Help with installing new hard drive (w/o transferring old stuff)

#1 Posted by EvGar (121 posts) - 1 year, 7 months ago

Hey guys, I recently got a new 500GB hard drive my for my PS3, a old, fat 40GB, but have been finding it difficult to get a hold of an external hard drive to back up all of my stuff from my old hard drive on (an issue having to do with money and friends not really coming through). So my question is, what would happen if I were to just throw the new hard drive into my PS3? Can I still recover my account and just download stuff onto it (i.e. games purchased)?. I can live without my old saves and installs, for the most part. Or is this not possible and I have to format the new hard drive in some fashion?

If anyone could shed some light on the issue, that would be wonderful.

#2 Posted by EvGar (121 posts) - 1 year, 7 months ago

Anyone?

#3 Posted by TheJohn (527 posts) - 1 year, 7 months ago

Just slap that sucker in there and hit go. No problem at all. When you log on to PSN your account will still be there, in the cloud, and any games you've purchased from the store are just sitting there, waiting for you to download them again.

I did this a while ago, and did the whole backup/migrate data thing, and had I known how ungodly slow the backup process is I would have just started afresh with a clean hdd. It might be annoying to have to download updates to your games all over again, but unless you're on a stupid slow connection this will be faster than using the PS3 backup feature.

Just make sure you sync your trophies before you change your hdd, and maybe get a usb and move your important save games.

#4 Edited by Tactical_Kill (1686 posts) - 1 year, 7 months ago

I actually did this recently with my ps3, because my hard drive was starting to fail. You can just put the new one in and you can re download all your games and add-ons. Once the hard drive is reformatted you can then re sync it with your account and get all you trophy data again, and re download the games.

Also if there are a few save files that you want to keep you can do what i did. Just take any flash drive and plug it in and transfer the few files you want to keep. The down side to this is you can't transfer copyright protected files (like ME2 save profiles) like you could if you backed up the hard drive. But it should work for most games files.

EDIT: I just checked to see what hard drive you bought. Its actually the same exact one i bought. Been using it since April and haven't had any problems with it at all. Hope you enjoy the larger hard drive space :D

#5 Posted by iam3green (14380 posts) - 1 year, 7 months ago

you just install the hard drive and download everything. it's what my friend did.

PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 (often abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console created and released by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

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