Ps3 keeps killing HDD's

L

lvl100Boss

Forum Noob
hey guys, noob here, i've owned this ps3 slim for about 4 years now, but it was only working for a few months in total, the reason ? it cant go a few months without fucking the hdd, and i cant afford a new one everytime, its on cfw, at first it was on habib, on the second hdd i took it to a guy and he put 4.76 ferrox, the first time, game load times were getting real slow and a few days later i get the hdd is corrupt message, i have to add that everytime a game freezes i just pull the cord, i guess thats bound to happen, i didnt know any other way to unfreeze it untill today where i realized pressing the power button for 30 seconds does it, and im still not sure wether its any better or just the same as removing the cord, now the second time, besides often pulling out the cords, it dropped to the ground, i figured that was the death punch, and i put it to rest in my closet for about 1.5 years now, yesterday i decided to pull it out and see if i can fix it, i went to safe mode, selected option 5, restore ps3 system and what do you know..
it worked... i was so happy and couldnt wait to put some games on it, i installed multiman with no problem, then i tried to install youtube no psn pkg, thats when again it froze, i waited all i could, it just didnt move, i got pissed and pulled the cord again.... now it shows a message about the software not working properly, it tells me i need to download a software on a usb and press select+start, i did that, i put 4.76 ferrox and pressed the buttons, it says preparing for update and stays stuck at 98% forever, i went to safe mode and everytime it just says "cannot access system storage"
now my questions are,

1 - is the hdd completely dead ? i have no access to a pc that i could connect it to so i cant really tell unless i take it to someone who will ask for money, when it worked yesterday i was suprised so maybe its still salvagable ?

2 - should i bother getting a new hdd ? and if i use the 30sec power button press, will it be any better than pulling the cord for when it freezes ? because i know it'll happen, and if theres no difference i wont bother getting a new one just for it to get fucked again also i was wondering is an sdd better for this case ? is it more resistant for drops and corruptions ? its more expensive but if it lasts im ready to get it

lastly, could the ps3 flash memory be affected too since it froze while installing a pkg ? and if i get a new drive, do i just format it and put the cfw on a usb stick like normal ?

i know im asking alot, sorry, and thanks in advance for helping
 
You should never pull out the power cord, internally the PS3 is using a linux filesystem, and all partitions needs to be "unmounted" before is turned OFF

If a game freezes or crashes, the first thing you need to do is to verify that the firmware is really "stucked" by pressing the PS button in the dualshock3 controller... if nothing happens is because is freezed
Next thing you need to try when the PS3 is freezed is to press eject button, sometimes it takes you back to XMB (but if it was freezed probably the PS button is not going to work)
Next thing is a single fast buton press in the power ON button... the PS3 takes some seconds and turns off
If doesnt turns off, then you need to repeat, but press and hold the power OFF button
If doesnt turns off, then yeah... only option is to disconnect the power cord
And at the next boot... if it doesnt turns ON you need to disconnect power cord and wait 1 minute before conecting it again (this is a crash on syscon chip)

If the PS3 shows you a screen with a extremelly ugly warning telling that the firmware cant boot (and prepare an USB with the firmware).. this means the crash happened in CELL processor (this is the worst crash of all the posibles crashes that can happen, i only saw it 2 or 3 times)

The flash memory chip doesnt cares about hdd data, if you boot the PS3 without hdd you are going to see a warning message on screen
This means that most of the critical files of the firmware (inside flash) are loaded and working normally

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You need to do a surface scan to the hdd to verify if is damaged, otherway you are not going to get any real hint of what is happening

The source of all problems could be a partially faulty power supply (not able to give the needed power to the SATA port), i never seen anyone reporting your problem and being caused by the power supply, so is not probable, but worths to be mentioned
Most probably the cause of all hdd problems is for turning off the PS3 before "unmounting" the filesystems (in other words, not allowing the PS3 to do the normal poweroff sequence)
 
sandungas said:
You should never pull out the power cord, internally the PS3 is using a linux filesystem, and all partitions needs to be "unmounted" before is turned OFF

If a game freezes or crashes, the first thing you need to do is to verify that the firmware is really "stucked" by pressing the PS button in the dualshock3 controller... if nothing happens is because is freezed
Next thing you need to try when the PS3 is freezed is to press eject button, sometimes it takes you back to XMB (but if it was freezed probably the PS button is not going to work)
Next thing is a single fast buton press in the power ON button... the PS3 takes some seconds and turns off
If doesnt turns off, then you need to repeat, but press and hold the power OFF button
If doesnt turns off, then yeah... only option is to disconnect the power cord
And at the next boot... if it doesnt turns ON you need to disconnect power cord and wait 1 minute before conecting it again (this is a crash on syscon chip)

If the PS3 shows you a screen with a extremelly ugly warning telling that the firmware cant boot (and prepare an USB with the firmware).. this means the crash happened in CELL processor (this is the worst crash of all the posibles crashes that can happen, i only saw it 2 or 3 times)

The flash memory chip doesnt cares about hdd data, if you boot the PS3 without hdd you are going to see a warning message on screen
This means that most of the critical files of the firmware (inside flash) are loaded and working normally

-----------
You need to do a surface scan to the hdd to verify if is damaged, otherway you are not going to get any real hint of what is happening

The source of all problems could be a partially faulty power supply (not able to give the needed power to the SATA port), i never seen anyone reporting your problem and being caused by the power supply, so is not probable, but worths to be mentioned
Most probably the cause of all hdd problems is for turning off the PS3 before "unmounting" the filesystems (in other words, not allowing the PS3 to do the normal poweroff sequence)
Click to expand...



thanks alot, but i have some few questions left, what does CELL crash mean, and how bad is it ? also how do i do a surface scan of HDD ?
 
If your PS3 has been wrecking HDDs, why did you not get it serviced or replaced? Something is not right.
Either you have been mistreating your HDDs or your PS3 has a problem. Maybe a bad PSU.

My own set recently had its PSU fail, before I sent it back to Sony for repairs.

BTW, nobody knows for sure why you have these problems. So don't blame others for "ignoring you".
 
sandungas said:
this is the worst crash of all the posibles crashes that can happen, i only saw it 2 or 3 times)
Click to expand...

Only 2 or 3 time's you lucky person, I've had the CELL crash on 6 time's in a row and that's straight after a FW re-install each time, felt like hitting it with a hammer.

( Hitting PS1's on the case over the PSU used to make them work again if they crashed :D. But that was mainly because CD drive would jam up on them with heat because of the crappy plastic used in them... PS1 crash??.....WHACK!! working now :D )

lvl100Boss said:
thanks alot, but i have some few questions left, what does CELL crash mean, and how bad is it ? also how do i do a surface scan of HDD ?
Click to expand...

The CELL in a PS3 is the CPU ( Its proper name is CELL Broadband Engine or CELL/BE ) it a multi core processor made by IBM. They are used in all sorts of things. If this crashes it's like your brain stopping work so its very bad for the PS3. And if your PS3 is NOR it keeps most of the firmware on the HDD, and is like its nerves system, so repeated HDD crashes stopping the signals and data being sent then just plugging cutting the power, is like stopping someone's heart, cause's major corruption of this data being sent and the CELL crashes and gives up.

You need to connect your PS3's HDD to a PC using a USB to sata adaptor or if you have and External HDD you can take out the HDD in it and use that connector and use a formatting utility like Partition Wizard to do surface scan of the HDD and if its possible it will attempt to reapir some of the damage, and to be honest using crystal disk info on the HDD would be helpful as well as it will tell you the health of the HDD and if its going to fail.
 
The syscon crash can be identifyed because the power button is connected to it, and when you push the button the syscon ignores it completly... is like if syscon has been "nuked" (most probably is stucked in a infinite loop trying to do something)
When that happens, the only way to "reset" syscon and make it return to normal working is by disconnecting the power cable and wait 1 or 2 minutes (to allow all the electricity and capacitors of the console to dischargue). In the next boot syscon turns ON the PS3 normally but with the fan at 100% speed or some shit like that (this is another wtf)... but after some seconds it recovers the control of the fan and everything returns to normal working

When CELL crashes the PS3 turns off (and cuts off power) inmediatly, and i dont remember well if is needed to disconect the power cable, but the warning message mentions 3 things basically:
1) is doubtful if the installed firmware is damaged
2) is doubtful if hdd is going to be formatted
3) prepare the PS3UPDAT.PUP in a USB and follow instructions

So you think... WTF happened ?, im going to lose all hdd contents and i cant do anything (turning off the PS3 in that screen to try to bypass the check is too much risky imo)... so you enter in a small panic moment... "bite the bullet" and acept the message thinking... "ok, do whatever you want but dont brick !!!"
I have to say that all the times that happened to me the PS3 didnt formatted the hdd and it was not needed to reinstall the firmware... so.... it was not harmfull but the feeling you have after passing that is like "fiiiiu, i dont want to see this again ever"

I think the reason why this warning message happens is because in the next boot (after the CELL crash) there are components of the motherboard that are "nuked" (syscon, and maybe southbridge too) so CELL doesnt knows if the hdd contents are valid
In other words... is a preventive warning and the PS3 is telling you "i dont know what is going to happen with your hdd contents" :D

----------------
The "surface scan" is something i use to mention in a generic way because there are several tools that can do it, the process consists in reading all the sectors of the hdd (there are some hundreds of millions) and meassures the time they takes in returning the data stored in the sector

Basically, if the sector doesnt returns any data it means is damaged (phisically, is imposible to repair that sector), if it returns data but does it very slow the sector is still usable but the hdd is becoming old or had a lot of stress, and if it returns data at a normal speed it means the sector is fine

The damaged (and slow) sectors can be "remapped" because modern hdds have around 2000 sectors reserved for this task (in a protected area)
Is imposible to know how many reserved sector an hdd have because the hdd manufacturers doesnt tells it, but if you look at the SMART attributes of the hdd you can see how much have been used (in other words, how many sectors was damaged in the past and was remaped by the hdd bios automatically)
In a hdd like yours that had lot of power cuts probably you are going to have a lot of sectors remaped

To see this info you can use an app named crystaldisk that runs on windows
But to make the "surface scan" and to configure SMART settings i always use an app named MHDD that runs on MSdos (you need to boot it from usblive or cdlive)
MHDD is tricky to use and it looks ugly (msdos graphics, dont expect fireworks) but works very well, is one of that "low level tools"
 
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To be fair you did say it lasted for 4 years and u just kept it away for 1.5 years. That gives the ps3 2.5 years runtime.
If you had an older model or perhaps bad luck, it died due to age or heavy usage. HDD's do run at hot temps if forced to.

then you say you gave it in for repair to some shady ass guy? ( You say he did install cfw with replacing hdd, sony doesn't provide Cfws)
He probably owns some small repair shop & had a lot of old Laptops in his desk and took one Old hdd out and replaced it in your PS3.
That can explain why your second HDD also failed. If not it might be some CFW probs or you're hdd is running too hot or bad PSU?
 
Agreed, is usual for some people to offer (low quality) repair services and they can give you some parts that was in the borderline of a failure, hdd and power supplies falls in this category

You should use a new hdd to make at least one test and verify that everything works normally in the PS3 with it
You can use this hdd for the test temporally, and repurpose it later for other PC/laptop/whatever

And with the power supply, you should do the same, is needed at least one test with a relliable power supply, either a new PS3 PSU... or a PC ATX power supply (there are several tutorials in the forum explaining how to connect it to the PS3)
 
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