How to upgrade your PS3 Hard Drive with Software 3.41

Disclaimer: This guide only works if you have the hard drive that has 3.41 installed on it before you tried to upgrade to a larger drive. If your hard drive died or something else this guide won’t be much use. I am working on a way to upgrade the drive without the original drive but Sony might beat me to it. So for those of you in this situation you will just have to wait….Sorry.

What you need:

PC with two SATA ports

EASEUS Disk Copy

Original PS3 HD containing 3.41

New PS3 HD

External HD for Backup

Some basic computer knowledge

 

LET’S DO THIS!

Step 1: Backup Data—Unless you don’t want to save your data…..

Using the backup utility on the PS3 backup your existing data to the external HD.

There are guides on how to do this online.

http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/console/articles/5957.aspx

If you want to save your trophies. Sync them to the PSN server using the options for the Trophies tab.

When I backed up my PS3 the Game Saves didn’t get backed up. Make sure you make a couple of copies to be sure you don’t lose them!

Step 2: Get yourself a copy of EASEUS Disk Copy

This program is free and does a sector—sector copy of your PS3 HD.

The download is a zip file containing an ISO that you need to burn to a writable CD using and ISO burning program, such as ImageBurn.

Again, there are guides on how to do this online.

Step 3: Connect the drives to PC.

I recommend disconnecting all existing HD’s from your PC to ease with confusion. This must be done with the computer powered off. If you don't know this already, this guide might be beyond you. And it’s time to ask a friend for help.

You need to connect the original PS3 HD and the HD that you plan to use as your upgrade to your PC.

Step 4: COPY!!!!

Once everything is connected insert the EASEUS Disk Copy CD into your PC and point your BIOS to boot from the CD.

 

Select “Start Disk Copy 2.3”

Select “Disk Copy”. Click Next.

Select Source Drive—The original PS3 drive.

Select Destination Drive—The one you want to upgrade to.

Click next a few times and wait for the process to finish successfully. With a little luck it should work the first try. It did for me.

Step 5: Screw the new HD into the HD caddy (carriage) and Install it into the PS3.

Step 6: Turn on your PS3.

It should turn on just fine. Mine booted up as if the HD hadn’t been changed at all. Except for one small difference.

                                             Before                                                                                                                   After

The PS3 is still only showing that it has 46gb left so on to the next step!

Step 7: Make sure HD is completely useable.

Now even though it sees the entire drive it might be a good idea to simply format the HD. This is where the external HD comes in.

Format the HD through the “System Settings” menu. This will delete all of your game data and your saved games. If you want them back connect that external HD that I had you backup everything onto and run the Backup Utility again.

After this is done you can get your trophies back by going to the trophies menu and selecting Sync with Server in the options.

Step 8: Enjoy your bigger and better HD with 3.41!

As is with any upgrade or update, let’s pray that this is the fix-all. I have only done some initial testing but its seems as though everything is working just fine.  More people will confirm that this works or doesn’t. It worked for me and I am confident it should work for you!

After playing with mine a bit I realized that I was reading the Free Space wrong. You must format the hard drive after the copy and then it will show this.