couple of questions about the hdd exchange feature

[oldirtdog]

i'm planning to upgrade my internal hdd to a samsung spinpoint 1tb and was wondering the best way to get my ps3 slim 160gb original purchased "yes purchased a long time ago while i still had access to psn" psn titles, gamesaves and dlc moved over to the new hard drive. will the exchange utility do this if i plug the 1tb into an external enclosure, preform the hdd exchange, and then take it out of the enclosure and install it into the ps3 internal drive bay. also, this process wouldn't turn my 1tb hdd into a 160gb hdd (which is what a 1:1 clone would do). also if this does in fact work without changing the size of the new hard drive would everything work as it did before (except trophies since we can't sync them on psn anymore and yes i have read about the rebuild database trick but there are reports of not being able to earn new trophies afterwards).

last but not least, if all this works again would i be able to then update to true blue firmware and still have everything work the way it does now with true blue on my 160gb hdd.

thanks in advance

[Misfit]

Yes, thats what the exchange will do, clone your hdd to the usb hdd, remove the new drive from the casing and replace. It will recognize that it's 1tb and from my experience, everything works the same as it did prior to the switch, but you'll have more hdd space. I've performed this on 3 ps3's with positive results each time, i've even kept the originsl hdds and put them back in the usb casing.

Can't answer your tb question, but I couldn't see why this wouldn't operate, anyone know about this?

[oldirtdog]

thanks misfit, i'll give it a try on thursday when my new hdd gets here and post the results.

[Misfit]

Oh, BTW, you need to make sure your 1TB would fit, most of them are physically too big

[oldirtdog]

thanks again, i made sure it was a 9.5mm height drive before i ordered it, i did way too much research on what should be such a simple procedure... the model of the 1tb drive i got is SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB 1TB 5400 RPM. and i snagged it for 99.99 from newegg.

hdd passed smart test and sector scan and i have started the upgrade with the exchange utility, or so i thought... i have a nyko ps3 hub that might have been interefering with the transfer process or the drive needs to be formatted ntfs in order to be recognized by the utilitly???

attempt #1 unformatted drive and nyko hub connected - stuck on please wait screen after prompt to connect controller with usb cable.

attempt #2 fat32 formatted drive and nyko hub connected - stuck on please wait screen after prompt to connect controller with usb cable.

attempt #3 ntfs formatted drive and nyko hub DISconnected - please wait screen popped up for 10 seconds and the transfer process started.

attempt #3 failed after the transfer during the hdd database rebuild and prompted me to format the new hdd while it was connected internally and not through usb with the enclosure... -_-

attempt#4 ps3 internally formatted drive and nyko hub DISconnected - please wait screen popped up for 10 seconds and the transfer process started only 104 more minutes to go...

attempt#4 FAILED AT THE DATABASE REBUILD PART

no way in hell i'm wasting another 2 hours trying it again, this time i'm going to use the ps3 backup/restore utility as i already backed up the orignal hdd to another fat32 formatted usb external.

attempt#5 restoring from backup using the ps3 backup restore utility, 56 minutes to go...

attempt#5 GREAT SUCCESS!!! using the ps3 utility the restore from backup completed (thank god i had the foresight to do a backup last week b4 the new hdd got here). all my saves are intact (including demon's souls which i believe is a locked save, yoda dlc worked on soul caluibr IV, and all my previously purchased psn games worked after the restore (including tekken dark resurrection and wipeout hd/fury). trophies are gone, but the only one i'm really going to miss is "zico", damn that one was hard to get. what did not work after the transfer was the dlc for mortal kombat (fixed after reinstalling the game - had a hell of a time trying to get all the dlc reinstalled and making it work from the internal hdd as it was installed to an external before, but i finally got it to work) and little big planet dlc (wait hold up wtf it looks like my act.dat file decided to disappear all on it's own causing the little big planet dlc and tekken dr and wipeout fury/hd to stop working...) luckily i have a backup of the exdata folder so that all works again now. and after everything i upgraded to the true blue 2.5 firmware and all is good.

thanks for your help, and i hope all this can help someone who is looking to upgrade their internal hdd as i found 0 documentation or walkthroughs for using the rebug hdd exchange utility (which didn't work for me at all for whatever reason). got 600 gigs left, BRING ON THOSE EBOOTS TB TEAM

[Misfit]

Dude, the exchange does the format itself, It works fine. Maybe your hub, just did this http://www.ps3crunch.net/forum/threa...egion-changing

Thats the 4th time i've used it

[mp1]

Misfit is right, the Rebug HDD exchange works as advertised. I used it just a few months ago to upgrade my slim to a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint (same as OP) and my Phat to a 500GB Seagate. All went perfectly smooth on the first try.