Obadiah's new 320gig PS3

It's hard to believe but as of January, I will have owned a PS3 for TWO years. Yeah... TWO years. Remember that Christmas? Everyone thought Wii's would be piled high on store shelves and PS3s would be impossible to come by? Wow. How could we feel so right and yet be so completely wrong? Here we are 2 years later and Wiis are still hard to find while PS3s are... well... abundantly available. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

I had a bizarre attitude toward the PS3 when I bought it. I wanted it but it had more to do with being a completist than it did with actually wanting it on its own merits. Sure, my new HDTV needed a blu-ray player... but another game system? I already had a Wii and 360 but Riot Control needed to be able to cover every platform and off to the store I went. I came home with this:


Yep, that's the PS3... but I got "the cheap one". I paid $500 for the 20 gig model because "who needs a big hard drive and wi-fi"? Seriously? As noted above, this is definitely not the first time I was wrong about the PS3. Now that it has been relocated to my loft I REALLY wish I had wi-fi. And the hard drive? Oh man... Unlike the Xbox 360 the PS3 manually installs games to the HD ALL THE TIME. Every time I grab a new game I have to delete OLD game data before I can play it. I have no room for videos or music. It's no good... but it's FIXABLE.

Enter the solution: Seagate's Momentus hard drive. It's 7200 RPMs, 320 gigs, 2.5" and the answer to half of my PS3's problems. Here it is:


I can't help but wonder what is living in there that requires a "breather hole"...

Small? VERY. Expensive? Not so much. If you dig around a bit you can find this Seagate drive or one like it for around $100 or so. Why go with Seagate? Sony did:



In reality, you can use almost any 2.5" drive, but Seagate were the ones that were kind enough to provide the drive on the left (that came in the PS3) ... and the replacement on the right (that came by UPS). You can get an off-brand, 5400 RPM drive for less cash, but this high-speed, high capacity drive is the one that is getting the nod from me.

After you purchase your replacement drive, make sure you that you also snag the right tools for the job. I got my little PC Repair kit on sale at Microcenter for $5. You'll need the tiny screw drivers.



If you want, you can go the extra mile when replacing your PS3 hard drive and back up the current drive. All you need is an external HD and a few extra minutes. First, plug the external drive into your PC and go to the Disk Management Tool. Using it, create a new partition on the external drive and format it as a FAT32 drive. Then plug the external drive into the PS3, click System Settings on the XMB, and choose Backup Utility. Select Backup. It will then recognize the external drive and create a backup image on it. Sound complicated? It's not! The backup took about 20 minutes and I didn't lose a single game save! It's worth it!



With your backup complete, you are ready to remove the existing drive. This is by far the trickiest part. Remove the plastic cover from the left side of your PS3 marked "20 gig" (or "60" or "80"... whatever you HD size currently is). Then you will encounter the dreaded blue screw. IT STRIPS INCREDIBLY EASILY!!!!!! I finally opted for a pair of needle nose pliers. This is by far the easiest way to get it out.



With the blue screw removed, slide the drive to the right and it will lift out. Then you can remove the drive mount (see the two drives pictured above, the one on the left is in the mounting). Four screws are holding the drive into the mount. I HIGHLY RECCOMEND USING NEEDLE NOSE PLIERS TO REMOVE THOSE SCREWS!

Now take your brand new drive and reverse the above instructions. Viola! Your new drive is in your PS3! Turn it on and you'll see this:




Allow the drive to reformat. If you did not back up your PS3's original drive, you're done! If you're like me you've got 320gig spinning inside your Playstation. If you did back up your HD, go back to the System Settings on the XMB but this time select Restore under the Backup Utility. About twenty minutes later, you'll be good to go... and your screen might look something like this:




Am I excited about LBP? HUGELY. Is a bigger hard drive worth all this effort? ABSOLUTELY.