Hey guys, So I recently filled up my slims 160GB Hard Drive and thought I would invest in a a bigger HDD. So I got a 250GB one and swapped out the hard drives. My brain must have been off because when I turned on the PS3 I realized I did not back up my saves to a thumb drive!

I have PS+ but it will only upload game saves if you launch that game while the service is active. It won't back up older saves of games that you had on the system.

So my question is, I know that if I tried to put in my old 160GB HDD in, it will say that it needs to format the drive even though its already formatted and will erase the data on the 160GB one. I tried plugging in the 160GB drive into my mac with a usb adapter and it says that it can not recognize the drive. So does anybody know any way I can retrieve this data off the 160GB HDD?

Nope, sorry bud. ._.

Put the old one back in the same PS3 and hope it doesn't make you format it, otherwise there is no way to get at the data.

You can't do anything about it. You're fucked.

I dont see why it would ask you to format the old drive. Just pop the original one in, back up your stuff and you should be ok.

If you filled the 160 GB drive then why do you only want to transfer over the saves? If the other stuff on there is so inessential then just delete it. Otherwise, you should perform a proper backup after placing the old drive back into the PS3. A thumb drive won't do it. If you don't have an external drive handy, you should put the new 250 GB drive into a USB enclosure, format it with FAT32, perform the backup, and copy over those backup files to your computer. Then you can safely format the 250 GB drive in the PS3, format the 160 GB drive to FAT32, move the backup files to the 160 GB drive, and perform a restore. Why did you "invest" in such a marginally higher capacity drive, by the way?

@rudyarr: The old hard drive shouldn't need to be reformatted if you put it back into the original PS3 that it was in. PS3s only ask you to format drives if it recognizes that the drive has not been formatted by that PS3. Or at least that is my understanding of how it works. You can manually upload any save files from the Save Data Utility so you should be able to transfer all your files onto the cloud assuming they all add up to under 150MB.

@mosespippy: the reason I am so hesitant to attempt to put the old drive back in is because I already downloaded all of my games on the new hdd. and if it says it has to format the old drive..then it will just be a super long process. It also sucks that sony has limited the download of all games to just 2 times as opposed to the 5 it allowed before. So I since I already downloaded these games twice it will lock me out again.

I made a horrible mistake lol and didn't even think about it

@KamasamaK: because I got it for 5 dollars :)

@rudyarr: Pretty good reason, I guess.

About the limited number of downloads, that's only how many PS3's on which the content can be active. Now I don't know whether they count a PS3 with a different hard drive a different "system", but they shouldn't. For more information about activation, see here.

@rudyarr: You can deactivate your systems to basically reset your download count. At least that is my understanding of how it works. You can do it from a PC and then when you turn on your PS3 you can go to the manage account section and activate the PS3 so you won't have to redownload what's on that hard drive.

http://us.playstation.com/support/answer/index.htm?a_id=2616

yeah as others have said you shouldn't have to format if you put it in the exact same ps3, and your not limited to 2 downloads your limited to 2 activations you can download as much as you want I believe.

Also if you do get the old HDD working you can upload all of your old saves to the cloud all you have to do is hit Triangle on any save file and the option will be there. If you don't want to upload every save file just upload the ones that are copy protected like Dark Souls or Vanquish. That is the only way you can move them to another system.

Don't use a mac, that would solve one of your problems. As for the HDD I believe your boned.

thanks guys. i'll give it a shot and post my results tomorrow!

Ok guys I have returned with the results!!

It is possible to switch between Hard drives on the fly and continue to use both without any trouble. I popped my original Hard drive in there and it booted up like normal. Copied all my saves to the cloud with PS+ and boom!!! Success!

@rudyarr: hi man i know your message is 2 years old but, I wonder if you tried to swap 2 discs with a ps3 super slim

Weirdest necro thread I have seen in awhile.