PS3 hard drive swapping question help?

[Sterist]

if i were to remove my hard drive (working fine, with everything still on it) and put a new one in and do the firmware re-install. would i still be able to put my old one back in and use it or would it then have to be formatted?

please only answer by personal experience... no "think so's" or "maybe's" i have a lot to lose.

[elser1]

aboslutely not... or i think you can't anyhow... maybe you can try.. but it will not work till it's formatted...

[Helmax]

if i were to remove my hard drive (working fine, with everything still on it) and put a new one in and do the firmware re-install. would i still be able to put my old one back in and use it or would it then have to be formatted?

please only answer by personal experience... no "think so's" or "maybe's" i have a lot to lose.

I just did this tonight actually. You have a few options.

You can backup your old HDD to an External Device. When the new drive goes in to your system (for a FAT PS3), it simply asks you to format this new drive if it is not FAT32. This new drive then gets formatted, and your PS3 works like normal.

Afterwards, you can restore your backup if you want. If you backed up a PS3 with Homebrew on it, including backed up games in a GAMEZ folder and cracked PSN games, these will also get backed up, including any retail content you purchased.

The only thing you lose, are your trophies, because they arent synced with the server unless you have PSN access and can do this.

For a SLIM PS3, you need a PS3UPDAT.PUP file on the root of the USB device you are restoring to I believe. Otherwise it does not let you restore, or format I believe.

[Sterist]

You can backup your old HDD to an External Device. When the new drive goes in to your system (for a FAT PS3), it simply asks you to format this new drive if it is not FAT32. This new drive then gets formatted, and your PS3 works like normal.

there's a problem with this statement. the ps3 uses the format called UFS+ (same one that Mac OSX uses). also if it didn't format fat32's then you would have to explain why the ps3's internal CAN hold files larger than 4gb (which is actually a fat32 limitation).

anyhow my question was answered. thank you for your time

[rdurbin]

The only thing you lose, are your trophies, because they arent synced with the server unless you have PSN access and can do this.

Actually its possible to backup trophies. you will need to either ftp or use a filemanager to backup your home folder to your external. when you open your home folder you will see folder with #s like 00000001, 00000002, etc, open the one is for your username, you can check this by opening the localusername file using a text editor. Inside you will see the trophy folder.

After you use the built-in restore feature, copy the trophy folder back into the correct user name folder. You will than need to rebuild database and you will have all your trophies back. You can rebuild database in the recovery menu, when you ps3 off just hold the power button down til you hear the 2 series of 3 beeps.