How to add an External USB hard drive to the PS3
PS3 Help Guides / Sunday, March 16th, 2008
If you have amassed plenty of videos, music and pictures on your computer over the years then why not stick it all on an external hard drive and hook it up to your PS3. Easier, and much quicker, than streaming files over your home network this is an ideal solution for users with massive hard drive needs.
With the advances in the PS3 software, many video types can now be played and nearly all music and picture formats are also available.
So what do you need?
A nice big external hard drive (in theory any size up to around 2000 Gb is possible) although most people will opt for something between 250 and 500 Gb.
Let’s sort it out!
The perfect external HD for the PS3 is the fantastic 500Gb Seagate.
It has a sleek black outer casing, and a super fast 7200 rpm drive for quick file access.
(Available for only £79.99)
Or 750Gb for £89.99
Next up we need to format your drive so that the PS3 will recognise it. We need to format the hard drive to utilise the FAT32 file system. First problem is that we can’t do this using the normal Windows format facility. Windows can only format FAT32 drives up to 32Gb.
You will need to download a program such as Swissknife (Download from here). This is a free download and can format your massive external hard drive in the FAT32 file system.
When you have formatted your external drive you will need to create 4 folders so that the PS3 can recognise where you put your files.
Name these four folders:
Photo
Video
Music
Game
You can then fill these folders with your pictures, videos and music - make sure you put the files in the right folder and then after you have disconnected the drive from your PC it’s time to hook it up to your PS3.
Enjoy!
Tags: External Hard Drive, PS3 Hard Drive, PS3 Help Guides, USB
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March 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
i already have a external hardrive with lots of songs and movies if i do this methoud will the information be lost
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Andrew, if you’re external HD is not FAT32 then unfortunately you will have to format it which will indeed result in the loss of your data. You could transfer your files from your external HD temporarily to either your PC and/or burn them on to re-writable DVD’s before you format the external HD.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
i got a Philips 500gb hdd from argos for £80 i think or less so i can format this too FAT32 and have all 500gb or do i have to split it?
April 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Swissknife dosen’t work on vista for me any one having this too?
April 8th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
i have an external 40gb drive but windows does not let me format it as FAT32. It is a very old drive, could this be the reason? is there any way 2 get this old drive to FAT32 format, because it would really help me transfer things from pc to ps3
April 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Swissknife works for me on Windows Vista. Please make sure you downloaded the latest version.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Could you use a portable external HDD? i.e. one which is powered by the PS3 via USB. Would this have any negative effects on the console?
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:11 am
Does the PS3 recognize more than on partition on the USB Ext HDD. Im having trouble seeing the files on the second partition.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Guys,
I just did it. Iomega external 2.5″HD 250G FAT32 default firmated from the fabric. Everything works greate like described. But twow buts:
1)create PICTURE instead of PHOTO.
2)PS3 does recognize only one DIRectory down the topic tree.
E.g. Music\Artist\….mp3 is OK
but Music\Artist\Album\…mp3 NOT
so to split a albums you have to do something like this Music\Artist_Album1\…mp3
May 13th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Serge
Are you sure you are clicking ‘display all’ to see multiple trees?
May 14th, 2008 at 2:17 am
i am attempting this with a drive from a laptop in which i bought a portable case for. it was already a fat32 and ps3 would not recognize it with single usb and/or the power usb plugged in. but i’ll let you all know what happens after this.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
i have 2.5 60 gigs i took out of the ps3 and put in a 320 the 320 no pro in the ps3. but the 60 i put in the 2.5 drive did fat32 useing swissknife and put the folders in. when to ps3 , didn’t see it so i got a power cord and try that too, because i though that usb was not powerful to do .so what can i do next ? or will it work better on a 3.5 then a 2.5 . because most online help use 3.5 not 2.5. thanks man….
May 24th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Try http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm
I couldn’t get swissknife to work for me, but this only took a matter of minutes and did the job perfectly.
July 6th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
ive done all of this already but its only letting me partition 196GB of the 750GB i have available, if anyone knows how i can do this to use the full 750GB please please! email me on billym06@hotmail.co.uk
July 10th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
the problem with this is that the file size limit of fat 32 is 4GB - so you cant copy big video files over!
I think using EXT as a partition type may work though.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
will it play back blue ray files
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
does anyone know if an external drive will be able to store files saved using the new ‘Play TV’ add on for PS3? In other words you could end up with a HDD TV box cable of storing up to 2TB! thats alot of TV!
September 7th, 2008 at 5:19 am
FAT32 don’t show-up on swissknife….only NTFS & FAT16???
what am I doin wrong!!
September 7th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
will you be able to save game data on the external hardrive not save data GAME DATA??
September 12th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Right guys….this is it..get your self a western digital(WD) external drives, they come aready with FAT32 format, as simple as that no hussle!
September 17th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
i got the 500Gb Seagate shown as i thought it would be easier to format and get working quickly but when eever i try and format it using the above free download it keeps coming up that there is a read/write error. can someone please tell me where im going wrong????
September 27th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
The REAL problem with that is that FAT32 is a very old file system, and can only store files up to 4GB in size.
Cannot believe PS3 does not recognize my NTFS 320GB Western Digital. Damn Sony. Why choosing an old format…
October 4th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Can’t understand why you lot are using external programs to format the hard drive in Fat32. Format in windows does it !!!! Doh !!!
October 19th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Because, Jools, in Windows you are limited to a drive size of 32GB. Doh!
October 24th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Jools - Windows can only format FAT32 drives up to 32Gb.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:37 am
NTFS is owned by Microsoft and that means there will be licensing issues if used by other vendors. That is why Linux does not support NTFS. FAT32 can be used freely.
October 25th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I read somewhere that this has to be a SATA drive and not IDE. Can anyone confirm please.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I have a question:
1. When you formated the HDD, can you transfer a file from windows PS bigger than 4 gig to the external HDD?
2. Lets say you managed to transfer 8 gig file (hd movie for ps3), can you play a hd movie of 8 gig on the ps3?
October 29th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Jools - Windows will only Format 32GB FAT32.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Can you not just use the PS3 to format the external Hard drive? It does it for The 8GB memory Sticks!
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
how to play hd video files on my ps3 i have formatet my drive to fat 32 but can’t put mij 7.5GB files on it because it only accepts a max of 4 gb. how do i have to do it?
best regards
roy
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:21 am
I formatted a 1TB external hard drive using SwissKnife however I was left with only 429GB after the formatting, how do I get the full 1TB to format?
December 10th, 2008 at 11:10 am
the same problem happened to me, can anyone tell us if it is possible to get the full storage space back?