Internal HD 1.5 TB recommendations? Is it actually possible?

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

So i'm well aware that most ps3's seem to only jive with 1 tb internal HDD's. That's all i've been able to get working from my experience. I've heard through various posts online on various sites that some people were able to get 1.5 tb's to work properly with their consoles. If anyone has had success installing a larger internal drive and can recommend me a specific drive model that they know 100% works, i'd greatly appreciate the info.

 

[pinky]

So i'm well aware that most ps3's seem to only jive with 1 tb internal HDD's. That's all i've been able to get working from my experience. I've heard through various posts online on various sites that some people were able to get 1.5 tb's to work properly with their consoles. If anyone has had success installing a larger internal drive and can recommend me a specific drive model that they know 100% works, i'd greatly appreciate the info.

@atreyu187 , I think has managed it, but I think he used linux to format it properly.

 

[atreyu187]

So i'm well aware that most ps3's seem to only jive with 1 tb internal HDD's. That's all i've been able to get working from my experience. I've heard through various posts online on various sites that some people were able to get 1.5 tb's to work properly with their consoles. If anyone has had success installing a larger internal drive and can recommend me a specific drive model that they know 100% works, i'd greatly appreciate the info.

So if you find a 1.5tb exactly it's a pretty easy process. QA flag system then downgrade to a 4.46 CFW. Install new HDD and let the system do it's thing. After that you can freely upgrade to whatever CFW you want.

Now you can use a a 2tb HDD and make a partition and get roughly 1.75tb of disc space. Then use the HDD resize tool and you have a fun ton of storage. It's a bit more involved and that does require Linux. Live CD will be fine as well no need for installing the OS to your PC

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

So if you find a 1.5tb exactly it's a pretty easy process. QA flag system then downgrade to a 4.46 CFW. Install new HDD and let the system do it's thing. After that you can freely upgrade to whatever CFW you want.

Now you can use a a 2tb HDD and make a partition and get roughly 1.75tb of disc space. Then use the HDD resize tool and you have a fun ton of storage. It's a bit more involved and that does require Linux. Live CD will be fine as well no need for installing the OS to your PC

I appreciate the advice bud. Man, those 1.5 tb internals are really hard to come by nowadays i'm noticing lol. Do you by chance know of a tutorial out there that covers the linux conversion for the 2 tb>1.75?

 

[remlei]

oh nice, so the way to use 2TB drives on PS3 is:

- downgrade the firmware to specific version
- swap the drive with a 2tb one and reinstall the firmware
- after that plug that 2tb drive to a PC running linux and re-adjust the partition to 1.75TB something size
- plug the 2tb hdd back in to PS3 and you can now upgrade the HDD to the latest CFW.

mounting the drive on linux is found here

 

[sandungas]

Not in that order... one of the tricks involved is to use a feature named HPA supported by many/all modern HDD's that stores the HDD capacity (in other words, the number of sectors) inside the HDD BIOS

Lets say... a hdd of 2TB have from factory 24.654.345 of sectors... and you configure it to "crop" the capacity to only 24.000.000 sectors
By doing that you are "hiding" a lot of sectors that are completly invisible to the BIOS of most/all PC's (and to the PS3)
Technically... the PS3 doesnt really knows that the HDD has been "cropped"... is just taken as an HDD with a smaller capacity

-----------
But there are 2 different ways to take advantage of this trick...
If you take an HDD of 2TB you can reduce it to something around what @atreyu187 said... and use an old PS3 firmware to perform the HDD partition creation, filesystems creation, file installation, etc... because the old PS3 firmwares was not so restrictive with the HDD capacity
The payback is that you are not going to be able to run any of the filesystem manteinance functions... some happens periodically at the background when you are in XMB, and the most important is the option that appears in recovery menu named "restore filesystem" (the same process triggered automatically after some PS3 freezes/crashes). This process is the responsible of cleaning-up the small errors that uses to cummulate in the filesystems, if you "break" it your PS3 is not going to be able to clean-up and repair filesystems ever and eventually the HDD filesystems will collapse and you will lose all the HDD contents
But... everything depends of which kind of use you do of your PS3... if you keep this in mind and you do a periodical backup of worthy files (saves, whatever) you can use this trick to maximize HDD capacity and forget a bit about it, the day it collapses you format it, and start again

The other way is to try to reduce the capacity to the point where the HDD manteinance functions keeps working normally, i dont know the size but it should be something intermediate in between 1TB and 1.5TB... maybe 1.2TB ? dunno
I never did read anyone trying this... most people was interested in maximizing the capacity (in other words... not worrying about the broken filesystem manteinance functions)

 

[atreyu187]

Yeah when I did mine I use the QA settings to disable file system checks & such but it was a temp fix and eventually I had to format and try again. Not worth the effort if you have to constantly do this.

 

[xanthefin]

Constantly? I have myself done this only once and been going without needing to do format or system checks since 2018.. I think that constantly is slight over shoot.

Closest one was with Arch emulator package suddenly crashing and asking system check but it ignored and continued. Only real corruptions for me so far was caused by my Dell E6320 laptop ethernet port / or chipset which did leave random things broken after FTP transfer (could see in transfer it did not success move whole package of files without needing retry some).
After moving to Macbook Pro on same cables no broken corrupted files after FTP transfer been detected since so i will say its a myth if oversized hard drive would equal instantly broken packages (fake news). Its up to user doing mistake anyway. Keep hdd keys copied and its just console not honeymoon memories on it if ever crashes i will reinstall anyway then. And even if system check would be working (who keeps them enabled on rebugs anyway? I seen them off mostly) it does not mean its super safe thing to trust working in worst cases either when hdd fails itself anyway.

But surely good behaviour would be not ignore things but i would not myself put so much weight over the operation in bad light as people does in general overreacting.

 

[OldGnashburg]

1.5TB works, no HPA shenanigans, I bought a 1.5TB external drive, shucked it from the casing, and threw it in my PS3 and everything worked like a charm, with that 8% HDD Unlocker I now have around 1400GB of internal storage.
Running off EvilNat 4.88.2 on a CECHA01.

 

[Checkity_CheckYoSelf]

1.5TB works, no HPA shenanigans, I bought a 1.5TB external drive, shucked it from the casing, and threw it in my PS3 and everything worked like a charm, with that 8% HDD Unlocker I now have around 1400GB of internal storage.
Running off EvilNat 4.88.2 on a CECHA01.

Sick.. Yea i'm thinking about throwing one of these in each of my A models I got hanging out in different rooms. Gotta order them from China though since I can't locate any in the states.

 

[OldGnashburg]

Sick.. Yea i'm thinking about throwing one of these in each of my A models I got hanging out in different rooms. Gotta order them from China though since I can't locate any in the states.

Check out Newegg. The Canadian version has one. It appears to be the same model I have. American version might have something as well. Your going to need a flathead screwdriver and an exacto knife to shuck it from the case.

Only reason I needed such a large drive is PS2 on a CECHA01 can only run off internal. I have 240 PS2 games on it right now. That almost fills up a 1TB drive, not enough room for updates and game data.