PS3 CFW COBRA REBUG & Internal HDD Change

That error messages after a firmware crash was not telling you to send to sony
They was telling you to do the filesystem check !

Is something very usual, most people using unnofficial PS3 firmware have crashes from time to time... specially with retroarch or when booting PS2 games
We have tenths of crashes, and the hdd suffers from them

After that crashes is when appears the warning to check the filesystem (with other words), but in that warning texts doesnt tells anything about sending it to sony as far i remember
 
sandungas said:
The only explaination posible about why you had all that problems cummulated in your hdd filesystem is because you have been bypasing that warning screen (usually displayed by the PS3 after a firmware crash) since weeks/months/years ago, right ?
It looks your PS3 never made a filesystem check since looooot of time ago
But you never advised us that you was bypassing the filesystem checks :/

I mentioned it at begining of the thread
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/cfw-cobra-rebug-internal-hdd-change.28830/#post-234135

At that point you should have mentioned that you was bypassing the checks, and my approach to the problem would have been different

Im paranoid with hdd problems, so most probably i would have told you to enter in def con 1 mode, backup all the worthy files from it and format it
But most probably you would have thought that i was exagerating and your hdd filesystem was perfect

The truth is your filesystem was about to collapse... there is no need to believe me, the proof is what the PS3 is showing to you, it cant complete the filesystem check :/
Probably it means you have either a big cummulation of small errors, or a few huge errors
Click to expand...

Its a good thing to know
from now on , i will DO THE CHECK SYSTEM FILES each single time it will be given to me.

I have put a new hdd and formatted it , tried my 1.5 agains with no luck
so ive lost everything on it BUT ....I have a backup console with exactly ALL the sames games on it
IF I Format my 1.5TB in console # 1 ....did hooking my console # 2 and making a data transfert utility could do the trick for me ???
 
Feww, thats nice you have other PS3 with the games, if i remember right multiman have an option to create a network connection in between 2 PS3's (i guess using a ethernet cable to connect them directly?)
Not sure if that feature allows to transfer files directly in between 2 PS3's though... it was intended to play the games stored in PS3_1 by PS3_2
Someone reading this knows about it ?

I guess that could be the faster and easyer way incase it works
 
sandungas said:
That error messages after a firmware crash was not telling you to send to sony
They was telling you to do the filesystem check !

Is something very usual, most people using unnofficial PS3 firmware have crashes from time to time... specially with retroarch or when booting PS2 games
We have tenths of crashes, and the hdd suffers from them

After that crashes is when appears the warning to check the filesystem (with other words), but in that warning texts doesnt tells anything about sending it to sony as far i remember
Click to expand...

QUESTION : FINALLY , The MAXIMUM HDD SIZE that will allow check files system is what exactly , precisely ?
someone know ? 1500, 1000 , 750 , 500 ?!?!?!

EDIT i need to know it before making any new move now with my 1.5TB extracted.
 
Last edited:
Btw, before you format the 1.5TB hdd... you have not lost his contents completly... is just now is very tricky to recover that files (to the point that most people just refuses to do it)
But if you had some files that worths to be recovered (like gamesaves mostly) it worths the effort

In the new hdd probably you installed rebug 4.86 lite, right ?, then the next thing you should do (incase you never did before) is to get the EID root key, as explained here
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/how-can-i-get-my-eid_root_key.15607/

That key is mandatory to decrypt the hdd contents in PC
Usually the tool used in PC to decrypt the PS3 hdd's in PC is able to load the filesystem and is going to allow to extract files
 
sandungas said:
Btw, before you format the 1.5TB hdd... you have not lost his contents completly... is just now is very tricky to recover that files (to the point that most people just refuses to do it)
But if you had some files that worths to be recovered (like gamesaves mostly) it worths the effort

In the new hdd probably you installed rebug 4.86 lite, right ?, then the next thing you should do (incase you never did before) is to get the EID root key, as explained here
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/how-can-i-get-my-eid_root_key.15607/

That key is mandatory to decrypt the hdd contents in PC
Usually the tool used in PC to decrypt the PS3 hdd's in PC is able to load the filesystem and is going to allow to extract files
Click to expand...

Ive installed the very same 4.84.2 i had on my other HDD

Are you SURE that I can work a 1.5TB without issue with the checkfile system ?
I will do the process each time i will be asked , but it will piss me off to understand later that the process is not made 100% properly on a 1.5TB ...and to fall in the same kind of trap sooner or later ...
 
sandungas said:
Take a read at this post just as an introduction to that PC tools
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/how-to-use-the-eid-root-key-to-mount-hdd.16004/#post-98715

There are several implementations of that PC driver and decryption methods, some are "read only" (doesnt allows to write, but you dont need to write anyway), others are full "read write", some runs in windows, others in linux, etc...
There are many talks in the forum about it
Click to expand...

THE EID ROOT key is in wich format and where ?
in the rebug tool box
 
I cannot believe that now in 2020 a PC program do not allow us to acces the PS3 HDD / access the checkfile system and ERASE the corrupted files ?!
 
sandungas said:
Ok, so is really 1500GB
Inmediatly when you select the "restore filesystem" in recovery menu appears a text message that tells: "The file system on the system is corrupted and will be restored"
But that text is generic, and it doesnt really means that a problem has been detected (because the hdd filesystem has not been scanned yet), so at that point the PS3 doesnt really knows if the filesystem is corrupted
Is alarmistic and is not true in all cases, if you do it with a perfect filesystem is going to show the same text

If you acept it then it starts scanning the hdd... and it should take around 10 minutes as much, it depends of the capacity of the hdd (but actually, it should be completed successfully in less than 5 minutes or so)

https://www.ps3blog.net/2013/02/10/...s3-safe-mode-recovery-menu-video-walkthrough/
Click to expand...

Are you able to CONFIRM me that if i reformat my 1.5TB and stay it there and do the maintenance thing that i will not get the message that HDD need to be formated again ,,,,simply because his size is a 1.5TB instead of a 1.0TB ??

I need confirmation to understand and know what kind of HDD i need to put in there and NEVER get this kind of annoyance again...
 
sandungas said:
That error messages after a firmware crash was not telling you to send to sony
They was telling you to do the filesystem check !

Is something very usual, most people using unnofficial PS3 firmware have crashes from time to time... specially with retroarch or when booting PS2 games
We have tenths of crashes, and the hdd suffers from them

After that crashes is when appears the warning to check the filesystem (with other words), but in that warning texts doesnt tells anything about sending it to sony as far i remember
Click to expand...

Im pretty sure I was not able to do maintenance simply BECAUSE of the size of the HDD...
not because i got too many error code , like i told you , i experience 3-4 max since 2 years
since my last crash , i simply added stuff , played 2-3 games without issues , only 2-3 freeze playing retroarch.
Im pretty sure its not enough to corrupt thing to a point the check file system become useless.....
 
CFW1971 said:
THE EID ROOT key is in wich format and where ?
in the rebug tool box
Click to expand...

the eid root key dumping its a utility inside rebug you can only access eid root key in cfw
if you want read your hdd in pc i recommend using aldostools, put the ERK file on your hdd and copy put in the aldostools folder
also launch the reader in ADMINISTRATOR or your ps3 hdd not readed by pc
CFW1971 said:
Are you able to CONFIRM me that if i reformat my 1.5TB and stay it there and do the maintenance thing that i will not get the message that HDD need to be formated again
Click to expand...

but format it on ps3 dont format on pc. pc have different sector setting than pc
 
The root of the problem is that is unknown what causes that restriction about max internal hdd capacity considered valid by the system (in other words, the max capacity that allows to works the filesystem manteinance task normally)
I mentioned it in a post at beginning of the talk
sandungas said:
Yep, thats the problem i was mentioning, if you install a hdd bigger than a specific capacity (that im not sure which one is it exactly at this point, probably is an intermediate number of max hdd sectors) then the firmware cant complete that "restore filesystem" procedure
Click to expand...

I can explain this a bit better, but is mostly a theory and i dont have proofs of what im going to say
In a filesystem, there is an area used as the index, where every folder or file is represented with a very small amount of info (just few bytes), and it depends of the number of sectors of the hdd

As a experiment.. if you take a USB stick and you fornat it in PC with different filesystems (NTFS, FAT, or any other you want), you are going to see every filesystem used allows for a different capacity
The reason why that happens is because every differet filesystem requires a different size of the index
The "restore filesytem" function of the PS3 seems to check the dev_hdd0 partition, that is a UFS2 filesystem (inherited from unix and freebsd), i dont know how it works
Anyway... the PS3 "restore filesystem" needs to process the wole index and rebuild it (if needed), and this requires an additional space used temporally
So... are really 2 sizes... the size of the index, and the size of the area used to rebuild the index

The easyest way to know if the hdd works fine is to enter "recovery menu" and run the "restore filesystem", there is no other way as far i know

Incase your hdd doesnt passes that check... there is a handy feature allowed by most of the BIOS of the hdd, is named "HPA" (high protected area)
With it you can "crop" the capacity of the hdd (to a number of sectors smaller than the real number of sectors), this way you can reduce the capacity of the hdd... down to the amount required by the PS3

So incase your 1.5TB is not good you can reduce it to 1.4TB or 1.3TB... i dont know how much but is around that numbers as far i remember
See this test, there was someone trying to find the exact numbers of sectors
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Talk:...he_max_HDD_capacity_supported_by_the_firmware
That person said 3633537126 sectors is the max that allows to format it, but it was not passing the "restore filesystem" functions... so that size is not relliable
The same test should be made but keeping an eye at the "restore filesystem", but nobody did, so i dont know whats the magic number
 
sandungas said:
The root of the problem is that is unknown what causes that restriction about max internal hdd capacity considered valid by the system (in other words, the max capacity that allows to works the filesystem manteinance task normally)
I mentioned it in a post at beginning of the talk


I can explain this a bit better, but is mostly a theory and i dont have proofs of what im going to say
In a filesystem, there is an area used as the index, where every folder or file is represented with a very small amount of info (just few bytes), and it depends of the number of sectors of the hdd

As a experiment.. if you take a USB stick and you fornat it in PC with different filesystems (NTFS, FAT, or any other you want), you are going to see every filesystem used allows for a different capacity
The reason why that happens is because every differet filesystem requires a different size of the index
The "restore filesytem" function of the PS3 seems to check the dev_hdd0 partition, that is a UFS2 filesystem (inherited from unix and freebsd), i dont know how it works
Anyway... the PS3 "restore filesystem" needs to process the wole index and rebuild it (if needed), and this requires an additional space used temporally
So... are really 2 sizes... the size of the index, and the size of the area used to rebuild the index

The easyest way to know if the hdd works fine is to enter "recovery menu" and run the "restore filesystem", there is no other way as far i know

Incase your hdd doesnt passes that check... there is a handy feature allowed by most of the BIOS of the hdd, is named "HPA" (high protected area)
With it you can "crop" the capacity of the hdd (to a number of sectors smaller than the real number of sectors), this way you can reduce the capacity of the hdd... down to the amount required by the PS3

So incase your 1.5TB is not good you can reduce it to 1.4TB or 1.3TB... i dont know how much but is around that numbers as far i remember
See this test, there was someone trying to find the exact numbers of sectors
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Talk:...he_max_HDD_capacity_supported_by_the_firmware
That person said 3633537126 sectors is the max that allows to format it, but it was not passing the "restore filesystem" functions... so that size is not relliable
The same test should be made but keeping an eye at the "restore filesystem", but nobody did, so i dont know whats the magic number
Click to expand...

IF NOBODY KNOW , THEN WHY WHEN I ASKED THE QUESTION IN THIS THREAD
"....did im safe with theses speces now (HAVING A 1.5TB) ?
it is safe to try doing a "restore filesystem" on the safe mode menu while i have 455GB free space / 1397 GB HDD ? without risking to had to restaure everything and wipe my HDD ??"

THEN WHY YOU ANSWERED ME :
"Nice, then yes, enter recovery menu and do the restore filesystem, mostly as a confirmation that everything is fine, and also as manteinance :)"

???

I HAD TO FORMAT & ERASE/WIPE THE ENTIRE HDD NOW
I IMMEDIATELLY MADE A CHECK SYSTEM FILES AND IT DONT WORK !!!
SO WHY PEOPLE KEEP TELLING OTHER THAT ITS FINE TO USE A 1.5TB WHEN ITS NOT ????
 
I completely understand your frustration but maybe asking for a 2006 piece of technology, handle such a huge amount of gigabytes is not guaranteed.

Also no one can confirm you what you are asking, besides ken kutaragi or one of official sony programmers that actually built the PS3 operating system.

My opinion, is that is extremely difficult to have a PS3 handle such huge amount of data internally. As I remember you said something about 100+ PS1 PS2 and PS3 games.

Of course it would be awesome to have all of them ready and playable, but think about the amount of data.

PS1 and PS3 games could at least be on an external HDD, which can be read by webman mod and be played like that. And when you want to play a PS2 game, just then copy it internally. How many games do you play simultaneously? 3-4 games internally should be ok.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Hope you sort things out.

I cannot answer any of your questions, but please try to be calm and research exactly what you like to do.

Regards.
 
CFW1971 said:
IF NOBODY KNOW , THEN WHY WHEN I ASKED THE QUESTION IN THIS THREAD
"....did im safe with theses speces now (HAVING A 1.5TB) ?
it is safe to try doing a "restore filesystem" on the safe mode menu while i have 455GB free space / 1397 GB HDD ? without risking to had to restaure everything and wipe my HDD ??"

THEN WHY YOU ANSWERED ME :
"Nice, then yes, enter recovery menu and do the restore filesystem, mostly as a confirmation that everything is fine, and also as manteinance :)"

???

I HAD TO FORMAT & ERASE/WIPE THE ENTIRE HDD NOW
I IMMEDIATELLY MADE A CHECK SYSTEM FILES AND IT DONT WORK !!!
SO WHY PEOPLE KEEP TELLING OTHER THAT ITS FINE TO USE A 1.5TB WHEN ITS NOT ????
Click to expand...
Because i could never imagine you was bypassing that warnings 100% of the times since years ago, but you didnt even mentioned it in this thread

Before that you was saying your hdd was 2tb, and suddenly you start telling that is 1.5tb, at that point i thought your hdd was working perfect and you was doing the manteinance filesystem checks at least one time in all this years
You are not the first person that tells 1.5tb works fine, there is a lot of confusing info in internet about this because people doesnt worries about the "restore filesystem", so they considers is fine even when their PS3's cant complete the "restore filesytem" and filesystem manteinance functions
But no, it looks like you never did the filesystem manteinance ever, you are bypassing all that warnings since the first day, but you dont consider worths to be mentioned in this thread ?
Now what do you want me to tell, is like if you are cheating me in the info you gave me

And now you say that warnings never appeared to you ?...and the only ones you saw was asking you to send the console to sony ?... to be honest, it looks you was not even reading that warning texts
 
the limitation is likely software-based, because the 360 can read 2TBs just fine even when it's not supposed to. that's deliberate. it's probably due to stability concerns, but what's odd is that there seems to be no limit to game/dlc installs, yet there's a limit to how many themes can be installed.
 
SpyroMancer said:
I completely understand your frustration but maybe asking for a 2006 piece of technology, handle such a huge amount of gigabytes is not guaranteed.

Also no one can confirm you what you are asking, besides ken kutaragi or one of official sony programmers that actually built the PS3 operating system.

My opinion, is that is extremely difficult to have a PS3 handle such huge amount of data internally. As I remember you said something about 100+ PS1 PS2 and PS3 games.

Of course it would be awesome to have all of them ready and playable, but think about the amount of data.

PS1 and PS3 games could at least be on an external HDD, which can be read by webman mod and be played like that. And when you want to play a PS2 game, just then copy it internally. How many games do you play simultaneously? 3-4 games internally should be ok.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Hope you sort things out.

I cannot answer any of your questions, but please try to be calm and research exactly what you like to do.

Regards.
Click to expand...

Im a peaceful guy normally and i have made research before making what i would like to do.
but somes guys who think who know the truth misleaded me making important financial decision that in the end worth nothing and cost me somes hard earned money wasted in a way that dont work for me

dont worry , i STOCK and play all my rom/psx on a USB stick that i have indeed made a back up. 150GB of games.
PS2 ISO have 350GB , and I forgot the exact cound for my PS3 OEM Physical discs in my collection that i want to digitalize in order to preserve my 2x optical on PS3.

I understand that i will have to play my 150 GB usb ..well...from USB
install my 350 GB PS2 ISO internally
PKG games & DLC internally
PS3 ISO/Folder Externally on a FAT32 HDD

...but for my PS2/PSN/PS3 games with DLC internally , now i have to purchase two other 1TB HDD 2.5 (one back up)

Im still debating , trying not to be misleaded in a deceptive way....with this check system file thing

I dont want to buy refurbished stock...
despite what people tell that 1.5 TB is "SAFE" to use (wich is NOT) because as soon i wiped my 1.5TB i made a safe boot "check system file" and it say HDD was corrupted and ONLY allowed me to wipe it again.
just to ensure my feature was working properly i installed a 150GB spare HDD formatted it and make the same process that passed successfully...!

So telling a 1.5TB is safe is NOT TRUE

I made research and 1TB HDD MAX is safe and for allowing the check system file you HAVE to not pass beyong 850GB !!!

Now Im worried about HDD , SSHD and SSD , 5400 vs 7200RPM 8,16,32,64,128 MB CACHE ...

Im wondering :

(1) if its safe to install a 7,200RPM HDD ?

(2) did the PS3 really get gain using a SSHD like firecuda ??

(3) Did the PS3 console will truly use/ have performance gain if the HDD/SSHD have MORE MB Cache size ???
 
sandungas said:
Because i could never imagine you was bypassing that warnings 100% of the times since years ago, but you didnt even mentioned it in this thread

Before that you was saying your hdd was 2tb, and suddenly you start telling that is 1.5tb, at that point i thought your hdd was working perfect and you was doing the manteinance filesystem checks at least one time in all this years
You are not the first person that tells 1.5tb works fine, there is a lot of confusing info in internet about this because people doesnt worries about the "restore filesystem", so they considers is fine even when their PS3's cant complete the "restore filesytem" and filesystem manteinance functions
But no, it looks like you never did the filesystem manteinance ever, you are bypassing all that warnings since the first day, but you dont consider worths to be mentioned in this thread ?
Now what do you want me to tell, is like if you are cheating me in the info you gave me

And now you say that warnings never appeared to you ?...and the only ones you saw was asking you to send the console to sony ?... to be honest, it looks you was not even reading that warning texts
Click to expand...

Listen , I have bypassed 2-3 of theses messages in two years
in theses 24 months i ONLY installed games on this console , never played any of them and never erased a single thing too. and it change nothing as i made the check system file immediatelly after i decided/resigned myself to wipe/reformat it and it did NOT passed the check since the 1.5TB is TOO BIG in size.
 
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