Playstation 3 with Solid State Drive

horrorxpunk

horrorxpunk

horrorxpunk

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Hi Guys,

Wondered if anyone had any experience in doing this; I want to take out my playstation Hard drive and the clone the image onto a solid state drive. It's a 320GB HDD so a 240GB SSD should suffice. Is it simply a case of taking out the old drive and replacing it with a new SSD or are there advanced configurations I need to go through to make this work correctly.

Replace HDD with SSD and keep my data essentially.
 
Eurogamer/Digital Foundry have done a few articles on SSDs in PS3s (including one a week or two ago), they're worth a look. I've been tempted once or twice but the increase in performance isn't particularly massive for most games really. It improves games that are installed solely on the HDD or those that rely on the HDD for a significant install, but most disc-based games didn't seem to benefit enough to warrant the expense, plus the PS3's SATA speeds are limited anyway so you aren't going to get the most from a fast SSD. Maybe a project for the PS4 instead.

I'm not entirely sure if you can actually clone the drive like that, I have a feeling that if the PS3 detects a different drive it'll simply force you to format it. Give it a go, but keep a usable console-made back-up first.
 
I'll keep the old drive safe, obviously something like playstation plus would be helpful for syncing game saves. If it's a SATA-I or II interface then obviously I am not going to be putting a an OCZ Vertex 4 or anything. I was looking at using an OCZ Vertex 2 something around 200MB/s read. Most of my games are downloaded from PSN store and with games like Demon Souls the load times are massively huge.

I assumed that it would force me to format the drive I just didn't want to have to redownload all my games but I have a fibre connection so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle maybe invest in Playstation plus for 30 days to retain my saves.

I would have thought next gen consoles would be SSD based or hoped at least but looks like that won't be happening yet, but if the PS4 HDD is as easily swapped out it shouldn't be a problem :-)

Thank for your advice Voice I shall take a look at those articles.

** EDIT **

I looked at some benches for the PS3 HDD's mine specifically does about 90MB/s read so that could easily be doubled to 187.5MB/s theoretically if it is only SATA-I interface.
 
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Benchmarks mean nothing - the PS3 file system is overly complex so it really limits how useful a SSD is (well actually its probably more the reliance on a 2xBD-ROM when reading gamedata), also dont forget lack of TRIM. Have heard though it makes a good improvement on PSN games...

Personally I think its a pointless upgrade, especially if you intend to get PS+ and then realise you need space over performance...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
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Unless you have a spare SSD then it's not really worth doing, I put one in mine and the difference was just about noticeable in some games. As someone else mentioned, the lack of TRIM support also means that performance will degrade over time. I'd be surprised if the next generation don't offer/support SSD drives but for the current gen you're limited by other factors.
 
Just to echo what is said above.

It's a terrible performance gain for the financial outlay. I did it for a few weeks before going back to a 1tb drive. Admittedly I don't play GT5 which I understand sees a very large gain, but everything else that I do play and download was almost as fast on a new 1tb as it was on a 256gb ssd.

All of my games saw a few seconds benefit, which I considered much less beneficial than having a huge 1tb drive in there for all the PS+ downloads/PSN purchases.

The custom file system is over engineered around caching from optical to hd and the hardware itself just doesn't support the kind of throughput you'd hope to see.

Here's hoping the next gen systems allow and fully support SSD upgrades, that would make me very happy.
 
If you want to spend on hardware, I'd just put the money towards a PS4, especially if there is any truth in 22nd of November being the release date.
 
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