Ben-DutkaThere have been more than a few versions of the PlayStation 3, all of which boasting a different size hard drive. But most of you don't have the massive 250GB model and perhaps you're feeling the constraints of a smaller HDD.
Well, maybe this new service that Sony is offering in Japan will someday find its way to the US. According to Andriasang , Sony will upgrade your PS3 hard drive and perform all the functions that go along with such a switch. So for 18,000 yen, they will move over your system software and content and they will even return your old hard drive to you after the job is done. The service covers basically all models, ranging from the original 20GB and 60GB iterations to the more recent 120GB and 160GB offerings. The question is, would Americans respond to such a service, or would you say that most are tech-savvy enough to perform the upgrade on their own? Bear in mind that transferring a ton of content between hard drives can take a while (I had to transfer quite a bit when I upgraded from the 60GB to the 120GB Slim last year), so perhaps for some lazier gamers, the service will be worth the price. After all, you do have to pay for labor in all things, whether you like it or not.
However, for the record, 18,000 yen translates to about $190…and that's steep, regardless of how you view the situation. I suppose I'd have to have a looooot of content to transfer to warrant that kind of price.
seeing how i bought a 250 gig harddrive for like 70 bucks and ten minutes of work (if you could really call it that) and 5 screws later i was booting up my system i would say that that is WWWWAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!! too much.
did you lose any saved games, and did downloaded full PSN games stay intact? I heard resident evil 5 has some issues carrying games over from drive to drive.
Last edited by Superman915 on 4/28/2010 10:09:19 PM
People would want the service but they would never pay $200 for it. Well, hmmm….maybe I should hold my tongue.
We could guage the effectiveness of this price by looking at Target's amount of success with their $100 "console installation" service.
>_> People honestly can't figure out the TWO CORDS necessary to set up a console? Sheesh.
If you charged $200 and threw in a 500GB HDD with the price, it would sell….
Last I checked Geek Squad is still in business. This over priced farce of a service would certainly sell to SOMEONE out there in NA. Though I doubt anyone that frequents this site would.
Out there in N.A.? You're in N.A. too. And yes, I would agree that there are enough dunderheads to support a service like this. Charge them up the wazoo and they'll praise it.
Last edited by fluffer nutter on 4/28/2010 11:16:02 PM
Dunderheads. That's great!
18,000 yen?
100 yen is about 1$.
so in us dollars that Japanese populace will spend 180 for the upgrade.
My question is if this where to come to america and i wanted to switch out my 40 GB will it void the warrenty?
No, it does not void the warrenty, just hold on to the original drive that came with the system.
Why would you hold on to the hard drive? SCEA tell you not to send in the hard drive when you send in the system for repair.
well I dont kow if that JUST changed but when my 60gb YLOD on me one month ago, the sony rep told me I had to put back the original HDD inside before sending it.
Oh, this would be a great service. I had to reformat my 320GB HDD, which basically requires about the same work as replacing the drive, except of course without the 5 minute job of actually physically swapping drives. It took a week to put everything back and re-apply all my game patches. If there was a service to do this, I could so see some people doing it. It's not always so troublesome to replace a drive, it depends on the size and what you have on it. But, it can be a total pain in the a$$, and I'd have paid to have it all done for me.
@Darthvintage,
Swapping the HDD on a PS3 does not void the warranty at all. Sony actually promotes this upgrade and has instructions on their own web site. If you can make a good backup, it's actually pretty simple.
can i has link?
I had a problem with the external drive that I was trying to back up to, so I had to download everything again. It took a damn long time, and I'm not even sure if I got all the stuff I had before. The download list helped though.
Here ya go…
oops, empty paste…
Here ya go…
http://us.playstation.com/support/answer/index.htm?a_id=362
Last edited by TheHighlander on 4/28/2010 11:01:23 PM
You can also find that information in your manual that came with the PS3.
Domo
Manually upgrading the RAM on a computer was a hassle for me, but since then… services that would do it for me are not worth it. Other than the fact that I am saving up for the 250 GB PS3 to be my first Playstation 3 console,before that I was pining over the original backwards compatible 60 GB one. That said I had looked up the directions to changing the HDD on the old model on CNET's website. Combine that with the fact that I've seen youtube videos done for the slimmer model, I'm not too worried about having to do it myself (but since the 250 will be my first I should not have to worry about replacing it with a bigger HDD… yet). If Sony were upgrading the hard drive to some 500-1000 GB model that wasn't sold in stores then maybe I would consider it. Now however, the service is totally unnecessary.
lol 190 bucks? ill just go buy a new system.
Too much
I'd rather start a new game file and enjoy yhe games from the beginning. Nothing wrong with that
goodness, 18,000 yen? Everything is too expensive over there.
Off topic just stumbled on music play back through the XMB while playIng certain games. Anyone else find this feature? Sony must have snuck it in somewhere.
its always been there
the developers have to enable it
What Darth said…
It arrived somewhere during the early revisions of firmware 2.0 (IIRC).
wtf, i'm pretty lame. I just found it now. I tried when i was playing Metal Gear Solid 4 but it didn't work so i assumed it wasn't available. I stumbled upon it while playing Bad Company 2.
I feel like a dummy. 🙂
Last edited by Jawknee on 4/28/2010 11:19:34 PM
LOL you dumbass. Only kidding. That music option is a great feature in so many games. I use it whenever possible.
ahahaha im going through my collection of games now to see which ones that feature is allowed so far only Bad Company 2.
It came with the famous 2.40, if my memory isn't fooling me, but only few games supported it. I used it when I played Midnight Club: LA.
Yeah a few games have supported this one. Burnout has always done it I think, which is cool, that way you can listen to your tunes instead of hearing Avril Lavigne's "boyfriend" 50 million times..(it's on the burnout soundtrack, one major glaring flaw of an otherwise amazing game)
I also seem to remember that Warhawk add this as an option too when they added trophy support. I used it for a bit until I discovered that it was hard to hear proximity mines beeping when the music was going. I just wish more games supported this function. I don't always agree with the music tastes of some developers (see above for burnout reference..)lol
Last edited by CH1N00K on 4/29/2010 10:27:45 AM
Damn that Avril Lavigne track! Damn it straight to hell!
this is like charging someone to change an air filter in a car, just about the easiest thing you could do with a rediculous price tag.
the only thing that is hard about changing the ps3 hard drive is the incredible ease the screws on the case strip, and sony will send you a new one for free
I still don't understand how people can strip that screw. Seriously. Do people not know how to use a screwdriver properly? Do they put a stick between their butt cheeks and use that to loosen the blue screw?
Last edited by fluffer nutter on 4/28/2010 11:19:38 PM
trust me those screws are really easy to strip, or at least the one's on my hard drive case were. The metal they are made of is not very strong and they are screwed in really tight, so the force needed to loosen them up sometimes ends up stripping them.
and I'm talking about the 4 screws on the case, the big one you need to unscrew to get it out would be hard to strip
Last edited by BTNwarrior on 4/29/2010 12:03:30 AM
I've been building computers for years and haven't run into any of those issues with screws before. You thought about lifting weights? Maybe start off with a gallon of milk, perhaps? lol
no need to be an ass about it, this is a common occurance with the hard drive case on ps3's. Such a problem that sony has a replacement policy set up to replace the hard drive cases if the screws end up being stripped in the process of trying to switch a hard drive.
I don't see why you have to go and act like everyone who stripped a screw trying to replace it is a moron.
I wouldn't say that they're morons but I would suggest that they put on a helmet before they head out the door.
actually the problem is that you have to have the perfect screwdriver. If its the wrong size it strips easily, if its the right size, it won't slip at all.
needs to be a hard drive screw driver, like the ones you get when you buy an external hard drive case.
The problem that people have is definitely their choice of screwdriver but it's not a special size. One just needs a smaller one but that's how everyone should approach every screw. The right tool for the right job and if people would just look at the size of the head, before going nuts on the screw, they'd save themselves a lot of grief. It's amazing the amount of work that less than two seconds of looking can save.
$5 kit of mini drivers will do the trick nicely.
No there has been many complaints of the screw stripping.
Trust me, I had the proper mini driver for the job when I swapped my HDD. The screw still stripped. But I've transferred hard drives for some friends as well (a 40gb and a 60 gb) I found for some reason that the screw on my 80gb was in tighter then the others. Now I don't even bother with the screw driver, I grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and gripped the sides of the screw to turn it. A quick 1/4 turn and then it unthreaded by hand.
Last edited by CH1N00K on 4/29/2010 10:35:41 AM
I have done hard drive upgrades and used the Transfer Utility. I used the utility to move over 100GB of data and that whole process took 90 minutes from start to end, including upgrading the hard drive. 320GB hard drive was only $50.
i payed 70 bucks for a 320 gb hdd, and it took all but ten min. to swap them out. obviously i did have to take the time to format a external usb hdd, to fat 32 so the ps3 could read it,and thats a chore when your running windows xp, lol. anyways about 2 hours worth of backing up data, and 2 hours worth of restoring its so much more worth it to do it yourself. especially since you wont have downtime with out the ps3 when you send it off. $190 bucks no thanks!
see now, that's what happens when you can use the transfer utility or a good backup.
My HDD had to be reformatted and I couldn't get a clean backup, so I had to manually copy game saves and then re-download/install everything.
That's a chore.
What hard drive was it?
@highlander
well i kind of ran into the same problem. When i installed the new HDD for whatever reason, (im assuming model of PS3) it wanted the system update before it would format the NEW hdd. So when i went to get the update (3.30) off playstation website. After creating the files and folders (PS3—UPDATE) the file the PS3 created for my back up data went in to the update folder.
So without me realising it after i got the update and the hdd formatted, it couldnt find my backupdata. I was pissed. So i had to manually go in find the file under (PS3—UPDATE) and there was my backup folder sitting inside there! So then moved it to the PS3 folder and had to create on more folder(restore) so the PS3 could find it and ended up having a path like this (PS3—RESTORE—BACKUP). It wasnt hard but it took some time to get it right.
IDK why the back up folder moved when i added the update folder but it did. anyways all is well! and i wouldnt pay $190 bucks to have that done! as i said it was simple but took a few moments of my time!
Last edited by bigrailer19 on 4/29/2010 9:35:53 AM
I think it's a Western Digital 320GB, but I'd have to double check to be sure.
I had problems with Home freezing and requiring a hard reboot, this all came after a power outage some time ago. I concluded that there was drive corruption due to the power outage (the PS3 was on when the outage happened). The hard resets when Home froze didn't help, and the corruption was not something that could be handled with a simple file system restore. I don't think it was the drive's fault.
Last edited by TheHighlander on 4/29/2010 10:24:39 AM
I actually need a HDD upgrade, I've got 40GB now, and it's stuffed. I had to delete all my movies and a lot of demo's/downloadable games just to get Episodes of Liberty City.
Can anybody tell me wether it's hard to transfer your data to another disc if I don't have an external HDD? And if not so, how do I do it then?
Offtopic: I'm taking the plane to the USA this afternoon to stay there on vacation for a week. First time across the Atlantic, woohoo!
[Edit] I just remembered some PS3 update allowed you to link your PS3 to a friend's PS3 and copy it's data. Could I just temporarily push my old HDD in a PS3 from a friend and copy the data to my, freshly retrofitted PS3?
Last edited by faraga on 4/29/2010 12:20:28 AM
faraga-
i dont know if you have found your answer and sorry this one is a little late!
In ragards to linking two ps3' together its more for data transferring, like putting your saved files on his or vice versa. When you take youer hdd out and put another one in it formats the new one erasing everything. so say you put your hdd in a friends your data would be erased because his ps3 has to format your hdd.
honestly i dont know how to transfer the data to a disc havnt had to. i do know that you can use cd-r discs to save updates on though via the playstaion network on your pc though. but i dont know bout the other way around!
With another disc I actually ment hard disc. And yes I'm up early, jetlag.
The price seems pretty steep. Considering how long it takes, when you add an hourly wage for someone else to do this for you, it may actually be a fair price.
The advantage to doing it yourself is that you could have been playing your games during this process and downloading files while you sleep.
290USD!?
WTF!?
THATS MORE THAN HALF THE PRICE OF THE FREAKING SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!!
and i thought M$ were a rip off!!!
amazing what people will pay for these days!
honestly how hard is it to undo one screw, shift out the HDD, undo 4 screws, remove the plate, place new HDD in, redo 4 screws, slide in, replace holding screw, job done.
how hard is that?
a freaking drunk monkey after a blood infusion and a night at a dutch bakery could do it!