PS3 showing 0 HDD space even after deleting more than 35gb of data

oxitran

Member
So I have a weird problem with my PS3 that I wasn't able to find an existing thread about, so I would appreciate any ideas as to how to fix it.

So the other night I ftp'd some game files over to my CFW PS3 Slim running Rebug 4.86 CEX 1.8TB HDD. When I went over to the PS3 after the transfers finished, I loaded up a game with Webman. The game loaded fine but when the game loaded up I got a warning about the system memory being less than 500mb of free space. I thought this was weird since the chances of the two games files I transferred leaving the system with less than 500mb of space free but also not getting any warning from Filezilla about the disc lacking enough space to complete the tranfer was extremely unlikely. So I went to Irisman and opened the file manager to see the HDD had 0.0GB remaining. I restarted the system and it was the same thing. So I deleted a lot of game data and a few installed games, and booted up the same game again with webman and got the same issue, less than 500mb of free space left. So I soft rebooted and still got the same error when the PS3 loaded up. So back to Irisman and it was still 0.0GB left. I deleted some more games, back to irisman, and still 0.0GB. I did a hard reboot, and got no change, same error.

So my PS3 is giving a low space error, irisman is showing 0.0gb, and this is on a HDD that I think has only around 1.5TB of data on it, has had 35gb+ of data deleted and shows no change in the lack of free HDD space, still accepts now files from Filezilla, and had previously been working perfectly.

And that is where I'am now. Games that do not need to create system data on the HDD can still be played just fine. Its as if the utility that the PS3 uses to keep track of the hard drive size is not working correctly. The only thing I can think of as a cause is the game transfers possibly filling the hard drive full, and since it is a 1.8TB drive maybe the space tracking utility broke and is thinking that the PS3 has a max size of like 1.5TB or 1TB. But thats unlikely as I have hit the space limit on the hard drive before and had no problem. And the only other cause I can think of is something in the game files, but I don't know how that would happen just from moving the files to the hard drive and never launching the game associated with them.

Please leave a comment to ask about anything that I may have left out, or something that might help you troubleshoot.
 
Make a backup of the worthy files before is too late, the dev_hdd0 filesystem is broken and cant be fixed
Damn it!!! I was so close to having almost every game I would ever play on the console on the hard drive.

Anyway, after I do that I would just have to reformat the drive and pray it never happens again right?

And just out of curiousity, is there any idea what causes this to happen?
 
Damn it!!! I was so close to having almost every game I would ever play on the console on the hard drive.

Anyway, after I do that I would just have to reformat the drive and pray it never happens again right?

And just out of curiousity, is there any idea what causes this to happen?


Hardware failure is the most likely suspect.
 
Damn it!!! I was so close to having almost every game I would ever play on the console on the hard drive.

Anyway, after I do that I would just have to reformat the drive and pray it never happens again right?

And just out of curiousity, is there any idea what causes this to happen?
Yes, the filesystem is just software, if you format the hdd you are creating a new filesystem
In your description of the probem, when you said that it doesnt allows to delete files and the space available is 0%, thats a confirmation that the filesystem is "broken" (or partially broken if you want to say)

Btw, i suggest you to dont delete files by now, everytime you delete something the filesystem needs to be updated and eventually could be broken a bit more
Think in it as something very unestable... if you continue messing around with it the PS3 is going to refuse to load the hdd contents entirelly (like if there was no filesystem at all)

The reason why it happened seems to be because there was some problems when it was copying files from FTP, probably the transfer was interrupted, maybe even the PS3 rebooted and the FTP of webman active by default restarted another file transfer, etc...
Dunno, but that kind of problems are relativelly normal, the freezes and crashes of games/apps could cause errors in the filesystems too

In a standard PS3 with a smaller hdd size there are functions that tryes to find and repair that kind of problems regulary, but with your hdd of 1.8TB your PS3 cant do it.... so the result is everytime you have a filesystem problem is going to stay there forever and will be cummulated with the next errors, etc...

So... the "only" thing you need to worry with your hdd hack is to dont have any freeze, crash, or interrupted writings to the hdd
 
Yes, the filesystem is just software, if you format the hdd you are creating a new filesystem
In your description of the probem, when you said that it doesnt allows to delete files and the space available is 0%, thats a confirmation that the filesystem is "broken" (or partially broken if you want to say)

Btw, i suggest you to dont delete files by now, everytime you delete something the filesystem needs to be updated and eventually could be broken a bit more
Think in it as something very unestable... if you continue messing around with it the PS3 is going to refuse to load the hdd contents entirelly (like if there was no filesystem at all)

The reason why it happened seems to be because there was some problems when it was copying files from FTP, probably the transfer was interrupted, maybe even the PS3 rebooted and the FTP of webman active by default restarted another file transfer, etc...
Dunno, but that kind of problems are relativelly normal, the freezes and crashes of games/apps could cause errors in the filesystems too

In a standard PS3 with a smaller hdd size there are functions that tryes to find and repair that kind of problems regulary, but with your hdd of 1.8TB your PS3 cant do it.... so the result is everytime you have a filesystem problem is going to stay there forever and will be cummulated with the next errors, etc...

So... the "only" thing you need to worry with your hdd hack is to dont have any freeze, crash, or interrupted writings to the hdd
Okay, thats making a lot more sense now. I was FTPing a game from a drive that I'm sure is on its way out, so that couldn't have helped. I had no idea the PS3 was that tempermental to drive errors. Is there any way to make sure that the FTP of files goes smoothly? I have been using Filezilla for a while, and it works fine most of the time, but for games with thousands of small files the transfer tends to blitz the PS3 with about 1000 at a time until the FTP module on the PS3 crashes and I have to reboot the console to get the FTP server up and running again. I thought this was not a good thing, but seeing as how Filezilla had no obvious way to fix this I just went with it so long as it caused no huge problems. Everytime a transfer failed was the hard drive in the PS3 accumulating errors until it finally had one to many, or was it more likely to be the faulty drive transfering files to the PS3?
 
Take a read at this tutorial, maybe helps https://www.psx-place.com/threads/guide-how-to-successfully-ftp-huge-amount-of-files.22434/
The best you can do to minimize problems is to convert the games to ISO, the speed problems when transfering games in JB format (folder and files) is because the transfer needs to stop/restart in between each file, this takes some time, if there are thousands of files (and specially if the files are tiny) most of the time is spent in that stop/restarts

Yes, the dev_hdd0 filesystem is very temperamental, everytime a file write is interrupted we have (at least) one corrupted file... in theory that file should be identifyed automatically and deleted by the hdd manteinance functions, but that functions are not failproof, sometimes the error cant be fixed and results in folder/files that cant be deleted... or invisible files (wasting space)
What happened to you is not frequent though... i would say is not the kind of thing that was caused by a single error
Most probably is because you had some other errors cummulated from the past weeks/months
 
Check if "Fake Free Space" was enabled by mistake in QA debug menu.
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/QA_Flagging#QA_Flags_Features

Another possible cause (less probable) is: If the deleted files in dev_hdd0 were copied using Shadow Copy (links), it is possible that other files in other paths are still pointing to the same inodes. In these cases, deleting the file will not free the space until all the files that reference the inodes are deleted.
 
I just got myself into this same problem recently,
same thing, loading my 2tb internal hdd (only 6 years old, not skipped a beat etc) with tonnes of games,
via Filezilla FTP.

After weeks of successful filling with ps3,2 & 1 games.
I was ramming so much via FTP plus also installing pkgs from Playstation store, and got a bit carried away with 100s of things installing and downloading. Not that that was a problem !

I got the 500mb of hdd space error / Filezilla was no longer uploading anything all of a sudden, my first alert, then noticing on the ps3.

This morning i set out to hopefully quickly fix it, after noticing my deleting probably 35gb of games, pkg, installs, webman games etc,
was not actually giving me any hard drive space back.
I do have lots of games ready to install, games that arent that great or i dont ever want to play are being deleted anyway & especially now

GOOD NEWS SO FAR ! READ ON, THINK I SORTED IT !
I seem to have dug myself out of the hole this morning, in just minutes! Read on

*Tried deleting more, no good
*Saw this thread after a google, thought theres no way my hdd could be corrupted/ing, or hoping i havent f^*t it by all the DL action.
*I am not sure exactly what worked (or is working), but its working, i did a few things, heres what i suspect worked,
i went into Rebug (still usin it haha 4.82) Debug versions "Debug settings"
*Purposely Set "Fake Storage space" to "ON"
*I then set the amount in next option below to "10000"
*I opened Multiman to check the space of my PS3 Root/dev_hdd0, in the "File Manager / mmOS".. i noticed it had 916mb
*I restarted the console thru multiman.
*Feeling positive on some roll, i set the limit of Fake space from "10000", to "50000"
*Came back to Multiman, back to "File Manager /mmOS" .. same space of 916mb
*While still in here is deleted a game i had in Webman games, that installed itself to my internal hdd /GAMES folder (5.5gb game)
*Internal HDD space in Multiman, now showing 2,284 GB !
*So this is working for now me now, as far as i know !
*I'll delete some more games i dont use and try get back a couple hundred gigs or so before any more installing

I'll report back if it works, and i'll turn the fake space off after a few more deletes and space got back.
Hopefully when i turn that off, it'll all still be working as the machine should!

Hope this helps people ! :)
If it wasn't the enabling Fake, it could have been some deleting of pkgs and pkg games i had been installing at the same time,
or also maybe the PS3 Game Data folders in the xmb, of games i had deleted.
My gut says it was playing with the Debug option though, it might have tweaked some hdd record back into action,
and now im actually freeing space.

Some ps3 debug options can be quite powerful.
Not sure how this works in other / newer firmwares, but i imagine my reply will peak some devs interest

Update : After closing and re opening Multiman, i can see i now have 5595 free space showing.
The 500mb error isnt flashing up on the xmb so far.
I still have fake space turned on in debug set at 50000 and havent done anything but restart multiman,
i'll free more space and try turn off the fake space option,
hopefully back in business, get plenty free space, install or delete as intented again

Update,
whatever i did worked right away,
most likely turning on the Debug option "Fake free space",
setting it to 10000...
I think it may have reset something to do with paths,
and i was able to start deleting to free space & get back in action.

I turned it off after getting about 13 GB back,
then rebooted and ive deleted a few more small games and alls working fine again now.

If it wasnt doing the above, it might have been some path pointing to a psn download that filled the hdd, or one the ftp files i was getting.
Definately seemed to fix after playing with turning fake free space on, so i'm going to stick with thats my theory that fixed it for me.
 
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