Upgrading a Playstation 3’s Hard Drive- Just how easy is it?

During my college years, I had learned some basic computer upgrade and maintenance skills- reinstalling an operating system, diagnosing hardware/software faults, disinfecting computers, etc, despite being in a career path where one expects a computer to be automatically set up for use and repairs are done by someone in IT (I’m an accountant, for the uninitiated).  Other than a student job in tech support as an undergrad, I hadn’t done much over the past few years, deciding that my laptop was sufficient for my needs (the most powerful program I use is Adobe Lightroom) and ultimately scrapping plans to build my own desktop.

This was the situation I was in when my friend indicated that he was looking to upgrade the hard drive in his Playstation 3 as he was running out of room, but he was relying on another friend who was being quite flaky with getting the job done.  After watching the below video from Tigerdirect, I had concluded that the task would be quite easy, even easier than upgrading the hard drive in a computer, which I had done on several of my previous laptops and desktops.  After all, the only difference was that my friend had the slim model.  I told my friend that everything could be done in about 5 hours, given the amount of data he had (which I estimated at 110 GB), pitched my credentials, and indicated that it shouldn’t be too difficult.

http://youtu.be/NNSytaL9hnI

Now, I had sold this friend my old external Western Digital Passport hard drive which I concluded couldn’t be formatted into FAT32, which was required for the upgrade.  I had bought a new hard drive to use in an enclosure I previously bought, thinking that a blank drive could be formatted into FAT32 to back up the data.  However, even getting my laptop to recognize the enclosure took some odd turns.  The USB cable had a one-prong end leading to a two-prong end, so naturally the two-prong end would go to the laptop for more power.  Nope.  My laptop refused to recognize the enclosure, but oddly, swapping the sides the prongs went solved the problem, even though the enclosure had no space for the second prong.

It was then to my huge annoyance that Windows 7’s disk management refused to format the drive into FAT32, and a search on Google revealed that this capability was removed in Windows 7.  That is, unless one used command prompt.  However, even after correctly inputting the information requested by the 1970s/1980s era operating system, the formatting began at a glacial pace.  Think 1% every 5 minutes on my 500 GB hard drive.  And I didn’t have my laptop’s AC adapter with me.  But that gave me an idea:  if command prompt worked, then would it be able to format the external Western Digital Passport?  And I could use one of my friend’s laptops which did have an AC adapter (an 8-year old HP I gave him which ran Windows XP).  Imagine my surprise when command prompt started formatting the Passport into FAT32, and it would take less time since the hard drive was only 320 GB.  And then imagine my frustration when about two hours later, at about 98-99 percent completion, the formatting failed since Windows said that the hard drive was too large to format into FAT32.

Now, I don’t own any software to format or partition hard drives, and I was unaware of any freeware programs which allowed me to do such a thing.  More research on Google yielded the unknown but promising Swissknife program, which while a bit old, was free.  Unfortunately, after downloading it, the program refused to run on my laptop.  Deciding that it was because Windows 7 couldn’t run such an old program, I installed it on my friend’s laptop.  It was such a lovely moment when it was able to successfully start and format the Passport into FAT32 in less than 30 seconds on the XP-equipped machine.

So finally we began what I had thought would be the most arduous task, waiting for my friend’s data to back up over USB 2.0.  Now, I should disclose that my current laptop, previous laptop, and external hard drive have an eSATA port, and I had installed an eSATA port on my family’s desktop, so reverting to backing up data over USB 2.0 was an exercise in patience.  It took around 3 hours to transfer the data onto the Passport, and the only good thing about the experience was the very easy-to-use backup utility on the Playstation 3, which eliminated the need to go hunting and pecking for individual files like one would backing up a computer, and eliminated the problem of forgetting to transfer a batch of files.

Now, the reference video I had watched had indicated the hard drive bay was on the side of the Playstation 3, but since my friend’s unit was newer, the bay was instead located at the front.  Prying the door open, sliding the hard drive out and replacing it with the replacement was a breeze, even with me chastising my friend for having purchased the new hard drive off Ebay.

However, when the Playstation 3 was restarted, it kept trying to boot up, but would indicate some cryptic message, saying something about a missing file, version 4.66 before going into a continuous loop.  This was not mentioned in the video, so I was again in completely unchartered territory.  Formatting the new hard drive with Swissknife didn’t work.  Neither did plugging the Passport into the Playstation 3 and having the system try and find the necessary file on it.  More research on Google and Sony’s website had me guessing that one needed to install the operating system or at least the system software update released a few days previously, which ironically was version 4.66.  Reading the cautions on Sony’s website and following the easy, yet bizarre instructions on how to create and store the information on a USB key in a specific folder, I knew that again I was taking chances.  I was hoping and pleading when I plugged the USB key into the machine, and it took a while to read, (which I wasn’t sure was time itself, the fact I was feeling burned out, or just hoping things would work) but after a few reboots later, I breathed a sigh of relief when screens began popping up asking my friend to enter in his user information, configure the Wi-Fi, and performing the general system setup.

It would be another 3 hours before the backup utility was able to restore all 87 GB of my friend’s data, and another visit before I was able to confirm the success of the transplant.  Apparently upgrading the hard drive isn’t as easy as the video made it seem.  Yes, once one had all the tools needed to perform the operation, it was smooth going, but just acquiring the tools was an exercise in frustration, considering that hard drives are usually in NTFS format and only flash drives are in FAT32 format.  I will admit that buying a 128 GB flash drive instead of a 500 GB hard drive just to have something in FAT32 format did cross my mind temporarily.  Having to upgrade the hard drive of someone with even more information than my friend would have been an even more difficult or costly task.  Having the video omit the part about needing the operating system reinstalled with a USB key was annoying, but that may have been a necessary step only with the newer models of the Playstation 3.  All in all, the task which I told my friend would take about 5 hours instead took about 9.5, but it was a great sense of accomplishment when I completed the task, considering how video-game illiterate I am.  It was also quite amusing that what was needed to make the transplant possible was an ancient Windows XP-equipped laptop which I previously put in storage for about 5 years before donating to my friend.  The most ironic thing, however, is that my friend won’t be able to fully utilize the benefits of the bigger hard drive immediately.  You see, the past weekend was Black Friday.  He just unboxed his newly-acquired Playstation 4 the night of the transplant to start playing Assassin’s Creed Unity, completely mesmerized by the game’s graphics.

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