Upgrading your PS3 hard drive

With Playstation Plus continually giving out free full games, my 160GB PS3 Slim was getting rather stuffed. Noticed at first I would have to keep deleting rented movies from it, so I could download more things. I knew this day was coming but I just kept putting it off.

Yes you CAN use a 1TB drive, but it must be 9.5mm tall, otherwise it will not physically fit into your PS3. Most are 12.5mm tall which is too big. I found the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB 2.5inch internal hard drive to be the correct size. The model number I had for my PS3 Slim was WD10JPVT. Shop around but make sure you know how tall the drive is.

There are 6 steps.
1. Format the backup drive to FAT32
2. Plug it into your PS3
3. Back up the files from the PS3 to the external drive.
4. Take out the old hard drive and put in the new one
5. Download and perform the PS3 firmware update.
6. Restore the back up to the new hard drive.


1. By default the 320GB hard drive I had was formatted to NTFS, which needed changing to FAT32 before the PS3 could even know it was there and back up the files. I found a utility here called Fat32format, and left it at the default settings. I just ran the program. Within a couple of minutes I had a completely formatted external USB drive that the PS3 would be able to recognize.

2. Plugged it into the PS3, and selected Backup from the System menu of the PS3. The PS3 will recognize your external drive and tell you if you proceed, that is where your files will go. I tried without formatting the external drive to FAT32 and leaving it at NTFS, and the PS3 didn't see it. So when I selected to do a backup it was as if there was no external drive plugged in. You have to format your backup storage to FAT32.

3. Then you sit back and wait for the backup to happen

I have no idea if just over 4 hours is normal, but at least you now know rough wait times.

4. Then you just pop out the old drive, which is super simple. Hats off to Sony for making this such a breeze.
Click here for the link to the most no-nonsense video on YouTube, which the creator disabled embedding for so it can't be included in this page.
4a. Flip over the PS3 and pop off the screw cover that's in the center of the front edge of the unit.
4b. Take out the screw.
4c. Slide off the small hard drive cover (it's very easy to do).
4d. Pull out the tray containing the hard drive.
4e. Remove the 4 screws which keep the hard drive in the tray.
4f. Pop it out, pop in the new one and do the above in reverse. It really only takes as long to read as it does to do it.

Yep, that's a 1TB drive going in there. You just have to make sure it's only 9.5mm tall, otherwise it won't fit. The 160GB original drive on the right is still in the tray which slides out of the PS3. The hard drive is attached to the tray with 4 screws. The piece of metal in the center (part of the metal tray) is for the single screw on the bottom of the PS3 Slim to secure the tray once it's back inside the unit.

There isn't anything that is hard to remove, or you might break. All the parts easily come off and on again without having to worry if you've done it properly.

5. Download a firmware update from the Sony Playstation website, to get your PS3 in a working state. Without it, your PS3 says it cannot do anything and asks you to insert the storage medium with the firmware on it, and hold Start and Select for 5 seconds. So I plugged in the flash drive, held down Start and Select on the controller. A few seconds later it went through the firmware update process to get me to a standard PS3 with nothing (yet) on it. You need to do this step to be able to navigate through the system menu to perform the restoration of your backed up files from the external hard drive.

6. Restore the files.

This took longer than the back up, and you're probably looking at similar times.

I was wondering what it would back up, and having PlayStation Plus, would it back up the games that were free for a limited time only and the time had run out. It restored everything. Even the wifi settings. So once the backup was restored it was exactly as before I'd started the process, except that now I had a LOT more space.

931GB looks to be the space I'm left with for now, but it does beat just the 160GB I had previously.

Now with PlayStation Plus I get the option to back up saves to the cloud, which in the event of a hard drive failure means you don't have to start games over. In these current times of 60 hours or more to finish games (or cross play on the PS Vita) it's a nice not having to worry about backing up saves.

I would say that upgrading your PS3 hard drive is the perfect project for someone who may be a little nervous of taking a screwdriver to a piece of expensive electronics, but needs that first success to get over it once and for all.