Sony Encourages PS3 Owners To Upgrade Hard Drives

[BR7]

Sony is apparently encouraging owners of the PS3 console to upgrade the hard drives within the console on their own.
This comes from a blog post on the official PlayStation.com bog by a Social Media Manager at the PlayStation Group.
It states that PS3 owners are encouraged to upgrade their hard drives. They state the fact that the PS3 does not need any type of special HDD. This means that you have the option to change it out and by any type of drive you like for the next-gen console.

Link to story

No matter which model of the PLAYSTATION 3 you’ve got - 20GB, 40GB, 60GB, or 80GB - music, video, and gaming download fiends will find a way to fill up their hard disk drive. Fortunately, the PS3 doesn’t require some hard-to-find proprietary HDD - you can swap it out yourself with the kind of drive found at most electronics retailers and on the internet

I understand you can use any brand of HDD, does this mean there is no HDD size limit as well ?

[Chewy]

I would guess 250 gigs is the largest you can find now

[BR7]

I thought 250 may be it's max as well.The way they put it, I thought there would be a chance there was no HD size limit.I was hoping to throw a 500GB one in there
Thanks

[Chewy]

give it a year or two, right now all I see available in the 5400 rpm laptop drives are
250gigs max

wonder when they will add esata

[admin]

Won't opening up the console and swapping the HDD void the warranty?

(I suppose the warranty will be over by the time you need more than 40/60/80 GB)

[Chewy]

I suppose the warranty will be over by the time you need more than 40/60/80 GB

didn't you say they were adding avi support, h264 would eat 80 gigs up pretty fast

[admin]

I think streaming H.264 over a network is a better solution - most external storage drives now support UPnP/DNLA, so you don't even need a computer, just a networked drive. Besides, the PS3 uses FAT32 and has the associated file size limits, making it pretty useless for large files. You can easily connect external drives to the PS3 as well (as long as its formated to FAT32), so there's no need to open up the console and replace the drive unless you're desperate to have a "neater" storage solution.

[BR7]

Won't opening up the console and swapping the HDD void the warranty?

There have been numerous reports of people calling and asking Sony CS if this will void the warranty and the answer was no being it was being encouraged by them(I also seen it in an article if I can find it I will post the link).From what I have been reading(if I understood correctly) is that you can hook up a 500GB external drive if you don't feel comfortable changing out the HDD .It would be the cheaper way to go as well

[doctorhardware]

I think it would be better to use the external hard drive and less of a pain than taking apart the PS3.

[BR7]

I thought the externals just hooked up to the USB ports ?

LMAO NM I misread your post

[admin]

It's a technical gray area here in Australia legally speaking, but I wish somebody would hack the PS3 to remove both DVD and Blu-ray region control. Not so much an issue for people in the US, but Blu-ray region B sucks in both selection and pricing.

[Chewy]

that brings to mind a question I have been wondering about, how is an OS stored completely in bios? very small OS or a very large bios

[BR7]

It's a technical gray area here in Australia legally speaking, but I wish somebody would hack the PS3 to remove both DVD and Blu-ray region control. Not so much an issue for people in the US, but Blu-ray region B sucks in both selection and pricing.

Here is a site that shows which USA titles will play on Region B players if your lookng to get some imports

[admin]

Yes, I often refer to a similar thread on this Australian forum. It seems more and more titles are region-locked these days (all of Fox, most new Sony, MGM, Disney) - the recent Amazon Buy One Get One Free sale only had a few titles that I could buy, most of them were Warner ones.

What I want is Ratatouille, but our local Blu-ray version won't be released until March or later, even though the local DVD version is available next week.

Lots of people here in Australia have 2 PS3s, one Region A and one Region B, or sometimes they simply don't buy the local version, just the Region A version.

[Aomircko]

Won't opening up the console and swapping the HDD void the warranty?

(I suppose the warranty will be over by the time you need more than 40/60/80 GB)

No, you don't "open up the console" the HDD is plugged in from the side. If you look in the manual for the PS3 there's instructions on how to change it (at least with the EU 60Gb machine)