HINTS: Swapping PS3 Hard Drives (unit to unit)

[alecjahn]

I recently acquired a 60GB PS3 to go along with my 80GB. I want to use the 60GB as my main unit to clear up the PS2 spot (I've got a memory card adapter, etc already).
I'm still working on it, and am not finished as I got swamped doing a hard drive recovery on a customer computer all through the night.

I decided to make a list of findings in trying to swap drives:

1. You cannot swap drives directly. Each drive, when formatted I assume, links itself to the unit it is in.
2. Different PS3 models have different HD caddies, (though I cannot tell the differences exactly) my 80gb goes in SATA-port first, whereas the 60GB goes in 90 degrees from that and then slides to the side (don't lose that blue screw!)
3. Backups can only be made onto a FAT32 partition.
4. When you put any drive that is not linked with a PS3 into that PS3, it will ask to format upon booting.
5. When I placed one of the drives into the other unit, despite making sure both machines were on firmware 2.8, it asked for the update file and went through some crap before it would format the disk inside. This confused me.
6. If you want to keep your Trophies, hit triangle on your trophies and upload that data to Sony BEFORE you format anything, as they WILL NOT be copied into a backup.
7. Using the backup function (under System settings) and copying to ANOTHER PS3 did not transfer my saved games or installed game data or downloaded games/demos. You will need to transfer your saved games separately (by copying them individually to your external storage media, one-by-one as there is no "copy all" function), and then copy them into the new drive. I have also heard that some saves may not function on the new unit, I do know one of mine refused to copy (Lost Planet?).
8. You can easily re-download purchased items off of PSN, but you can only have a game installed on five units at the same time, so look into deactivating an old install if possible/necessary.
9. Many of your user settings will not get copied, such as your theme. None of the system settings will copy either, such as your wireless/network settings.
10. My user profiles, when copied to the new machine, have an asterisk (*) next to them. I do not know what this means.
11. ??????????


Feel free to make suggestions, explainations (especially!) and additions. I want this to be a semi-comprehensive list as I haven't found but bits and pieces of information all over the net that are not consolidated into an easy-to-access form.

[Mugi]

8. You can easily re-download purchased items off of PSN, but I have heard that you can only do this 5 times when downloading to a different machine. I cannot verify this.

you can download a game to 5 different machines SIMULTANEOUSLY.

when you look at an installed game on your system, there should be a "DEACTIVATE" setting somehwhere which will uninstall and unlock the game, giving you back one of the 5 "slots" available.

however, i heard that if you don't deactivate a game prior to formatting/deleting, the slot will be lost forever as you become unable to deactivate it.

7. Using the backup function (under System settings) and copying to ANOTHER PS3 did not transfer my saved games or installed game data or downloaded games/demos. You will need to transfer your saved games separately (by copying them individually to your external storage media, one-by-one as there is no "copy all" function), and then copy them into the new drive. I have also heard that some saves may not function on the new unit, I do know one of mine refused to copy (Lost Planet?).

im not actually sure about this one but i can swear that my backup restored my psx memorycards when i restored the backup (same console but a new HDD) a friend of mine said the same after restoring a backup to her PS3.

[alecjahn]

im not actually sure about this one but i can swear that my backup restored my psx memorycards when i restored the backup (same console but a new HDD) a friend of mine said the same after restoring a backup to her PS3.

I can definitely see this happening, but I'm mainly speaking of moving data to a new PS3. It copies very little.

[Hellcat]

1. You cannot swap drives directly. Each drive, when formatted I assume, links itself to the unit it is in.
4. When you put any drive that is not linked with a PS3 into that PS3, it will ask to format upon booting.

I think it's the encryption of the HDD.
It's most likely linked to a unique ID that is used as part of the encryption key.

5. When I placed one of the drives into the other unit, despite making sure both machines were on firmware 2.8, it asked for the update file and went through some crap before it would format the disk inside. This confused me.

Most likely some files from the the update need to be on the HDD for security/restoration reasons.
As the HDD is formatted none are existant. One should try if this also happens when (just) formatting the HDD or putting in a new one (not from a different PS3).
Could be due to the recovery menu added in FW 2.50....

7. Using the backup function (under System settings) and copying to ANOTHER PS3 did not transfer my saved games or installed game data or downloaded games/demos. You will need to transfer your saved games separately (by copying them individually to your external storage media, one-by-one as there is no "copy all" function), and then copy them into the new drive. I have also heard that some saves may not function on the new unit, I do know one of mine refused to copy (Lost Planet?).

Yeah, as it states on the "splash" screen for the backup, DRM protected data can only be restored to the PS3 the backup was made on.
But why it didn't restore any savedata is weird, should have....
About "Lost Planet": Games can flag their saves as "copy protected" (my NFS:Carbon does it as well, and AFAIK any EA game), so you have no chance of getting it off the console - which suck IMO, why make gamesave copyprotected? I like to keep regular backups (one-by-one) of my saves....

8. You can easily re-download purchased items off of PSN, but you can only have a game installed on five units at the same time, so look into deactivating an old install if possible/necessary.

As I understand it, you can have up to five consoles activead simultaniously for ony account.
Every actuvated console can play every d/l'ed content from that account.
You can disable/deactivate the console (not every single game, AFAIK, please correct me someone who knows better) making it unable to play ANY content from the account it got disabled for but giving the account one more console "slot" back to be used for activating another one.

9. Many of your user settings will not get copied, such as your theme. None of the system settings will copy either, such as your wireless/network settings.

Those are stored in the flash, not the HDD, as the backup only backs up the HDD none of those can be restored on the target system - obviously xD

[l_oliveira]

I have to mention this:

PS3s based on the COK-001 and COK-002 motherboards never ask for the update on removable media with HDD swaps.

So all PS3 units released after the 40GB model require this.

[PrOfUnD Darkness]

Every actuvated console can play every d/l'ed content from that account.
You can disable/deactivate the console (not every single game, AFAIK, please correct me someone who knows better) making it unable to play ANY content from the account it got disabled for but giving the account one more console "slot" back to be used for activating another one.

Can someone confirm this? Never heard about it.

[Hellcat]

It's somewhere in the terms of service of the PSN, couldn't find it on the englisch ones, so I took it from the german terms of service (usage-rights):

Spieleartikel oder -inhalte, die Sie erworben haben, können vom PLAYSTATION®Store heruntergeladen werden. Gemäß den besonderen Nutzungsbestimmungen, die einen bestimmten Spieleartikel oder -inhalt regulieren, können Sie den erworbenen Artikel oder Inhalt auf drei (3) verschiedenen PLAYSTATION®3-Systemen, die für Ihr Konto aktiviert wurden, nutzen. Sofern die höchste Anzahl an aktivierten PLAYSTATION®3-Systemen für Ihr Konto drei (3) ist, können Sie bestimmte PLAYSTATION®3-Systeme deaktivieren oder aktivieren.

The boldened part in english:
"[...]you can use the purchased article on three (3) different PLAYSTATION®3-systems that are activated for your account."

The following part says:
"Is the maximum number of activated PLAYSTATION®3-systems for your account three (3), you can deactivate or activate individual PLAYSTATION®3-systems."


So, they lowered the max. number of devices to three, what a shame, has been five in the past....
And it works, see all the game-sharing threads going around everywhere, they loose "slots" per device, not per shared game.


....unless I horribly missinterpreted something here.... :confused:

[PrOfUnD Darkness]

Yeap I share games that way (shh don't tell Sony lol). I just looked at the psn account manager and it really has a deactivation option. Interesting, didn't know that.

[alecjahn]

So you're saying I could "give my friend a copy" of, say, Mobile Light Force (Gunbird), technically? And then take it away as well?

[Hellcat]

Taking away can only be done with access to your friends PS3, as the deactivation can only be done on the console to be deactivated.

But that taken in consideration, yes.