PS3 hard drive swap, questions?

[Roberty]

I have a 40gb PS3 that has the YLOD (Yellow Light of Death).

I upgraded it to a 320gb HDD a year or more ago as it kept running out of space.

I've tried the usual YLOD fixes, bought a kit to reflow the solder on the main motherboard chipset but no joy so I'm looking at replacing it with a brand new PS3 slim.

My question is can I buy the smallest Slim, currently 160gb and swap in my 320gb HDD from my now dead Fat PS3?

And if I can swap in the bigger drive will I keep all my game save data and the game pack add ons etc that I purchased through the Playstation store?

Or as I fear will it format it and I'll lose everything?


Any help much appreciated.

[Ian_sUK]

I believe it will format it. I looked into this when my PS3 died. If you haven't backed up your game saves then the only option to get them back is to get it repaired.

[Meoricin]

Couldn't you use a cheap HDD case to connect the 320gb drive through USB? Then backup to the 160gb, switch them over, and if the PS3 formats the new drive, copy the stuff back across from the 160gb.

Might take a while, but it's probably the cheapest way to do it?

[Roberty]

Thanks for the advice I'll see if I can get one of those USB HDD caddy's.

In the mean time I'm starting to to resign myself to a complete restart.

I can't even remember my PS Network loggin or even the e-mail address I used so It's a proper start again from scratch.

[Mroad]

Personally I don't know of an easy way of transferring the data as a new PS3 won't accept another PS3's HDD without formatting, I've tried it myself to try and save a friends data.
Try doing the reflow again, it can be a bit hit or miss. I've done quite a few now for friends etc. and not had one that hasn't worked yet. How long they last after the reflow does vary (days to 6 months and counting) but they should work long enough to backup your old data.

[Roberty]

Mroad said:

Try doing the reflow again, it can be a bit hit or miss. I've done quite a few now for friends etc. and not had one that hasn't worked yet. How long they last after the reflow does vary (days to 6 months and counting) but they should work long enough to backup your old data.

Tried it again today for the third time and still no joy so I think that's a dead end.

Did manage to retrieve my GT5 disk though which was something.

[Remagel2507]

http://mukerji.co.uk/2010/12/11/ps3-replacing-hdd-...

Does this help anyone?

[Neil H]

If you remove the drive and put it in a new PS3 it will not recognise the data and will ask you to format it. Same if you put it in a USB caddy (the drive is encrypted).

Your only option to rescue the data on it is to get the PS3 working for long enough to transfer it off.

[Roberty]

Neil H said:

If you remove the drive and put it in a new PS3 it will not recognise the data and will ask you to format it. Same if you put it in a USB caddy (the drive is encrypted).

Your only option to rescue the data on it is to get the PS3 working for long enough to transfer it off.

Thanks.

Yes after some interweb searching and much Fooking about that's what I have found too.

My PS3 is well and truly FUBAR, have tried the Motherboard re-flow several times now and Zip, Nada Nothing, Nowt!

I bought a new PS3 friday logged on to my existing PSNetwork account and found that I could download everything I've ever downloaded with out having to pay for it again.

So I'm happy that I have all my Map-packs, Add-ons and games back with out having to buy them again.

All my old game data is still on the old 320gb HDD but clearly it's irretrievable so I'm moving on and have already started GT5 again.