PS3 I connected my PS3 CFW HDD to PC and PS3 says it cannot be run correctly

Impaler

Impaler

Member
Hi guys, I screwed up so much by trying to clone my PS3 HDD to another HDD. I have a PS3 CFW running version 4.80 rebug I believe.

I connected that HDD to Windows 8 PC via sata USB and, the disk manager or something asked either to initialize that hard drive or something similar. Nothing else. I believe I pressed okay. I truly did not format it. I would remember that. no partitions were erased or anothing.

But when I tried to put that HDD back in PS3 - it would not boot! :( :( :(

It asked to connect joystick to ps3 via USB cable and press PS button and later it showed this screen there it says - The system software cannot be run correctly. Press the PS button to try to restart the system.

Please can you tell me what is the way to fix it. I have tons of games and other saves on that HDD. I'd loose weeks of work :( :(


Going to safe mode and restoring file system gives an error and rebuild database also gives an error. Seems it cant access the hdd.
 
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you're sol. you should not have initialized the disk on the pc. you'll have to reformat. this happens with the wii u external hdds as well. if you unplug the hdd, plug it into the pc, then initialize, you have to reformat.
 
okay, perhaps there is a way to do something to normally access that HDD on pc now? I would be able to FTP most of the games to reformatted hdd that way.
 
there's a way to access content on the pc using the eid_root_key, but I don't think it will work anymore now that the disk has been initialized.
 
btw, I'm not sure if there is a way to clone the internal disk drive. on the ps3, you can use eid_root_key to read content on the ps3. afaik, it doesn't allow write access, but read is probably all you'll need anyway, especially if you're just backing up the drive. the wii u external hdd (the one formatted by the wii u) can be read (not written) to with the seeprom and possibly the otp.bin. in either case, they say not to let the pc initialize the disk. if it asks you to, click cancel. I once accidentally did that with the wii u drive.

I always name my drives after Greek letters, and I decided to give it a whirl with my wii u hdd. I did initialize the drive without realizing what it would do. I had to reformat and lose all my games and saves. redownloading my games from the eshop took a while (I have 76 of them). you can see what you have purchased in the purchase' window. it still takes time though. iirc, you have to select each game manually. the worst part about it is the saves. I lost all of those. games save to the partition that the game is on, so games on the internal storage save to internal storage and ones on the usb save to the usb. I think there's a way to transfer saves to the internal storage if on usb and vice versa, but who's gonna do that? the game saves will only be usable by the storage medium that the game is on. :-/ I've since backed up all saves with system config tool. it's superior to saviine since you can do all games at once, and it includes additional files like the save icon graphic. basically, it includes everything germane to a save. write doesn't seem to exist with it though, but I've tested it, and it is compatible with saviine. afaik, it's basically just copying and pasting the save files. :-P I couldn't back up the games though since the hdd is encrypted and initialized pretty much crippled it. though, I think when I did that no tool existed to read a wii u hdd. in any case, I had to redo everything. I now have everything up to speed, such as going through games 100%, except for Super Mario 64 which I find particularly brutal especially those 100-coin runs. I haven't gone back to that game, but I did get 100% before, so... ;)
 
I see you have been through some trouble too. Well for me at least the game saves are of no concern. I had only one and I backed it up before taking out the HDD. But on the other hand - filling the HDD with 1TB of games, activating them, patching most of them. Thats a pain that awaits me..

Anyhow thanks for your insights. I dear lesson was learned quickly this year.

BTW got very drunk to ease the pain that evening, think it helped. Today I don't feel so bad. Like the city of Rome - WE WILL REBUILD. :D
 
yeah, I told you that story to show you that you're not the only one to have made that mistake. it sucks, I know, but at least now you know now. I had a lot of games and several saves on my wii u. most of those saves were 100% too, so it sucked big time.stupid encryption crap. I backed up my 360's hdd via ethernet a few months ago. I have the transfer cable which works with a few pc apps. those apps are supposed to be used to make a disc image of the drive, but I read about them being unstable and not working on drives above 500GBs, so I backed up the drive manually. it took a long time to backup a 1TB drive at 4MBs/s.. lol the ps3 is much faster (around 30MBs/s) via ethernet, so you could use that next time you try to backup the drive. I have a tutorial on bridging your internet connection in my ps3 tutorials thread. :)
 
pinky said:
yeah, I told you that story to show you that you're not the only one to have made that mistake. it sucks, I know, but at least now you know now.
Click to expand...

pinky, believe it or not.............. I RECOVERED! :D thanks to invaluable advice from Mr. 3141card which got my gears rolling and came up with the rest of the plan.

He wrote a pm asking if I formatted the hdd already. and since I was unable to say I quit, in my mind, I left it alone and did not give up. then he told me about how first sector is only overwritten by windows and how can I use winhex to restore it. so I made a hdd image of the bad ps3 with HDD Raw Copy v1.10 then I formatted the exact same drive, installed cfw I had on it originally. then I hooked it up to PC, opened that hdd in winhex, exported first sector. then I restored that bad image to that drive. opened it in winhex, pasted the first sector and saved. and it worked just fine. PS3 booted as if nothing ever happened :) a big lesson here for me and I got scott free, whew, sad that you were not that lucky.
 
Impaler said:
pinky, believe it or not.............. I RECOVERED! :D thanks to invaluable advice from Mr. 3141card which got my gears rolling and came up with the rest of the plan.

He wrote a pm asking if I formatted the hdd already. and since I was unable to say I quit, in my mind, I left it alone and did not give up. then he told me about how first sector is only overwritten by windows and how can I use winhex to restore it. so I made a hdd image of the bad ps3 with HDD Raw Copy v1.10 then I formatted the exact same drive, installed cfw I had on it originally. then I hooked it up to PC, opened that hdd in winhex, exported first sector. then I restored that bad image to that drive. opened it in winhex, pasted the first sector and saved. and it worked just fine. PS3 booted as if nothing ever happened :) a big lesson here for me and I got scott free, whew, sad that you were not that lucky.
Click to expand...

well, they say you should learn something new every day... :)
 
Have this similar problem with mine.
I didn't know about the encrypted drive of PS3, I thought that if I connect my PS3 HDD to my PC, it'll make my file transfer faster.
Little did I know... :(

But... the difference is, I didn't initialize my PS3 HDD on my PC (Win10 64bit), as soon as I connect my PS3 HDD to my PC, i noticed that it's not showing up.
I googled, and then I read that PS3 HDD is encrypted, so i stopped trying, i disconnected my PS3 HDD from my PC, and put it inside my PS3, trying to boot it up.
The same error... It asked to connect joystick to PS3 via USB cable and press PS button and later it showed this screen there it says - The system software cannot be run correctly. Press the PS button to try to restart the system.

My question is (I 100% remember i didn't initialize anything on my PC for that ps3 HDD):
If I clone the "broken" PS3 HDD (using HDD raw copy tool), and reformat that HDD on my ps3, and try to connect it to my PC again, I'm afraid that the first sector will be replaced again, just like the previous "broken" one.
Thus making the HDD can't be read on ps3 again.
Kindly help :(
 
Yeah, that would make sense, if you do this again - you will get the same result. I suggest you make a 1:1 of your HDD regardless now on your PC. then format the hdd anew in the ps3 then look for somebody with Windows 8 , connect the hdd, get the sectors. then restore hdd image to hdd, copy sectors over and hope for the best.
 
Impaler said:
Yeah, that would make sense, if you do this again - you will get the same result. I suggest you make a 1:1 of your HDD regardless now on your PC. then format the hdd anew in the ps3 then look for somebody with Windows 8 , connect the hdd, get the sectors. then restore hdd image to hdd, copy sectors over and hope for the best.
Click to expand...

so, is it really "just" a win 10 thing? because i have another laptop with win 7 in it

also, to reformat my new hdd in the ps3, i only need to download the last ps3 cfw update.pup (rebug 4.82) i installed before on my ps3, put it in a usb stick at root:/pS3/update/ps3update.pup. Right?
this is a rather noob question, but i bought this ps3 recently and not too familiar with CFW stuffs.
 
Impaler said:
I connected that HDD to Windows 8 PC via sata USB and, the disk manager or something asked either to initialize that hard drive or something similar. Nothing else.
Click to expand...

And doing this You have overwrite partition table. There is no way that You can use this HDD on PS3 without format. In every tutorial, ALWAYS everyone point to not doing this (and big F* to Microsoft for such stupid non adequate function name which mislead You ;)).

But probably You want Your data back so still it's possible to retrieve it, You must dump partitions alone and mount them or calculate offset when they start and mount them. Not easy task, and I doubt that there is any tool which offers such option.
 
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just before you format you hdd raw copy 1.10 program to make a 1:1 image of your current ps3 drive (which is bad at the moment) then after you have 1:1 copy image of your ps3 drive, then format it anew in ps3. then connect it to windows, but do not initialise the drive. open hex editor like winhex and export those sectors. then restore the broken image back to ps3 hdd. then use these sectors to overwrite that ps3 hdd and it might just work again.
 
This will not work if there is any fs table validation. Anyway, worth a try but this is time consuming and easy to make mistake.
 
The solution suggested by impaler is right, ive heard about this before
When microsoft windows "initializes" the hdd, it overwrites the first sector of it... so that sector is lost forever... only the PS3 can create it, and it needs to match with that same hdd model/capacity

So the solution is to make a full (and raw) backup of the whole hdd with the data it has now (contains the broken sector)
Then format it in PS3... and take it back to a PC... make a "copy" of the first sector... and save it somewhere else
Next step is to restore the whole hdd backup (the original data with the broken sector)... and "paste" the first sector (the good one from the previous step)


Edit:
To make an hdd backup you can use https://clonezilla.org/ (download the LiveCD iso), there are many ways to make a hdd backup but this one allows for a couple of usefull things:
-it boots in "live" mode (so is not dependant of any operative system)
-it allows to make "raw" backups, internally it uses the "dd" command (in this mode is filesystem "agnostic")
-allows to compress the backup "on the fly" (the compression adds a bit of processor workload but is aceptable and the final size is reduced A LOT)

You need a PC with 2 connected hdds:
-source (the ps3 hdd)
-target (the other hdd where is going to be stored the ps3 backup)
Better disconnect all other devices of the motherboard to avoid mistakes (just incase, you know, heheh)
 
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