Wednesday, June 15, 2011

and now for some geekinese

I replaced my Playstation hard drive a few days ago. The actual hardware replacement wasn't difficult. The pain in my rear came in the backing up of the restore data - game saves and updates, etc.

Playstation can do this relatively easily through the menu BUT you need a FAT32 formatted disc to do it on. Windows won't format a drive over 32gb as FAT32. Thank you, Sony! I love your obsolete system requirements for backing up restore data.

My super nice brother loaned me an external hard drive to transfer the data, but it was 100gb. I tried to partition it to 32gb (or what I thought was 32gb), managed to get it to format FAT32 once and the playstation told me there wasn't enough space.

Many bad words were spoken. So back to the computer, bigger partition, the computer kept telling me that the new bigger partition was already formatted FAT32 when it wasn't. The computer mocked me. I reassigned drive letter. That didn't work.

More bad words, this time directed at the computer.

I finally bought a flipping 32gb usb flash drive. That worked.

This was the short version of the story. It was a two-day, many-hour project. So much irritation. But perseverence sometimes pays off.

The moral of the story is, if you buy a playstation and plan to hardcore use it, you might want to upgrade the hard drive right away.

The good news is that I learned things. Let's have a list.

1. How to replace a hard drive in a ps3 (obviously)
2. What a hard drive enclosure is and how to use one
3. Also an old playstation hard drive can be used with a PC once you place it in a hard drive enclosure and clear off the playstation stuff. Recycling! Wheeee!!
4. Husband sometimes makes useful suggestions but may also use the lid of a hard drive enclosure as a drink coaster if I leave him unattended.
5. How to partition a hard drive and reassign drive letters in Windows 7

I also learned that if you ask the employees at Best Buy technical questions, they get a little nervous. The one I talked to was very helpful, but when I inquired about the recommended rpms, he started blinking a lot and hurried to his computer.

All ended well. Fin.
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2 comments:

  1. OK, I don't even know what FAT32 is. I might require a detailed explanation. I would have gone with the flash drive in the first place, since I know what that is. Good job making all of that work. Your patience is commendable.

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  2. The guys in the demonstration video I watched used an external hard drive. Of course, their Playstation may have had a bigger hard drive to begin with. Mine was just the 32gb model, which was the low-end at the time I bought it. I was lucky I didn't buy a bigger one and everything could fit on that little usb.

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Two Cents?