PS3 may need a Hard Drive Upgrade

HotShot

HotShot

HotShot

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1 Jun 2005
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87
Hi all:
2 days ago I downloaded DC Universe whilst I was out, after I got back and it had finished downloading I played it for awhile, logged out and quit the game to go watch the footie. (Left my ps3 turned on) After the footie had finished my brother asked me to play some pro evo online with him so I booted up pes and accepted his invite, after awhile of loading my ps3 (slim) froze and I had to turn it of via the power button on the front of the console.

Upon restarting my ps3 I noticed when I was scrolling through the xmb menu it was lagging/micro pausing. Everytime this happened the hdd light was flashing. Also after starting pro evo and playing offline matches it takes twice as long as normal not only for the game to load but for the matches themselves and I now occasionally get audio issues where the sound skips.

All this happens when the hdd light is flashing and when the hdd is not flashing and there is no disc in, it sounds like the hdd is clicking. I have tried rebuilding the database and even reformating the hard drive via ps3's safe mode. Up until the crash on Pro Evo everything was fine, no lag or sound issues or clicking noises, so now im left wondering if I need a new hdd & was hoping someone could give me their opinion.
 
clicking doesn't sound good, tbh it could be anything though, we can only guess from over the internet, the only way to truly find out would be to open it up and look at it or test it.

buy a new hard drive and test it out, if its works fine then you know its the hard drive, but it could also be the disc is dirty (i have loads of problems if fifa has 1 speck of dirt or a tiny mark on it), i think it's a dodgy copy from the printing press tbh as i have no issues from other games, so long ast its 100% clean its fine though, or a blu ray drive or laser issue.

test the hard drive first to rule that out though.
 
The Warranty ran out in october.

I had laser problems twice on my old phat ps3 and it caused nothing like this.
Regarding the clicking it could be described as rythmic and generally occurs when starting the ps3 or doing something on the ps3 to cause the hdd to start reading/loading and the clicking starts and continues for awhile until ive left it to settle or not do anything. During games it's more continous as I would expect. Stuff like pressing triangle on a game save to view more information causes a few seconds pause/lag or pressing select in the internet browser to view favourites does the same as well as just browsing through some of the xmb menu.

Edit:
Was just wondering if anyone knows if the phat ps3's hdd will fit a slims? Still got my phat 40gig ps3 which works but the lasers a bit dodgy so was thinking I may be able to swap the hdd over and give it a test.
 
Last edited:
HotShot said:
Edit:
Was just wondering if anyone knows if the phat ps3's hdd will fit a slims? Still got my phat 40gig ps3 which works but the lasers a bit dodgy so was thinking I may be able to swap the hdd over and give it a test.
Click to expand...

it will fit but it wont reconise the phats drive unless you format it once in the slim.
 
They're just standard 2.5" drives so you can use almost any really, but as above it'll need to be formatted by the new console.
 
you need to take it out of the phat cradle, slims and phats use different hard drive cradles. or some models do anyway, so be sure to check properly. because i recently had to buy one off ebay.
 
Update

Sorry for the long post!

I Finally got time to swap my hdd's over today with some interesting results.
Before swapping hdd's I had chance to install the sims 3 and play it for awhile as I wanted to test another game besides pro evo, whilst playing sound would stutter and the game would pause for a few seconds then continue, for example when a sim is walking or interacting with something the animation would stop then continue a few seconds later. This never happened before I started to encounter the problem described in my earlier posts.

So after turning of the console and disconecting everything I removed the hdd's from both my phat and slim ps3's and swapped them over. Turned on the slim ps3, reformatted and installed the latest firmware and once it booted up everything runs fine, no lag/pauses in the xmb menu or when playing the sims 3, everytinhg runs as it did before the problems on the other hdd started.

Next I turn on the phatt ps3, reformat the hdd (it didn't ask to install firmware for some reason?) scroll through the menu's and no lag/pauses like there was when it was in the slim console, couldn't try a game as I mentioned before the laser is dodgy and it rarely reads blu ray discs. but everything seemed fine and normal as far as scrolling through the menus, signing into psn and scrolling through friends list didn't pause every few seconds like it did when the hdd was in the slim.

I was supprised the slims hdd was fine in the phatts console and the phatts was fine in the slim, I thought maybe the reformat after putting the slims hdd into the phatt ps3 may have fixed it or something so I then decided to undo everything ive just done and put the slims hdd back into the ps3 slim.

After changing the slims hdd back to it's original, reformatting and installing the firmaware it booted up and instantly from scrolling through the menu's I got the lag/pasues that I had before I 1st swapped any of the drives.

So again I remove the slims original drive from the slim, put it in the phatt ps3, reformatt it, and it's running fine in the phatt ps3, whilst the phatt ps3's hdd is running fine in the slim ps3. So my old phatt ps3 has got a bigger 300gb hdd that seems to be working fine and my slim ps3 now has a much smaller 40gb hdd that seems to be working fine. But only the slims will read discs propperly lol.

Sorry if that got a bit confusing and if anyone has any thoughts/suggestions feel free to reply, meanwhile i'll go shop for a new hdd.
 
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