AVS › AVS Forum › Gaming & Content Streaming › Home Theater Gaming › PlayStation Area › Turned mine into a 460gb unit with no trouble at all!
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Turned mine into a 460gb unit with no trouble at all!

post #1 of 51
11/25/06 at 5:08am
Thread Starter 
I have to start by saying I'm very impressed so far at how easily external devices like USB drives integrate into the PS3.

I purchased a 400gb Western Digital My Book drive yesterday ($99 after discount and $40 rebate), backed up all my music, jpeg and video (mpeg4) to the drive. I placed the files in their respective directories on the WD drive (Music, Picture and Video). I then connected the drive to my PS3 and after about 3-5 seconds the PS3 saw it and it showed up as USB External Drive under each respective directory on the PS3. I can play everything on the PS3 except some of my Ipod music in .mp4 format. It obviously plays mp3s with no problem.

Now when I download a trailor from the Sony Store it allows me to select the PS3 drive or the External USB!

Here are some pictures of the unit downloading a movie clip to the external Western Digital 400gb drive. Sweeet!
LL
LL
LL
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #2 of 51
11/25/06 at 5:12am
Sweet! That's a nice setup you have there...
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 51
11/25/06 at 5:39am
Can you download demos or install games to the external HD?
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 51
11/25/06 at 5:45am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by santori_time View Post

Can you download demos or install games to the external HD?

I should have created a Games folder. I was thinking of that last night. I'll try it and report back. Now if I can just figure out how to create folders from the PS3 on the external drive I wouldn't have to do it on my PC. I looked but couldn't find that option last night. I'm sure it will work but I want to create the directory first.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 51
11/25/06 at 8:18am
Since the PS3 has 4 USB ports, can it theoretically recognize four drives?


fuad
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 51
11/25/06 at 8:31am
how's the new sxrd with the PS3 by the way? I'll be picking one up real soon, and a playstation by the end of the week if everything goes to plan.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 51
11/25/06 at 8:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by santori_time View Post

Can you download demos or install games to the external HD?

I don't think this is possible. When you download a game/demo it starts going to the HDD without giving you an option of where to save it. Also if you triangle a game or demo to bring up options, there's no option to copy the file anywhere.
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 51
11/25/06 at 9:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bleedblue63 View Post

I should have created a Games folder. I was thinking of that last night. I'll try it and report back. Now if I can just figure out how to create folders from the PS3 on the external drive I wouldn't have to do it on my PC. I looked but couldn't find that option last night. I'm sure it will work but I want to create the directory first.

give us a heads if possible that your external drive can hold the games information and what not instead of it being a multi media hard drive can it be a game drive also is a good questions.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 51
11/25/06 at 9:23am
I have 2 USB drives (400GB and 250GB) attached using a 4-port USB hub so that I'll only use one usb port. Worked like a charm.

In terms of downloading games and demos directly to the usb drive -- not gonna happen w/ this firmware unless you try doing it through Linux (and I don't think you'll be able to have full access to the ps3 store in Linux, though I guess I could try a little later since I have Fedora up and running).
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 51
11/25/06 at 10:30am
FYI: Looking at your screen, you have the horizontal banding problem that I have as well.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 51
11/25/06 at 11:22am
Thread Starter 
Tried it and as stated above you cannot write a game to the USB drive with this firmware. I hope they open it up in the future. Dave, as for the horizontal banding issue I don't see it. Can you elaborate on this? No blob after warm up in case you are wondering.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 51
11/25/06 at 12:23pm
You can see the banding especially in the store. Go to the store and look at the blue backgrounds. You will see dark black lines running along the screen. I see it in your 2 pictures.
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 51
11/25/06 at 6:32pm
I know its been mentioned before, but it would have been nice to have one or two USB ports on the back for this sort of thing. If I'm going to have a external HDD hooked up all the time I don't want to see the cable in the front. Not a big issue, but it sure messes up the clean lines of the PS3. Same goes for the EyeToy.

Now you just need to upgrade the internal drive to 120.
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 51
11/25/06 at 8:55pm
Does the external drive have to be formatted in fat32 for the ps3 to read data from it?
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 51
11/25/06 at 8:59pm
I don't know if it's the ONLY format it can recognize, but when I had the drives formatted in the usual default Mac format, they weren't recognized.
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 51
11/25/06 at 9:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bleedblue63 View Post

I should have created a Games folder. I was thinking of that last night. I'll try it and report back. Now if I can just figure out how to create folders from the PS3 on the external drive I wouldn't have to do it on my PC. I looked but couldn't find that option last night. I'm sure it will work but I want to create the directory first.

can you select a directory to save to when downloading files from the PS3?

Can you save downloads from the marketplace onto the external?

Can you install games on the external?
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 51
11/25/06 at 9:30pm
Quote:


can you select a directory to save to when downloading files from the PS3?

Can you save downloads from the marketplace onto the external?

Can you install games on the external?

All good questions.

And the answer to all (at this time) is 'NO'
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 51
11/25/06 at 9:32pm
Try formatting the drive in NTFS and see what happens. Probably won't read.
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 51
11/25/06 at 11:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewOrlnsDukie View Post

I don't know if it's the ONLY format it can recognize, but when I had the drives formatted in the usual default Mac format, they weren't recognized.

On the mac how did you format the drive to be read by the PS3? I'm on a PPC G5. All I see are Mac OSX Extended and one Unix option in the Disk Utility. Or did you end up having to format it on a PC? Thanks
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 51
11/25/06 at 11:46pm
when I plug my HDD in it says it's an unknown external storage device

or something like that
Reply
Reply
post #21 of 51
11/26/06 at 12:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by eclipz View Post

On the mac how did you format the drive to be read by the PS3? I'm on a PPC G5. All I see are Mac OSX Extended and one Unix option in the Disk Utility. Or did you end up having to format it on a PC? Thanks

I formatted it in Disk Utility as MS-DOS.
Reply
Reply
post #22 of 51
11/26/06 at 12:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewOrlnsDukie View Post

I formatted it in Disk Utility as MS-DOS.

So it's FAT16? I'm confused!

So you didn't use WinXP to format the drive so it's not NTFS.


fuad
Reply
Reply
post #23 of 51
11/26/06 at 8:48am
Thread Starter 
I'm using the standard FAT32 with the Western Digital 400gb and it is flawless. It comes already formatted with FAT32 right out of the box.

You can pick a directory to download to on your external drive for all content on the Sony Store except games and game demos. Trailors are fine.

The PS3 does not give the option to download game demos or games to the external drive at this time. A firmware update would be nice but that remains to be seen if Sony would be so kind to issue one. I created a GAME folder on the external drive but the PS3 ignores it for downloading game demos.

The PS3 has a nice slideshow app for pictures and it has a nice app for playing your videos as well. The MP3 playback is fine too.
Reply
Reply
post #24 of 51
11/26/06 at 3:41pm
and this makes GAMES look or play better?
Reply
Reply
post #25 of 51
11/26/06 at 4:06pm
I thought the PS3 formats the drive for you....
Reply
Reply
post #26 of 51
11/26/06 at 5:04pm
so can you fill the external drive with hidef movies, and the ps3 will play them in hidef?
Reply
Reply
post #27 of 51
11/26/06 at 6:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by roro5pm View Post

so can you fill the external drive with hidef movies, and the ps3 will play them in hidef?

Yep. I downloaded a bunch of 1080p movie trailers from the Quicktime site, loaded them on my external drive (w/ my mac), and, though I had to use pass-through mode on QT Pro to get them to export in a format that was both a) lossless and b) played nicely w/ the ps3, they looked spectacular.
Reply
Reply
post #28 of 51
11/26/06 at 6:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewOrlnsDukie View Post

Yep. I downloaded a bunch of 1080p movie trailers from the Quicktime site, loaded them on my external drive (w/ my mac), and, though I had to use pass-through mode on QT Pro to get them to export in a format that was both a) lossless and b) played nicely w/ the ps3, they looked spectacular.

What format is that?

I tried x.264 movies with .AVI, .MP4, and .MV4 extensions and none of them played.

The PS3 manual states "MPEG2 (TS)", do they mean a Video_TS folder? Or a .TS (Transport Stream)?
Reply
Reply
post #29 of 51
11/26/06 at 6:54pm
We shouldn't need to transcode the movies at all. Eventually someone will figure out how to get the PS3 to play back files natively.
Reply
Reply
post #30 of 51
11/26/06 at 8:04pm
Thread Starter 
I converted a bunch of stuff to MPEG4 for my video Ipod and they all play on the PS3. I downloaded a bunch of 1080P and HD movie and game trailors from the Sony Store as well and they look spectacular on the PS3. They are all playing from my external Western Digital 400gb drive.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: PlayStation Area

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Gaming & Content Streaming › Home Theater Gaming › PlayStation Area › Turned mine into a 460gb unit with no trouble at all!