PS3 PS3 1.75 tb internal hdd upgrade formatting utility

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y0urh34d

Member
I just want to ask if something could be modified in the newer firmwares.

Now I just recently upgrade my ps3 internal hdd to 1.75tb and on the recent 4.81 firmware, it nagged about how the hard disk isn't supported (it even said it in recovery mode) yet I downgraded to 4.55 and it formatted 100% and works just fine (1450gb out of 1630gb). So Sony for some reason locked out installing hard drives > than 1tb or 1.5tb (not sure the size they locked out) and I want to know, is it possible to change out the formatting utility in 4.81 fw for an older fw like 4.55 or would I have to downgrade every time to upgrade a new hdd. Granted this isn't so much for me as I only have 2 ps3s, but more so for everyone else so they don't have to downgrade to install a new hdd or if the file system or something else goes to shit in regards to the hdd, they don't have to downgrade to fix the hdd in recovery mode.
 
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y0urh34d said:
I just want to ask if something could be modified in the newer firmwares.

Now I just recently upgrade my ps3 internal hdd to 1.75tb and on the recent 4.81 firmware, it nagged about how the hard disk isn't supported (it even said it in recovery mode) yet I downgraded to 4.55 and it formatted 100% and works just fine (1450gb out of 1630gb). So Sony for some reason locked out installing hard drives > than 1tb or 1.5tb (not sure the size they locked out) and I want to know, is it possible to change out the formatting utility in 4.81 fw for an older fw like 4.55 or would I have to downgrade every time to upgrade a new hdd. Granted this isn't so much for me as I only have 2 ps3s, but more so for everyone else so they don't have to downgrade to install a new hdd or if the file system or something else goes to shit in regards to the hdd, they don't have to downgrade to fix the hdd in recovery mode.
Click to expand...

I want to put 2 tb on my ps3 slim but I couldn't find anyone that has success on it. You seemed to have the working limit of 1.75 tb. Sounds like running 1.75 tb on 4.81 is not working. Currently, I am on cfw 4.81 so if I want to install a new 1.75 tb then I would need to downgrade to 4.55 cfw first. After the downgrade, I can switch the new 1.75 tb and format it. Right? What happens if you upgrade back to 4.81 cfw after upgrading to 1.75 tb? Will that work still? What brand did you use for a working 1.75 tb. Thank you in advance for the help!
 
The thing was that 1.75tb hdd works just fine on 4.81 cfw but when I tried to format it, it said the hdd isnt supported but on 4.55 cfw, it formatted just fine. 2tb hdd wont work as I tried that but it lands on a blank xmb so 1.75tb works fine. What I wanted some of the makers of the cfw to do was change out the formatting utility to an older fw like 4.55 or 4.53 rebug in the newer 4.81 (or now 4.82) firmware so the ps3 wouldn't say the hdd isnt supported if I ever need to go to recovery mode or if I had to reformat the hdd for whatever reason on 4.81 cfw.

So if you want to use the 1.75tb hdd, grab rebug 4.53 or habib 4.55 etc then format the 1.75tb hdd and once its done, then upgrade to 4.81 cfw and you're sweet. You just can't get into recovery mode or reformat the hdd so if you have to do either of these things, you need to downgrade to the 4.53 or 4.55 cfw so the ps3 doesn't say the hdd isn't supported.
 
It would be awesome if a dev could take a look at this. Back in the day (around OFW 3.55 etc.) my Phat only accepted drives up to 1TB internally.
It would be awesome if CFWs could remove this limit completely.
 
Out of interest, (assuming you have data backups and a flasher to get out of jail) try a file system check like you get after a bad shutdown.

My 1.5tb worked great until I let it run a file system check which it fails and forces a format. (Every damn time)

An option would be to disable that check, but I fear for long term reliability doing that.

If it fails and you can't format it, it could get interesting though.
 
Purely theoretical, but perhaps we could partition the harddrive and through CFW assign user accounts to different partitions? Use offline/unregistered accounts for this purpose and then, if necessary, an online account could piggyback off one of the offline ones.
 
Startropic1 said:
Purely theoretical, but perhaps we could partition the harddrive and through CFW assign user accounts to different partitions? Use offline/unregistered accounts for this purpose and then, if necessary, an online account could piggyback off one of the offline ones.
Click to expand...

not sure if that's possible. NOR consoles store some flash files on the hdd.
 
self_slaughter said:
Out of interest, (assuming you have data backups and a flasher to get out of jail) try a file system check like you get after a bad shutdown.

My 1.5tb worked great until I let it run a file system check which it fails and forces a format. (Every damn time)

An option would be to disable that check, but I fear for long term reliability doing that.

If it fails and you can't format it, it could get interesting though.
Click to expand...

Ive had many bad shutdowns and ive never had a forced file system check and then a forced format on my ps3 and I'd rather not do the file system check if it does this on the 4.81 fw at least (as I know it won't format), I'd only do it on the 4.53 or 4.55 fw. I don't know why it forces a file system check for you, Im always able to cancel it (unless your console is nor flash and they always force the check, I have a cecha01 which is a nand flash console which never does that).

I'll probably check it eventually when I finish work today but for your ps3, id always disable the improper shutdown warning in the debug settings if you can.
 
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y0urh34d said:
The thing was that 1.75tb hdd works just fine on 4.81 cfw but when I tried to format it, it said the hdd isnt supported but on 4.55 cfw, it formatted just fine. 2tb hdd wont work as I tried that but it lands on a blank xmb so 1.75tb works fine. What I wanted some of the makers of the cfw to do was change out the formatting utility to an older fw like 4.55 or 4.53 rebug in the newer 4.81 (or now 4.82) firmware so the ps3 wouldn't say the hdd isnt supported if I ever need to go to recovery mode or if I had to reformat the hdd for whatever reason on 4.81 cfw.

So if you want to use the 1.75tb hdd, grab rebug 4.53 or habib 4.55 etc then format the 1.75tb hdd and once its done, then upgrade to 4.81 cfw and you're sweet. You just can't get into recovery mode or reformat the hdd so if you have to do either of these things, you need to downgrade to the 4.53 or 4.55 cfw so the ps3 doesn't say the hdd isn't supported.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recommendation on 1.75tb. I will use rebug since i am not familiar with habib.

I fully understand it now. I agree, sometimes i tend to reformat my ps3 once in a while. It would be awesome not to do the upgrade/downgrade process again.
 
y0urh34d said:
Ive had many bad shutdowns and ive never had a forced file system check
Click to expand...
Then you did not have so many, are more usual than you think, everybody in CFW is used to them :P
And canceling the filesystem check is not a good idea... if that filesystem check appears to you is because there is a real problem in the filesystem, so if you cancel the check this error in the filesystem will remain, so you are going to cummulate errors in the filesystem everytime this happens to you until you get to a point where the PS3 forces you to format the whole hdd (because is imposible to repair the fylesystem with that huge amount of cummulated errors)... and you will lose all its contents

For this reasons i dont think is a good idea to do what you are suggesting
 
It doesn't force the check, but if you let it run it will fail and will force a format. (in my testing anway)
Even if you didn't have a bad shutdown and manually run the file system check on a clean system it will fail at like 0-2% from memory and force you to format.

Either way, something to be wary of with drives greater than 1TB.
Unfortunately the first time I noticed this was weeks after upgrading and lost everything. :(
 
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Sorry if this is off topic, and doesn't really solve the problem of having to downgrade to use larger drives. But I have discovered a way to use as much as 1.86TB. No such disk exists, and as you're aware, the PS3 can't simply partition the disk to use only the max supported space on a 2TB. However, it IS possible to modify a disk's firmware to make it appear to the PS3 as a smaller disk than it really is. To do this you have to take advantage of a feature set in the ATA specification to create a "host protected area" on the disk that is hidden from the PS3 (and most operating systems). A 2TB disk has 3907029168 sectors. Reducing this by 7% to 3633537126 sectors will allow a PS3 running 4.46 firmware to format and successfully boot using such a disk. That seems to be the absolute limit. Any higher than that, the PS3 will format a larger size than that, but it will black screen on boot (believe me, I tried through trial and error, and had to blank the first few sectors on the disk after each attempt to make the PS3 boot again each time I'd formatted with a larger size than the PS3's kernel would accept as valid, in between each time I'd changed the max sector count!) Upgrading the PS3's firmware as far as the latest (at time of writing) Rebug lite 4.82 from that point on, and it remains fully functional.
Why would you want to do this, wasting 7% of a 2TB disk? Well, consider the fact that 1.75TB disks are getting very scarce, 1.5TB disks will likely go the same way. 2TB disks are cheaper in my experience and will likely be the easiest to get hold of going forward. This is one way you can get the maximum possible space for your PS3. Note: this was tested on CECHA and CECHC models. I cannot speak for later models, so you may get different results and have to try different max sizes on newer models. To set the max sector size, you will need a program capable of sending raw ATA commands to the hard drive. I personally used HDAT2 on a DOS bootable USB stick. One more note: you may have to plug the disk into the computer *after* it has booted into DOS from your USB stick. Most modern motherboards' BIOS automatically issue a "freeze lock" command at POST to lock these disk settings down, possibly to prevent viruses tampering with your hard drive. Either way, it forces you to have physical access to the inside of your computer while you're doing this. Also, you MUST connect using a SATA cable, you CANNOT do this with the drive connected via USB. If anyone would like a tutorial on how to use this information, please let me know.
 
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samspin said:
Sorry if this is off topic, and doesn't really solve the problem of having to downgrade to use larger drives. But I have discovered a way to use as much as 1.86TB. No such disk exists, and as you're aware, the PS3 can't simply partition the disk to use only the max supported space on a 2TB. However, it IS possible to modify a disk's firmware to make it appear to the PS3 as a smaller disk than it really is. To do this you have to take advantage of a feature set in the ATA specification to create a "host protected area" on the disk that is hidden from the PS3 (and most operating systems). A 2TB disk has 3907029168 sectors. Reducing this by 7% to 3633537126 sectors will allow a PS3 running 4.46 firmware to format and successfully boot using such a disk. That seems to be the absolute limit. Any higher than that, the PS3 will format a larger size than that, but it will black screen on boot (believe me, I tried through trial and error, and had to blank the first few sectors on the disk after each attempt to make the PS3 boot again each time I'd formatted with a larger size than the PS3's kernel would accept as valid, in between each time I'd changed the max sector count!) Upgrading the PS3's firmware as far as the latest (at time of writing) Rebug lite 4.82 from that point on, and it remains fully functional.
Why would you want to do this, wasting 7% of a 2TB disk? Well, consider the fact that 1.75TB disks are getting very scarce, 1.5TB disks will likely go the same way. 2TB disks are cheaper in my experience and will likely be the easiest to get hold of going forward. This is one way you can get the maximum possible space for your PS3. Note: this was tested on CECHA and CECHC models. I cannot speak for later models, so you may get different results and have to try different max sizes on newer models. To set the max sector size, you will need a program capable of sending raw ATA commands to the hard drive. I personally used HDAT2 on a DOS bootable USB stick. One more note: you may have to plug the disk into the computer *after* it has booted into DOS from your USB stick. Most modern motherboards' BIOS automatically issue a "freeze lock" command at POST to lock these disk settings down, possibly to prevent viruses tampering with your hard drive. Either way, it forces you to have physical access to the inside of your computer while you're doing this. Also, you MUST connect using a SATA cable, you CANNOT do this with the drive connected via USB. If anyone would like a tutorial on how to use this information, please let me know.
Click to expand...

Very interesting, Yes please. post a tutorial thread on this topic, I was thinking about this very topic myself not so long ago, I was thinking it must be possible to limit a 2TB Firecuda SSHD to 1.75TB approx. and get it to work.
 
I just followed this guide and it all worked perfectly.

Create a bootable HDAT2 disc. (I used Ultimate boot CD)
Boot usb from BIOS.
Plug in HDD.
Have HDAT2 search for hardware.
Open HPA and insert allocated memory amount above, then set it.
Format your PS3 to 4.46.
Jam in the new HDD and format.
Then upgrade back to 4.82.
Done.

Boot disc instructions are available on the ultimate boot CD website, but there are also other tools you can use.

The biggest pain is if you have a pre-existing PS3 HDD and transferring everything back to the new one.
 
you should be fine if you backup the home folder, the game and games folders, the ISO folders, and perhaps the mms folder. I've not tested it, but the mms folder houses the indexer for when games are installed. theoretically, replacing the file should do the trick without having to reinstall everything or rebuilding the database. if you use the gamei folder on an external hdd, use robocopy's robocopy "source directory" "destination directory" PARAM.SFO /E which is the minimum needed to install something on the xmb. contrary to believe, the eboot.bin and icon0.png are not needed, only the PARAM.SFO. you can then drop those folders (retains folder structure) into the game folder to get everything back. you'll need to rebuild the database in this case, but 50MBs equaling 5,000 installs instead of installing GBs at a time = :D
 
pinky said:
you should be fine if you backup the home folder, the game and games folders, the ISO folders, and perhaps the mms folder. I've not tested it, but the mms folder houses the indexer for when games are installed. theoretically, replacing the file should do the trick without having to reinstall everything or rebuilding the database. if you use the gamei folder on an external hdd, use robocopy's robocopy "source directory" "destination directory" PARAM.SFO /E which is the minimum needed to install something on the xmb. contrary to believe, the eboot.bin and icon0.png are not needed, only the PARAM.SFO. you can then drop those folders (retains folder structure) into the game folder to get everything back. you'll need to rebuild the database in this case, but 50MBs equaling 5,000 installs instead of installing GBs at a time = :D
Click to expand...

Haha, I reckon this is a one-time thing. At least until we get super cheap 2tb SSD's in a decades time. So I don't mind rebuilding a cleaner HDD anyways.
 
@pinky I have everything working fine now apart from some rebug toolbox options not appearing. I don't know why they arent there. But the main gripe is that sMan wants to fight webMan mod for the xmb position. Some boots have sman gui xmb icon, some boots have the webman mod xmb icon. I want the webman icon obviously, is there anything obvious here I'm missing as to how to fix this?
 
oxitran said:
@pinky I have everything working fine now apart from some rebug toolbox options not appearing. I don't know why they arent there. But the main gripe is that sMan wants to fight webMan mod for the xmb position. Some boots have sman gui xmb icon, some boots have the webman mod xmb icon. I want the webman icon obviously, is there anything obvious here I'm missing as to how to fix this?
Click to expand...

I've never tried sman, but I do know that webman mod and sman don't behave well together. you should choose one or the other.
 
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