Safe mode

[NCBrian1975]

I went into safe mode and have tried restore and rebuild and both just say preparing and stay like that forever at least 30 minutes until I gave up. Have heard sign of bad hard drive but didn't start until I changed some things. Any Ideas?. Option 6 freezes. I thought one of these would work until it got stuck and just said preparing during the file check and the rebuild attempt never finishes anything? I was told to get the PSN PATCH later I found out I needed it. UGH! please help if you can

 

[Izofeu]

You can always format your drive by plugging it into your PC, initializing it and then putting it back into your PS3 and reinstall the firmware. If you do this, you should also check the drive for bad sectors using a s.m.a.r.t. reader or surface scan.

 

[bguerville]

I went into safe mode and have tried restore and rebuild and both just say preparing and stay like that forever at least 30 minutes until I gave up. Have heard sign of bad hard drive but didn't start until I changed some things. Any Ideas?. Option 6 freezes. I thought one of these would work until it got stuck and just said preparing during the file check and the rebuild attempt never finishes anything? I was told to get the PSN PATCH later I found out I needed it. UGH! please help if you can

You would need to provide more detailed information in order to help us help you.
HDD Issues are common but here it may or may not be a HDD related issue, it's not possible to tell for sure with the little data you submitted.

1. What exactly prompted you to go into recovery mode to restore in the first place?
It would be helpful if you could explain what happened, how the issues began.
You said you changed some things, what things exactly? How did you change them? With a homebrew tool?
And what has psnpatch got to do with any of this?

2. Right now, do you still have access to the XMB or you are stuck in recovery mode?

3. What console model is it?

4. Is the internal drive a standard HDD or a SSD?

5. What kind of firmware setup are we talking about? CFW? HEN? OFW? 4.88?

6. Are there things installed on the HDD that you cannot bear to lose or reinstall?
If not, you can extract the HDD and repartition/reformat it with NTFS on your PC before reinserting it into the console for full firmware pup installation from USB.
If the "malfunctions" are caused by a file system related error or partition corruption, these steps should fix them.

7. If the console is currently or has been in the past on CFW, have you ever dumped the eid_root_key also referred to as ERK (it's basically the HDD UFS2 partition unique encryption key)? You need that key to recover any data from the HDD.

8. Do you have a spare hard drive you could use?
If so, you could confirm that it's a HDD issue, install the firmware on the spare HDD and dump the eid_root_key so you can try to recover data from the old HDD on your PC.
And if ever the recovery environment options are also failing with the spare HDD, it would imply other hardware problems or possibly an issue with Flash Memory stored data.

 

[NCBrian1975]

You can always format your drive by plugging it into your PC, initializing it and then putting it back into your PS3 and reinstall the firmware. If you do this, you should also check the drive for bad sectors using a s.m.a.r.t. reader or surface scan.

Thanks That was my next step. It has been trying a quick restore on its on but at over and hour later and only 0% something must be wrong

 

[NCBrian1975]

I changed a setting on redbug tool box and it restarted that is when everything went wrong.It wouldn't boot up fully and never would load the XMB again. It's a fat 32 original big size model. I was using CFW 4.86. but been stuck in nothing but safe mode will work no XMB access. I lost power in some processes because I realized I had changed to a power strip that was not working great but that was after the problems started. When I could only do safe mode I tried seveal options. Finally I chose option 5. Complete restore Now when it boots up I see the photo below ..I assume.that it is a bad or corrupt hard drive. I don't have a good way to test it because I only have a laptop PC and it's a desktop hard drive.

1.Is there an adapter or something that I could use this is a desk top hd and only have a laptop PC.

2.What does this screen mean how long should it stay like this or shoud it not lol?

3. Also if it just stays at this SONY screen any one know why or seen it before?

 

[Izofeu]

I changed a setting on redbug tool box and it restarted that is when everything went wrong.It wouldn't boot up fully and never would load the XMB again. It's a fat 32 original big size model. I was using CFW 4.86. but been stuck in nothing but safe mode will work no XMB access. I lost power in some processes because I realized I had changed to a power strip that was not working great but that was after the problems started. When I could only do safe mode I tried seveal options. Finally I chose option 5. Complete restore Now when it boots up I see the photo below ..I assume.that it is a bad or corrupt hard drive. I don't have a good way to test it because I only have a laptop PC and it's a desktop hard drive.

1.Is there an adapter or something that I could use this is a desk top hd and only have a laptop PC.

2.What does this screen mean how long should it stay like this or shoud it not lol?

3. Also if it just stays at this SONY screen any one know why or seen it before?

You don't need an adapter if you have a laptop, assuming you can take your drive out, you never know these days. What you can do is create a bootable USB of a partition manager (like this one) or any linux distro like Ubuntu using Rufus, turn your laptop off, unscrew and remove the back cover, replace the drive with the PS3's drive, power on the PC and boot the partition manager or linux distro, wipe the drive with it, power off the pc, remove the USB stick, put the laptop drive back in, insert and screw in the back cover, put the PS3 drive back into the PS3. Format your USB stick on Windows after doing this to remove the bootable software from it and install recovery pup on your PS3.

Tip for the future: If you don't know what an option does, don't use it.

I cannot guarantee safety of the ISO file I linked to.

 

[sandungas]

You don't need an adapter if you have a laptop, assuming you can take your drive out, you never know these days. What you can do is create a bootable USB of a partition manager (like this one) or any linux distro like Ubuntu using Rufus, turn your laptop off, unscrew and remove the back cover, replace the drive with the PS3's drive, power on the PC and boot the partition manager or linux distro, wipe the drive with it, power off the pc, remove the USB stick, put the laptop drive back in, insert and screw in the back cover, put the PS3 drive back into the PS3. Format your USB stick on Windows after doing this to remove the bootable software from it and install recovery pup on your PS3.

Tip for the future: If you don't know what an option does, don't use it.

I cannot guarantee safety of the ISO file I linked to.

Nice resume

Let me add this tool https://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
Download the ISO and make it bootable from USB... then use the "scan surface" option (and disable all the options for "bad block remapping")... and let the tool do his job (it takes several hours, i use to do it at night while sleeping)

This feature doesnt modifyes a single bit of the HDD data btw... so there is no risk for the data inside it... the only thing made by the "surface scan" feature is to read the data "block by block" and meassure his "latency" (the time required by the PC BIOS to receive the data) in miliseconds... and then it reports the info from all sectors using counters that pretty much means "healthy block", "vague block", or "dead block"

Is a failproof way to check the healthy of HDD drives, because is not only scanning 100% of the sectors speeds, but also the whole HDD
Lets say... if the HDD header "arm" have a mechanical problem, then all blocks can be affected either randomnly or following a checkered pattern. And any other electronic component of the HDD circuit board is going to trigger errors in this "scan surface" test too... so we are checking the whole HDD

I know there are other tools that can do it too, but MHDD is completly failproof because is extremelly strict... if MHDD tells the HDD is fine it really means is fine

 

[Izofeu]

Nice resume

Let me add this tool https://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
Download the ISO and make it bootable from USB... then use the "scan surface" option (and disable all the options for "bad block remapping")... and let the tool do his job (it takes several hours, i use to do it at night while sleeping)

This feature doesnt modifyes a single bit of the HDD data btw... so there is no risk for the data inside it... the only thing made by the "surface scan" feature is to read the data "block by block" and meassure his "latency" (the time required by the PC BIOS to receive the data) in miliseconds... and then it reports the info from all sectors using counters that pretty much means "healthy block", "vague block", or "dead block"

Is a failproof way to check the healthy of HDD drives, because is not only scanning 100% of the sectors speeds, but also the whole HDD
Lets say... if the HDD header "arm" have a mechanical problem, then all blocks can be affected either randomnly or following a checkered pattern. And any other electronic component of the HDD circuit board is going to trigger errors in this "scan surface" test too... so we are checking the whole HDD

I know there are other tools that can do it too, but MHDD is completly failproof because is extremelly strict... if MHDD tells the HDD is fine it really means is fine

Adding to your reply, alternatively there's also a S.M.A.R.T. check (CrystalDiskInfo) if someone wants to quickly check a drive. Not as failproof but does the job in most cases, including mine.

Also this is my 100th post on psx-place. Hooray!

 

[NCBrian1975]

You don't need an adapter if you have a laptop, assuming you can take your drive out, you never know these days. What you can do is create a bootable USB of a partition manager (like this one) or any linux distro like Ubuntu using Rufus, turn your laptop off, unscrew and remove the back cover, replace the drive with the PS3's drive, power on the PC and boot the partition manager or linux distro, wipe the drive with it, power off the pc, remove the USB stick, put the laptop drive back in, insert and screw in the back cover, put the PS3 drive back into the PS3. Format your USB stick on Windows after doing this to remove the bootable software from it and install recovery pup on your PS3.

Tip for the future: If you don't know what an option does, don't use it.

I cannot guarantee safety of the ISO file I linked to.

Actually it let me do option 5 in Safe Mode and an install of something called EvilNat fixed me right up. Good to go now but thanks everyone