Hard Drive Problems

[KON007]

I have a PS3 Fat that still has the original hard drive in it and it has worked quite well for the last 10 years, however a week ago when I booted up the ps3 it would freeze on start-up causing me to reset the ps3, and it would boot up normally and work fine afterwards. However in the last few days the ps3 takes 3-4 minutes to load up ps3 dashboard on start-up and when I quit a game and go back to the dashboard it sometimes crashes the PS3. The strange thing is when I'm playing a game there is nothing noticeably wrong, there are no freezes or slowdowns when playing a game.

 

Is the hard drive repairable by going into the safe mode menu and trying to restore settings on the hard drive, or is this just the first signs of a failing hard drive and should get a replacement hard drive?

 

Also if I need a new HDD, is it recommended to go for a HDD that has 7200rpm or just to go with a hard drive with the same 2.5 inch Sata HDD 9mm 5400rpm but with increased storage? Since I've read that 7200rpm causes overheating issues in the ps3. Thanks in advance for the advice.

[SnowxSakura]

The hard drive is probably failing in it, would recommend backing up anything important and replacing it. If you're concerned about heating issues, I'd recommend getting an SSD, they generate considerably less heat than a mechanical drive, especially in a fat ps3 that already generates a lot of heat

[EverythingOnFire]

Sorry to hear about your problem. I think you should boot into safe mode and try option #3 entitled "restore file system." If your HDD is seriously messed up, it might not even allow that, and tell you instead that you'll need to format the drive. If it tells you that, I honestly wouldn't even bother formatting it, given the age of the HDD. If it does come to that, I highly recommend that you get a good SSD. I put one in my PS3 not too long ago, and my systems never been quieter & cooler. Definitely pricey, but a worthwhile investment for sure.

Edited May 10, 2021 by EverythingOnFire

[DaivRules]

38 minutes ago, KON007 said:

I have a PS3 Fat that still has the original hard drive in it and it has worked quite well for the last 10 years, however a week ago when I booted up the ps3 it would freeze on start-up causing me to reset the ps3, and it would boot up normally and work fine afterwards. However in the last few days the ps3 takes 3-4 minutes to load up ps3 dashboard on start-up and when I quit a game and go back to the dashboard it sometimes crashes the PS3. The strange thing is when I'm playing a game there is nothing noticeably wrong, there are no freezes or slowdowns when playing a game.

 

Is the hard drive repairable by going into the safe mode menu and trying to restore settings on the hard drive, or is this just the first signs of a failing hard drive and should get a replacement hard drive?

 

Also if I need a new HDD, is it recommended to go for a HDD that has 7200rpm or just to go with a hard drive with the same 2.5 inch Sata HDD 9mm 5400rpm but with increased storage? Since I've read that 7200rpm causes overheating issues in the ps3. Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

Your hard drive is definitely on the way out the door. Back up your saves and sync your trophies and don't bother with an HDD as is mentioned above, go with an SSD. You'll gain a bit more space for the price by going for another HDD, but clearly you didn't have a problem and a 500 Gb SSD is around $50 at this point. If you have an original fat PS3, you were dealing with a 20, 60, or probably 80 Gb HDD. I wouldn't even bother with booting into safe mode. It's just more stress on the drive and there's no way it's anything other than an aging hard drive coming to the end of it's ~12 year run of thousands of hours of usage.

 

Any 2.5 mm SATA SSD is going to be an improvement in heat, power usage, noise, and load times. Not significantly in load times for all things, but I have noticed even the Store loads faster when I swapped out my PS3's HDD for an SSD a couple months ago.

[SnowxSakura]

52 minutes ago, EverythingOnFire said:

Sorry to hear about your problem. I think you should boot into safe mode and try option #3 entitled "restore file system." If your HDD is seriously messed up, it might not even allow that, and tell you instead that you'll need to format the drive. If it tells you that, I honestly wouldn't even bother formatting it, given the age of the HDD. If it does come to that, I highly recommend that you get a good SSD. I put one in my PS3 not too long ago, and my systems never been quieter & cooler. Definitely pricey, but a worthwhile investment for sure.

 

Like SnowxSakura said above me, if it does come to you having to replace the drive, be sure to back everything up, and also remember to deactivate both game and video in the account management section of your PS3 dashboard before you take the problem HDD out. Good luck.

You don't need to deactivate if you're using the same system again, console activations are tied to the unique console id number, not to the hard drive

[EverythingOnFire]

1 hour ago, SnowxSakura said:

You don't need to deactivate if you're using the same system again, console activations are tied to the unique console id number, not to the hard drive

 

Thanks for the info. It's good to know. I've edited my initial post.

 

In my defense, that information was actually given to me by Sony's technical support years ago (somewhere in Texas). I asked the woman what would happen if someone had a bunch of hard drives die in a row, and she said that I would need to call tech support and have them deactivate my account's systems from their end. I've always thought that was both strange and ridiculous. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by EverythingOnFire

[KON007]

Thanks for the advice guys, just bought a 500GB SSD for about £40 and backed up my PS3 files. Although it is a shame that the PS3 only has a Sata 1 port so it can't make full use of the SSD, but the extra space and the slightly faster loading speed from original 60GB HDD will be nice.