Upgraded to 250GB HDD - only 205GiB free? - PS3 NEWS

**aldostools** · 05-19-2008

I recently upgraded to my PS3 "60GB" with an Western Digital WD2500BEVS Scorpio 250 GB 2.5" SATA Hard Drive (for $108 tax+s/h included). After install, the first thing I noticed was that the 250GB disk is really 232GiB and I understand that (Gigabytes is not the same that Gibibytes).

But after formating the HDD on the PS3, it reported that I had 205GiB of 232GiB. Is this normal? Where did the other 27GiB go? Does this happen with larger HDDs?

**pacific808** · 05-19-2008

I have not heard of a case like this but I can offer one solution. If you are able to put your hdd in your computer whether its a laptop or desktop it doesn't matter. (Yes you can put the hdd in a desktop if it is fairly new and uses the same cable type connection I have done it with mine and it worked) Then using a boot disc from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ there are hdd tools for different brands and you can reformat and zero out your hdd which may give you back your lost space.

**aldostools** · 05-19-2008

I don't think the PS3 would recognize the disk formated on a PC. I formated my brand new HDD with the PS3. It took less than 1 minute, after reboot I got 205GB of 232GB. When I formated it for Linux, it reported 195GB of 232GB. I googled before post the question, and found other users of the same drive with the same issue in the PS3.

I guess that the PS3 reserve 10% of the disk for internal purposes, but I'm not sure about that.

**fmbaig21** · 05-20-2008

if it only took one minute to format.. something is wrong.. it seems that its not writing the full file system onto the disk. did you check the ps3 if there is a full format option?

**aldostools** · 05-20-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by fmbaig21

did you check the ps3 if there is a full format option?

I don't think so. I removed my 60gb HDD, inserted the brand new 250gb HDD, turned on the PS3, it asked immediately to press X to format the HDD, I pressed X and after 1 minute it rebooted. I went to the System Information and it reported 205GB free of 232GB. I reformatted the HDD again to add the Linux partition thinking it would use part of the missing 27GB, but I ended with 195GB free of 232GB.

I'm guessing that the PS3 reserves a part of the disk for internal purposes and not to install its own OS.

**admnt** · 05-20-2008

The PS3 internally reserves 8% of the disk space.

**aldostools** · 05-20-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by admnt

The PS3 internally reserves 8% of the disk space.

Ok, thanks. Do you have any reference where I could read more about the purpose of this reserved space?

**pacific808** · 05-20-2008

yeah sorry.. I totally forgot about the ps3 reformatting the hdd after. But still I thought if anything the disc utility on the pc would zero out the entire drive much like the full format option.

**SSJX** · 05-21-2008

Yes, the PS3 reserves some space for its own purposes. But just to add, it may be because it uses the FAT32 system rather than the NTFS standard? (and partitioning may take up slightly more space)

**t3nk3n** · 06-12-2008

too bad exfat/HFS file system is not supported at the moment. hopefully they will support it in near future to support larger storage devices better.