Backing up your Ps3 with an external Hdd in seven simple steps

NanoLion3

If you have an external Hdd, good but you will have to partition it and here's how:

:eek:Note:The Ps3 will only notice a Fat32 partition on an external Hdd not the whole Hdd.


1.First you will have to be an Administrator or have access to the laptop or pc, (good if you do)

2.Type "Computer Management" in the search box in the start menu, click on to open.

3.In the Navigation pane of Computer Management (Local), under Storage, click Disk Management.

4.Right-click on your external Hdd and click on shrink volume, it will query the Hdd for 1-2 minutes(The bigger the Hdd the longer it will take, but shouldn't take longer then 5 minutes)

5.Once its done a window should pop up saying how much the size is before shrink, how much your aloud to shrink and how much you will have left after the shrink, there will be a bar with an up and down arrows to select how much you want to shrink, 32GB's is 32768 in Mb's, once you have selected that just click on shrink and it will take a few secounds

6.After its done, the 32Gb partition will show that its unallocated, right click on it and click on new simple volume, the new simple volume wizard will open.

7.Click next to continue, don't change the amount of Mb's just click next again and once more after that and highlight the "Format this volume with following settings" click on the file system tab and select Fat32 as your file system, leave your allocation unit size as "Default", name your volume as "PS3" (as its easy to identify when you plug it into your laptop or pc via usb) once thats done click next and finish.

:eek:Note: If your backing up a size bigger then 32Gb's you should copy your video's, music and pictures first or files that take up the most room, onto the external drive, then plug the external Hdd into your laptop or pc via usb and copy the files into a new folder onto the laptop or pc Hdd called "PS3" for easy identifying when thats done, delete the files on the drive plug it back into 1 of your PS3's usb hubs, go to settings then onto system settings go onto Ps3 back-up select the external drive and press back-up and all your game save's and copy protected game save's will be backed-up and the game data aswell and i think the Ps3 updates.
You cannot back up your trophy information using the backup utility feature.

Note:eek:If you want to save trophy information, it is recommended that you create a PlayStation®Network account and save the information on the PlayStation®Network server. To back up your trophy information on the PlayStation®Network server, select (Game) > (Trophy Collection), press the button, and then select [Sync with Server] from the options menu.


Well i hope that was helpfull and thanks in Advance
Ps: Don't forget to post or quote

L31mr0d

Good post although I assume you are using XP. Under Vista you can no longer format to fat32. I believe there is a 3rd party utility you need to use to do this but I can't for the life of me think of the name of it, something like... ntfs2fat32 [sp?]

NanoLion3

L31mr0d wrote: »

Good post although I assume you are using XP. Under Vista you can no longer format to fat32. I believe there is a 3rd party utility you need to use to do this but I can't for the life of me think of the name of it, something like... ntfs2fat32 [sp?]

Thanks:D

My OS is Vista!

Hellrazer

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Heres the program to format any size hard drive into fat32
Ive tried it on a 360gb and it works 100%
Best thing about it is you can format the whole drive in one go and end up with a huge fat32 drive.

Click Start menu, select Run and enter diskmgmt.msc

If it asks you to initialise the disk, make sure you select a Basic disk, as opposed to a Dynamic.

There's a guide on Disk Management here You need to find the disk with unallocated space. Right click on it and select "New Partition" and follow these steps, clicking "Next" to get move on at each stage.
Partition Wizard starts, just click next to move on
Select Primary Partition.
Enter the maximum size for the Partition Size
Choose assign a drive letter. I used F:
Select "Do not Format this partition"
There will be a dialog box, summarising all the previous stuff. Click Finish
Now you have a drive letter, this is what we will pass to the formatter

Now download a copy of fat32format. Extract the single EXE file to somewhere suitable, like C:\. Click Start->Run and enter cmd. CD to the where you extracted the fat32format exe, e.g. by typing CD /D c:\

Now you're almost done.

Type this

fat32format f:

You should see this displayed

Warning ALL data on drive 'f' will be lost irretrievably, are you sure (y/n)

Now when it says this, it really means it. If you format the boot sector, FATs and root directory will be filled with zeros. By typing pressing Y and hitting return, you're also absolving me of liability for whatever was on the disk before.


Assuming you don't bail out at this point you should see something like this -

Warning ALL data on drive 'f' will be lost irretrievably, are you sure
(y/n) :y
Size : 250GB 488392002 sectors
512 Bytes Per Sector, Cluster size 32768 bytes
Volume ID is 1bdb:2c1d
32 Reserved Sectors, 59604 Sectors per FAT, 2 fats
7629261 Total clusters
7629260 Free Clusters
Formatting drive f:...
Clearing out 119304 sectors for Reserved sectors, fats and root cluster...
Wrote 61083648 bytes in 0.988463 seconds, 61796609.106193 bytes/sec
Initialising reserved sectors and FATs...
Done

NanoLion3

Hellrazer wrote: »

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Heres the program to format any size hard drive into fat32
Ive tried it on a 360gb and it works 100%
Best thing about it is you can format the whole drive in one go and end up with a huge fat32 drive.

Thanks for the info and link:)
But i tried it on my external Hdd and it kept on saying i need to be admin of the fat32format file and "access denied" but i am an Amin?

TinCool

Hellrazer wrote: »

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Heres the program to format any size hard drive into fat32
Ive tried it on a 360gb and it works 100%
Best thing about it is you can format the whole drive in one go and end up with a huge fat32 drive.

Good stuff. I should hopefully be receiving my 500GB USB Drive today and as I since I plan to use it for numerous things (PS3, playing MP3's off of it in my car - my stereo has a very useful USB connection), FAT32 is essential. I'll let you know whether that little program allows for a 500GB FAT32 volume.

If anyone is interested, I bought the very cool looking NESO Drive which doesn't require an external power supply and works off of the power from the USB.

NanoLion3

TinCool wrote: »

Good stuff. I should hopefully be receiving my 500GB USB Drive today and as I since I plan to use it for numerous things (PS3, playing MP3's off of it in my car - my stereo has a very useful USB connection), FAT32 is essential. I'll let you know whether that little program allows for a 500GB FAT32 volume.

If anyone is interested, I bought the very cool looking NESO Drive which doesn't require an external power supply and works off of the power from the USB.

Cool looking HDD man:D, did u get this in Ireland or the UK?
My HDD is 500GB's aswell but wouldn't work for:(, kept on saying "Access Denied" and "You have to an Admin":mad: Which i am,
If you have any luck will you let me know:D

Thanks in Advance:D