so i put a 320gb western digital in my 40gb ps3. when i checked in the system info it said there was 298gb available (i know that's normal for a 320gb drive). What was weird is before i installed one game, demo or video it said something like 263 or 268gb out of 298gb available.

Is the OS really 30GB? When i just had the 40GB in before i loaded anything it said the drive was 37GB (so i lost 3GB instead of 22GB) and it said 30GB available (so OS was taking about 7GB).

I had a tech friend tell me that maybe Sony is "reserving" a percentage for their own use. So it always reserves something in the neighborhood of 7-10%, so obviously the larger the drive the more you lose up front.

Any comments? i'd like to put it to rest soon so i can start installing stuff and just enjoy the ps3. When XMB asked me if i wanted to format it at the beginning i said yes so i think i installed it correctly. I guess i don't ultimately care since i got the drive for such a low price off ebay but i just want to know if there's anything i can do to squeeze use out of that last 30gb :)

thanks for the help.

Please search. There has been a ton of good threads on swapping hard drives and have discussed your questions.

Here is one example

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=989759&highlight=hard+drive+OS+size

Please search. There has been a ton of good threads on swapping hard drives and have discussed your questions.

Here is one example

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=989759&highlight=hard+drive+OS+size

i did a search and came up with nothing. guess i just suck. but thanks for the link, it was EXACTLY what i was looking for. i still like some awesome techno nerd to tell me precisely why i'm losing 30gb to the OS but at least i know this happens to anyone that puts a 320gb hdd in their ps3.

i understand the loss of the first 25gb or whatever to the two ways we count storage (1gb as opposed to 1024mb), but it's just strange to me that the OS takes a % instead of a static amount so it only takes a small portion on the 40gb and a HUGE portion on a 320gb. Does this mean my 320gb will run more efficiently or just that it has a lot more wasted space that will never get used? i'm 95% sure it's the latter.:(

does anyone know what the file structure is on a PS3 formatted drive? most linux OS's run on ext2/3, and formatting the HDD in that format can result in some space loss due to blocking setup. I lost something like 30gb for reserved blocks on an ext3 drive, but you can change that in linux. not sure if that's the cause here too or what, but i just thought i'd throw that out there.

Please search. There has been a ton of good threads on swapping hard drives and have discussed your questions.


See tag. ;)