success...

 

next stage is to caddy-up the 60gb, and re-copy the backup archive from my PC to the caddy, which takes another 20 mins. plug the caddy (with the original 60gb) into the PS3 but it doesnt recognise it. then i realise that when i formatted the 60gb it was with XP and so it'll be with NTFS format. i assumed that any common format of USB-connected drives would be recognised and that only the internal drive had to be FAT32 (seeing as I use a standard memory stick with it sometimes) but it looks like this may be wrong.

 

so i use FAT32formatter again to reformat the 60gb back to FAT32, and copy the archive over AGAIN from my PC...

 

now thats just finished and the PS3 now recognises the caddied 60gb. hit Restore PS3, but its decided to format its own drive and default all the settings. upon further investigation, you have to hit Backup first, then Restore :headvswal:, so im currently waiting 55mins for the files to be restored and (God willing) have all my old stuff back, but with heaps more space.

 

...its just the little 'delayed write fail' dialog box thats appeared on my PC thats worried me a little, even though i waited a while after the copy had finished. IM SURE EVERYTHING WILL BE OK! :eek: watch this space. whats everyone else up to?

just to update myself - it went fine!

well done !

i really want to do this however............. cannot buy the premium again like i did on release date. i use continues play for PS3 and pay a set amount per month so that should anything go wrong they HAVE to give me a premium console again (they confirmed) however i will lose that right if i install a different HD

 

needless to say i will be sticking with original (full) HD :-(