External HD questions (also some Playstation Plus queries)

[Tyger]

Hope someone can help with this, I have a 120GB slim PS3 and recently ran out of disk space, as I have a ton of DLC games (Playstation Plus member) as well as installs from several titles on disc. I did a bit of a clean up (mostly videos, some demos etc.) and all is well for now, but I really need to look to expand, so I have a few questions I hope you guys might be able to answer:

1. Ideally, it would be nice to swap out the external HD for a larger one, but I can't see how this is possible, as how would I transfer the content of my current drive to the new one, without using *another* drive to "leapfrog" all the data? Or am I missing a trick here?

2. I have an old 80GB external drive knocking around so will probably use that, I know it needs to be formatted in a particular way for the PS3 to utilise it, I might have to look at another thread for this but I got the drive about 10 years ago I guess, was used with a computer running XP, is an Iomega drive, is it likely good to go (once i've wiped the PC data) or will it need reformatting? Apologies but I don't have much knowledge of formatting drives!

3 When I use the above drive, what realistically can I store on it? I believe game installs are a no no, presumably as the data transfer speed via USB is not fast enough, however can I still just store installs on it, and move them back onto the internal drive when I want to play them? This is particularly relevant to DLC games as for disc-based games I can just reinstall anyway.

4. Following the above point, does anything funky happen to the DRM of PSN games/Playstation Plus games if I move them onto the external drive, then back onto the internal drive? I'm assuming not, as it seems to hook up to PSN intermittently to check my PS+ membership etc.

5. This is lazy of me so I can always check myself, but I have been assuming this with the above questions - can *any* game install including Playstation Plus freebies simply be moved wholesale to another device? I've done this with saves (backing up GT5 onto a flash drive) but not game installs.

6. Another cheeky query I can raise elsewhere if necessary - Does anyone use the free online storage provided by Playstation Plus and know what happens if your membership lapses? Is it no longer accessible? Every game asks me if I want to use it and I say no, but it would save space if I did use it. Also is it possible to move saves back from online storage to my PS3?

Thanks!

 

[Tyger]

Could a mod move this to the more specific Playstation 3 forum please? I meant to raise it there and now thread tools isn't giving me that forum to move it to. Thanks!

 

[Slash]

I'm pretty sure for an external you have to partition it because it has something to do with the format of the drive. Apparently FAT formats or something can only do 30gb at a time or something.


I believe you can just back up everything on a bunch of jump drives. My main thing is the fact that I don't want to lose copy protected saves etc. I can download everything else again.

 

[SirDrexl]

1. Yes, you'll need a drive just for the contents of your PS3 HDD.

2. Assuming the drive uses USB, it should work. The 32GB limitation is only for the built-in format tool in Windows. I use Fat32Formatter to format larger partitions: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

3. You can't just store game installations and transfer them back and forth. What you'll probably have to do is cut down on space by deleting certain installations that you don't play very often. I would recommend not doing this with GT5, since it takes so long to download the patches to get a fresh copy up to the latest version (although it should be faster if you happen to have the XL version). Try to do it with games that didn't get many updates.

However, bear in mind that the backup will be compressed, so it may not take quite as much space as you think.

4. No, nothing bad should happen. It will still be seen as the same system, so you won't lose an activation slot or anything.

5. No, you can't. And, some saves can't be moved to an external device (that is, on their own; anything can be moved in a whole HDD transfer). The online backup feature of Plus will allow them to be uploaded even if they are copy protected.

6. Well, let my Plus membership expire last year, and I can still see the amount of space taken up by saves I had uploaded (I just can't access them). So, I think they will hold on to them in case you join again.

Of course you can move saves back to the PS3. That's the very reason for it.

Before you do this, I would suggest syncing your trophies. It's just a precaution in case anything goes wrong.

 

[Sanji Himura]

What I would do is to get every thing using the Backup and restore feature on the PS3 on the external, install a bigger internal(you can squeeze a 1TB hdd in there now. This HDD is out of stock now.), and once you install the latest firmware, use the restore feature to restore your stuff.

I didn't have to worry about patches using this method because it all came to the external backup.

 

[Tyger]

1. Yes, you'll need a drive just for the contents of your PS3 HDD.

2. Assuming the drive uses USB, it should work. The 32GB limitation is only for the built-in format tool in Windows. I use Fat32Formatter to format larger partitions: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

So is the issue there that the PS3 will only recognise up to the first partition, so will show the drive as having only 30Gb capacity? And why larger partitions rather than none at all in that case? Can that program partition (or not) in such a way that my PS3 will recognise the total capacity of my drive, ie. 80GB?

3. You can't just store game installations and transfer them back and forth. What you'll probably have to do is cut down on space by deleting certain installations that you don't play very often. I would recommend not doing this with GT5, since it takes so long to download the patches to get a fresh copy up to the latest version (although it should be faster if you happen to have the XL version). Try to do it with games that didn't get many updates.

However, bear in mind that the backup will be compressed, so it may not take quite as much space as you think.

Please see below

4. No, nothing bad should happen. It will still be seen as the same system, so you won't lose an activation slot or anything.

So as most of my internal drive's capacity is taken up with DLC games, can I move them back and forth between the internal and external drives when I need them or not? Apart from GT5 which I will keep on the internal drive for the reasons you give above, I don't have any games installed from disc (I have disc-based games just don't currently play them) but it is DLC games that are taking up all the space, i've got a ton of free stuff from PS+ alone. So all I want to be able to do is store those installs on the external drive until I want to play them, then will copy back onto the internal.

5. No, you can't. And, some saves can't be moved to an external device (that is, on their own; anything can be moved in a whole HDD transfer). The online backup feature of Plus will allow them to be uploaded even if they are copy protected.

This surprises me. I always thought, as is the case with back ups I make of my GT5 save, that it will only work with my console/PSN account but I can still move files back and forth, to an external device, then back again. So this doesn't work with some saves, let alone installation files? Yikes

6. Well, let my Plus membership expire last year, and I can still see the amount of space taken up by saves I had uploaded (I just can't access them). So, I think they will hold on to them in case you join again.

Yeah that's what I thought, I can deal with not being able to play freebie games if my membership lapes, but I can't deal with not being able to access saves for games I own by other means. Or is it only an option for DLC games anyway?

Of course you can move saves back to the PS3. That's the very reason for it.

I kinda assumed you were loading them from the PSN site rather than copying them back to your HD?

Before you do this, I would suggest syncing your trophies. It's just a precaution in case anything goes wrong.

Thanks guys for your help, Sirdrexl I would really appreciate if you could clarify on the above though...I owe you a beer

 

[Tyger]

What I would do is to get every thing using the Backup and restore feature on the PS3 on the external, install a bigger internal(you can squeeze a 1TB hdd in there now. This HDD is out of stock now.), and once you install the latest firmware, use the restore feature to restore your stuff.

I didn't have to worry about patches using this method because it all came to the external backup.

(Apologies for double post but seemed easier to keep this separate)

Yeah that's another possibility, problem is that 1. My external is 80GB and my internal is 120GB so I would have to delete a bunch of stuff first if I did a full back up and 2. The point is, I want to use that 80GB external drive I have, it's not doing much at the moment and would save a bunch of money

 

[SirDrexl]

#2 - The problem is that Windows' built in format tool only allows you to format a FAT32 partition up to 32GB, but you need a bigger partition to back up the PS3's hard drive. That's why you need a third-party tool. It doesn't matter if it's the whole drive or just part of it; it just needs to be big enough to hold the data you need backed up.

With a big drive, what I typically do is make a partition with whatever I need, like 120GB or so, for the PS3 backup and then format the rest of it in an NTFS partition. I don't want to make the entire drive FAT32, mostly because of the 4GB file size limit. But in your case with only 80GB, you'll probably want to format the whole thing as a single FAT32 partition.

#4 - You can't move the games to an external drive. I believe the only things you can copy individually are game save files (most of them) and unprotected media files, such as your own music and videos.

#5 - Yes, some files are copy protected so that you can't back them up to USB flash (Rock Band games, for instance). I hate it, but that's the way it is. Developers have the option to lock them to the console, to the account, or to prevent them from being copied, period. However, again, this doesn't apply to the online backup or transferring an entire hard drive to a backup.

#6 - Regarding the online saves backup, I can't access any of the files unless I sign up for Plus again. Note that these are just backups of the save files, not the games themselves. I could re-download a game that I got with a discount from Plus if I wanted, as those are yours to keep. The free games I can't get again, and I don't know if signing up for Plus again would get them back or not.

 

[Tyger]

Thanks, you've helped a lot there. Unfortunately i'm not seeing an external drive as much of a benefit to me now if I can only really move (some) saves to it, and not game installs. Odd thing is that on the FOrza sister site to GTPlanet I was recently told that I can fully install Forza 4 on a 4GB xbox if I plug in a flash drive (say 16GB) to bump up the capacity. Bringing it back to PS3 though, is there any difference in what you've said above between an external HD with a USB connection, or a flash/pen drive? Perhaps showing my ignorance here but I always assumed both use the USB (or USB 2.0) protocol for data transfer.

Returning the favour, kinda, I can address your last point. If your PS+ membership lapses, but you buy new membership, you can reactivate the games you got for free, as long as they are still installed. However if you deleted them, i'm not sure you could reinstall them for free from the store, unless they were still "current" freebies.

Annoyingly, if at any point your membership lapsed but you renewed it a little later, if you then try to play a freebie game and PSN is down, it won't let you, it has to ping PSN to reactivate, else it shows as having expired when your membership lapsed. In this sense, it's worth reactivating all of your free games if there is ever a "gap" in your membership. On another note, I do wonder what will happen to all of my Playstation Plus free games in the future, with the advent of PS4 etc. Kinda hoping they are unlocked to play forever, or that there is Playstation Plus for PS4 that incorporates the PS3 also. But that's another subject =)