PS3 Slim PS3 with SSD has suddenly become very slow

[Kuppi]

I upgraded my PS3 with a Kingston 1TB SSD, where I instlaled Evilnat Cobra 4.90 and a bunch of games.

Everything worked fine for a few months, but now it has suddenly become very slow at loading anything. Initial boot to the XMB is normal, but loading a game takes ages, and closing a game takes even longer.

I checked the file system and rebuilt the database, but it didn't help at all.

I've heard that the PS3 doesn't support TRIM which can cause problems, I'm guessing that's the issue here.

Is there a solution? Should I just not use an SSD?

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Indeed, the PS3 is not prepared to use SSDs, because of the lack on TRIM support and the ability to handle the different NAND memory types.

The "best" option here would be to have a hybrid SSHD, but it's been proven that they don't offer much of a performance gain against HDDs or SSDs.

Most reliable, compatible option would be a 1 TB HDD @ 7200 RPM, but it's up to you.

 

[Kuppi]

Indeed, the PS3 is not prepared to use SSDs, because of the lack on TRIM support and the ability to handle the different NAND memory types.

The "best" option here would be to have a hybrid SSHD, but it's been proven that they don't offer much of a performance gain against HDDs or SSDs.

Most reliable, compatible option would be a 1 TB HDD @ 7200 RPM, but it's up to you.

Is there a way to make the SSD usable in the console again, other than reformatting? Don't really feel like doing that if not necessary, also don't feel like paying 50€ for another drive.

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Is there a way to make the SSD usable in the console again, other than reformatting? Don't really feel like doing that if not necessary, also don't feel like paying 50€ for another drive.

I'm afraid not, because the data is encrypted and only your PS3 knows which sector is which. If you try to apply TRIM on your SSD on your PC, you will only destroy all your data as the PC doesn't understand about the file system (not even by mounting the drive using the tools made by @Berion and other devs).

 

[Berion]

Trim is not needed in current SSD drives. Firmware controlling cell usage in wear leveling.

Some SSDs aren't compatible with PS3, causing not been recognized or corrupting logical structure. We don't know why, so it is roulette which will works fine and which doesn't.

No, if filesystems/partitions are damaged, You can do nothing. And this will return anyway on this specific device.

Only SSD fw knows which sector is which. ;] But exposed LBA are always the same, so it doesn't matter what environment will read/write to it. dev_hdd0 partition using UFS2, never tried doing fstrim on it (could be not possible due to UFS2 support is experimental on Linux). Anyway, this will lead to nowhere.