Hooking an external harddrive to your PS3

BogWog · 10-12-2008 2:43pm #1

I keep hearing about PS3's with 160GB harddrives and all this crap. Why can't you just format a 1TB harddrive with whatever filesystem PS3 uses and hook it up to your PS3?

TestTransmission · 10-12-2008 2:47pm

You can

Internal drive is needed for demos,downloaded games,
game saves,options,
Also if you want to use the custom soundtrack you need to copy music to the PS3 hard drive.

I have a 40gb 9 months and its just about full.
I also have a 500gb external attached to the PS3 which all my music/movies/photos are stored.

BogWog · 10-12-2008 2:59pm

Yeah cool thats one of the main reasons I wanna get a PS3. To use it as a media centre. By the way do you have a wireless network at home? Can you hook your PS3 up to it wirelessly? I hear you can get wireless cards for them. I have a 500GB hooked up to my computer upstairs so the plan is to hook the PS3 up to the wireless network so I can play videos and **** off the computer.

Also have you tried installing linux onto your PS3 harddrive yet? I think linux yellow dog is actually built for PS3's. I hear you can rip any Blu-ray disc straight to the PS3 harddrive with linux. All you'd have to do then is rent a game and rip it. You can get Blu-ray burners for about 100 Euros. Blank BD-R discs are 10 Euros though.

AnCapaillMor · 10-12-2008 3:22pm

Wireless is built into the PS3.

Holsten · 10-12-2008 3:29pm

Yep you can wirelessly connect up your computer to your Ps3 and then stream whatever media you want to it.

Really handy.

vibe666 · 10-12-2008 4:01pm

BogWog wrote: »

Yeah cool thats one of the main reasons I wanna get a PS3. To use it as a media centre. By the way do you have a wireless network at home? Can you hook your PS3 up to it wirelessly? I hear you can get wireless cards for them. I have a 500GB hooked up to my computer upstairs so the plan is to hook the PS3 up to the wireless network so I can play videos and **** off the computer.

yes you can, wifi is built in. and yes you can stream from a PC or any upnp streaming device very easily rather than hooking up a drive directly (a fat32 formatted usb drive works fine for external btw).

BogWog wrote: »

Also have you tried installing linux onto your PS3 harddrive yet? I think linux yellow dog is actually built for PS3's. I hear you can rip any Blu-ray disc straight to the PS3 harddrive with linux. All you'd have to do then is rent a game and rip it. You can get Blu-ray burners for about 100 Euros. Blank BD-R discs are 10 Euros though.

yes i have yellow dog installed (altho you need to reformat the hdd with two partitions to install it and wipe any saved data, unless ypou back it up first) any PPC linux distro should work fine and yes you can rip BD discs to the hdd and video can then be recoded into whatever format you like, but games are a different story. only the native PS3 OS has access to the full power of the consoles GPU/SPU's so you can't play games directly from Linux as it doesn't have the full power of the console at it's disposal. that said it works fine as a desktop OS if you're that way inclined.

BogWog · 10-12-2008 4:25pm

Yeah thats pretty handy the way you can rip the BD's. The prices of blank BD's are dropping by the week so I'd say its a good idea to stock up on ripped PS3 games for when they become affordable. If you can rip the games as they are you should be able to burn them onto a BD and play it in the PS3.

vibe666 · 10-12-2008 6:04pm

BogWog wrote: »

Yeah thats pretty handy the way you can rip the BD's. The prices of blank BD's are dropping by the week so I'd say its a good idea to stock up on ripped PS3 games for when they become affordable. If you can rip the games as they are you should be able to burn them onto a BD and play it in the PS3.

YOU CAN'T PLAY RIPPED GAMES ON A PS3!

you can rip them and burn them fine, but you can't play them as there is copy protection in the PS3 that so far has not been broken. if you want to play ripped games then get an xbox360.

BogWog · 11-12-2008 6:10pm

Ah right didn't know that. Would you say they'll make a modchip to bypass that some day?

vibe666 · 12-12-2008 8:30am

BogWog wrote: »

Ah right didn't know that. Would you say they'll make a modchip to bypass that some day?

i'd say someone will make a flying car and teleporters 'some day' bu don't hold your breath for a ps3 modchip any time soon. sony have that little baby locked up so tight nobody is getting in any time soon. a few people have thought they were close, but sony keep changintheir game so it's still a long way from being a reality imho.

thebman · 12-12-2008 8:56am

Steaming movies/music/video is much easier to PS3 than 360. Less transcoding too.

Install TVersity and add your shared folders and your done. Can also subscribe to RSS feeds using TVersity and watch it from your console.

I'm pretty happy with the PS3 as a multimedia device anyway. Seems to support TVersity better than 360 does.

samsamson · 12-12-2008 4:21pm

Can you use TVersity in-game instead of transferring music to the PS3's hard drive? So you could be racing along in motorstorm to music streaming from your PC?

Or can you only played the streamed music back at the main menu?

Saruman · 12-12-2008 4:27pm

might depend on the game, some games (the ones i have played) get you to select a playlist so if that playlist inlcudes music not on the internal drive then it would work.

thebman · 13-12-2008 1:38pm

Yeah I guess it depends on the game for PS3 and what way it supports music playback.

Works on the 360 but its more annoying because you can't say have it as a radio station in GTA and have the music stop when you get out of cars. It just plays the music all the time.

In games like FPS or RPG's you'd find that the music gets in the way and removes from the experience more than it adds to it.

4real · 20-12-2008 6:42pm

should i get an Internal Hard drive or an External one???

4real · 20-12-2008 6:47pm

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/664433/art/western-digital/my-book-essential-edition.html

this one is for 119 euro and has 1 TB

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/1443933/art/samsung/spinpoint-hm500li-m6-2-5.html

and this one is 500 GB for the same price!!!
so is it better to get the external one and also i can use it on my PC!!:cool:

4real · 20-12-2008 8:48pm

Can any external hdd work on the PS3? or it has to be compatible?

4real · 21-12-2008 6:31pm

anyone ???

TestTransmission · 21-12-2008 7:01pm

Any type,just make sure its format is FAT32

vibe666 · 22-12-2008 7:16pm

any type of external USB drive is fine, but if you want to upgrade the internal drive it needs to be a 2.5" sata drive or it won't fit.

and as long as an external one is formatted as fat32 as jackncoke says, you can use it in your PC or PS3.

4real · 24-12-2008 11:30am

how do u know that its FAT32?
i have heard that u need to convert it using a software called SwissKnife??

vibe666 · 25-12-2008 6:56am

nope.

most drives will already be in fat32 format (it's a standard windows format).

if it's not you can just plug it into any windows pc and format it there.

Conor108 · 25-12-2008 12:19pm

Theres no way to format without erasing it is there? Im pretty sure there isnt but Im hoping against hope someone know some magical obscure way:D Not too keen on transferring 300GB of stuff somewhere, formatting external HDD and then transferring it back:(

vibe666 · 27-12-2008 12:25am

formatting erases everything on the drive.

if you have something like partition magic it *might* be possible if you knew what you were doing with it, but given the question you just asked I wouldn't recommend it.

see if you can find a mate with a drive you could borrow and move it to that first and then reformat it.

Hooking an external harddrive to your PS3

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