PS3 HD Transfer Issue

[Hawksmoor]

Hey folks,

About two months ago my PS3 fat died and I decided to have it repaired. After maybe 6 hours of total use, it has died again. I've decided it's not worth pouring money into another repair. Luckily, my parents had purchased a PS3 years ago as it was the least expensive Blu-Ray player at the time, so I was able to get theirs after giving them one of my standard Blu-Ray players.

In any case, I was doing some research online concerning transferring my HD to this other PS3, and apparently if you simply swap the drives the PS3 will require me to format it. Are there any viable alternatives that would allow me to preserve and transfer the data from my dead PS3 to the working one? Maybe getting a drive enclosure and transferring the data to an external HDD and then from there to the working PS3?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Hey folks,

About two months ago my PS3 fat died and I decided to have it repaired. After maybe 6 hours of total use, it has died again. I've decided it's not worth pouring money into another repair. Luckily, my parents had purchased a PS3 years ago as it was the least expensive Blu-Ray player at the time, so I was able to get theirs after giving them one of my standard Blu-Ray players.

In any case, I was doing some research online concerning transferring my HD to this other PS3, and apparently if you simply swap the drives the PS3 will require me to format it. Are there any viable alternatives that would allow me to preserve and transfer the data from my dead PS3 to the working one? Maybe getting a drive enclosure and transferring the data to an external HDD and then from there to the working PS3?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

The "dead" PS3 NEEDS to be functional to accommodate a HDD transfer via the transfer tool.

There are no alternate methods of extracting and transferring the data.

What is the operational status of the PS3? Is it YLOD/won't power on, or is it won't read discs?

If it wont read discs but you still can power on/access the XMB, it's simple you can follow these steps to do a 1:1 HDD transfer to your new PS3 that should only take an hour or so...

http://manuals.playstation.net/docum...erutility.html

[Hawksmoor]

The "dead" PS3 NEEDS to be functional to accommodate a HDD transfer via the transfer tool.

There are no alternate methods of extracting and transferring the data.

What is the operational status of the PS3? Is it YLOD/won't power on, or is it won't read discs?

If it wont read discs but you still can power on/access the XMB, it's simple you can follow these steps to do a 1:1 HDD transfer to your new PS3 that should only take an hour or so...

http://manuals.playstation.net/docum...erutility.html

It will turn on, but then quickly turns off while making several beeps. The light flashes red.

[theclaw]

You'd need to contact Sony support. Or try to hunt down presumably illegal hacking tools (if they exist yet). PS3 ties HDDs to the console in some way.

I don't know how well understood PS3's file system is either. In any case there are reasons one can't conventionally mount PS3 HDDs as a PC drive letter without losing the PS3 data.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

It will turn on, but then quickly turns off while making several beeps. The light flashes red.

Yeah, that's going to require servicing to do a system transfer.

If you don't want to go that route, purchases are tied to your PSN account and can all be re downloaded to a new PS3.

[Robocop2]

Do you have a spare HDD enclosure laying around? Since all they use are SATA drives it should concieveably be possible to put the old drive in an enclosure and copy the data to your computer, get the new drive formatted and then transfer the files to it I would think theoretically this would work but maybe its a little different process than simply changing out drives in the same PS3.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Do you have a spare HDD enclosure laying around? Since all they use are SATA drives it should concieveably be possible to put the old drive in an enclosure and copy the data to your computer, get the new drive formatted and then transfer the files to it I would think theoretically this would work but maybe its a little different process than simply changing out drives in the same PS3.

PS3 HDD data is not recognized by PCs. You can't copy it out and futzing around with the drive like that is risky, he might lose the data.

Only way to rescue the data is get the dead PS3 working and do a PS3 to PS3 transfer.

[xelement5x]

PS3 hard drive data is also encrypted to the system as well, making a simple swap impossible. Thanks SONY!

If you're game to try a little questionable stuff on your PS3, you can try the hair dryer trick to get it up and running again for a short period to copy all the data off. Essentially you run a hair dryer pointing at the back vents to really poorly "reflow" the solder for the system chips. It's hit or miss, but I've helped 2 different people recover their files this way. Just do a bit of googling about the hair dryer trick and you'll get a better overview of what I'm talking about.

Note however, don't consider the hair dryer trick even a semi permanent fix. Get it going, get your files off quick, and then stop using the system. You need a proper reflow or reball to fix the YLOD issues on the PS3.

[Hawksmoor]

PS3 hard drive data is also encrypted to the system as well, making a simple swap impossible. Thanks SONY!

If you're game to try a little questionable stuff on your PS3, you can try the hair dryer trick to get it up and running again for a short period to copy all the data off. Essentially you run a hair dryer pointing at the back vents to really poorly "reflow" the solder for the system chips. It's hit or miss, but I've helped 2 different people recover their files this way. Just do a bit of googling about the hair dryer trick and you'll get a better overview of what I'm talking about.

Note however, don't consider the hair dryer trick even a semi permanent fix. Get it going, get your files off quick, and then stop using the system. You need a proper reflow or reball to fix the YLOD issues on the PS3.

Thanks, I think I'll give this a shot.