Playstation 3 and external drives

[John Clark]

Unfortunately, one of my mates thinks I'm the fount of all technical knowledge and has been asking me about running games from an external HD on a Playstation 3 (slim 320gb) because he's running out of space.

Even if it is legal (at the least, I assume Sony don't like it), he absolutely won't jailbreak his ps3. He's not even a fan of buying second hand games from places like CEX either as he thinks he got a dodgy ps2 disk from there once.

I've looked online and there seem to be varying opinions on how to it, but from what I can see, it doesn't seem to be a case of just installing the game to an external drive the way you can (from what he tells me anyway) to the internal drive.
Most places seem to thing that any external drive must be fat32, but some reckon ntfs will work

Has anyboy done anything like this please?

If it were me, from what I've read, I'd just swap out the internal HD for something rather larger, but seeing as most of my PC's have been a mix and match over the years, that just falls in my style. I've never tried actually doing anyting to the consoles I've had (Wii, Ps1, Ps2)
(Just to add, if you need a pc too, he doesn't have one, though occasionally has looked into getting one for some of the older games.)

 

[Mr Soak]

You cannot install games to an external HDD. You can use it to backup the system, and/or for media.

 

[Rincewiend]

If it were me, from what I've read, I'd just swap out the internal HD for something rather larger, but seeing as most of my PC's have been a mix and match over the years, that just falls in my style. I've never tried actually doing anyting to the consoles I've had (Wii, Ps1, Ps2)

Pretty much the only way for the PS3, replaced mine for a 2TB 2.5" years ago...
PS4 does allow for running games from an external drive....

really easy to do:

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[John Clark]

Oh well, thanks though.


Some of the sites I'd googled seemed to give some suggestions, but some of the methods involved seemed to be a little dodgy for my tastes.

I'll probably suggest he goes the larger HD route (He was looking at a 1tb external) but I think he's wary of taking it apart anyway. (I know it looks easy, but I don't think he'd be comfortable with it)

 

[John Clark]

Well, as suspected, he doesn't want to go the new hd route and is instead thinking of another ps3 and a 256gb flash drive for any music/video I think he may have.

Personally, that's not the way I'd go, but hey. (I'd probably go with a 2tb hard drive to swap out, whic'll probably be cheaper than the flash drive, then get an enclosure to use the old hd as an external for any media that doesn't need to be on the ps3)

 

[Haggis and tatties]

If he does not own a pc or a laptop then he could not rep!ace the hdd anyway seeing as you require a usb stick to have the ps3 update on the stick when install a hdd.

As for NTFS no Sony product will read this because it's a Microsoft format and Sony just won't pay for their products to support it, so again you would need a pc or laptop to format any external memory to fat16 or fat32.

So basically your friend has only one alternative, grab a secondhand ps3 slim, now i can tell you that CEX is very good for this and with every console they give a 2 year warranty, which is really good for secondhand goods.

 

[John Clark]

If he does not own a pc or a laptop then he could not rep!ace the hdd anyway seeing as you require a usb stick to have the ps3 update on the stick when install a hdd.

As for NTFS no Sony product will read this because it's a Microsoft format and Sony just won't pay for their products to support it, so again you would need a pc or laptop to format any external memory to fat16 or fat32.

So basically your friend has only one alternative, grab a secondhand ps3 slim, now i can tell you that CEX is very good for this and with every console they give a 2 year warranty, which is really good for secondhand goods.

I just know he'll have me looking for a new one if possible. I think he's been looking at a white special edition (500gb) one as he mentioned that before thinking about (but that's a used one on amazon). I know he's had a second hand xbox, ps1's and twos, and at the moment is looking to try to get any older console that he's never had.

He also had an issue where his Xbox360 and got me to get him a new one online (Turned out it was just the external power brick that had died) so his new one has gone into storage.

He used to be ok with CEX but has taken the hump with them over a dvd and ps1 game a few years back. OTOH, I've never had any issues with them.