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Re-formatting an Ex-PS4 500GB HDD for PC use


StrickenBiged

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Hello everyone

 

Can someone who is a bit techier than me give me a hand?

 

Essentially, I upgraded my PS4 HDD yesterday. I took the 2TB HDD for the upgrade out of an external USB hard drive and, after the swap, put the PS4's stock HDD into the plastic casing to use as an external USB drive.

 

The PS4 works fine with the 2TB drive. The problem is the stock PS4 drive is not showing up in "my computer" when I connect it via USB. The pop up in the corner of the screen tells me that the computer is installing the drivers for the drive, but it does not show in "my computer". I can see the drive in Control Panel\All control panel items\Devices and printers but that's about it.

 

I had anticipated that I would have to re-format the PS4 drive for use with a PC, but cannot figure out how to do it. Google searches tell me that I need to do something with the partition, but I start to get lost then.

 

Threads I've found on other sites tend to peter out before they solve the issue, so if anyone on here can assist I'd be very grateful.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Edit: Forgot to mention, my PC at work is running Windows 7, my one at home runs Windows 8.1. If answers could be followed in those OSs, that'd definitely be appreciated.

Edited by StrickenBiged
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What wire are you using. I know you said USB, but do you have a link or picture of the specific wire being used. And is the hard drive receiving power? Can you hear it rotating when it's plugged in? (Disregard this part if what I said below works)

 

Edit: And here are some instructions if the pc does recognize it. On either system go to search and then type "partitions". Next click on "Create and format hard drive partitions". Then "Disk Management" should pop up. You should see all the partitions for all of the drives listed out. On mine it has 3 unlabled partitions and one partition labled "Windows (C:)". Below that it shows all the drives that are connected to the system and labels them from Disk 0 to Disk infinity. Your main hard drive is probably the one that has a partition called windows on it. If there is another disk with a named partition and a volume labled D: E: F: etc, then it is probably a removable storage drive or disk drive or something else. Since you said you can't access the hard drive through my computer it probably will show up here with a single or many partitions that don't have any volume labels. If it's one partition, you can then right click on the partition and select format. If it's many partitions, you will have to delete all of them but one and then right click on the remaining partition and left click on "Extend Volume" and make it as big as it can be. Format this one partition as you see fit (probably to NTFS). It should then ask you to label the drive. Pick anything you see fit as the name. Hopefully this works.  :)

Edited by theguytom
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Hey buddy, I upgraded my PS4 some months ago and using this info I could access the hard drive and format it, I also have Windows 7. :)

 

http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-4-Support/How-to-format-a-used-Ps4-hard-drive-for-Windows-7/td-p/44527982

 

The only thing this guy has wrong in the description is the color of the sectors (I think blue instead of black) but as soon as you interact with the window you'll figure out that.

Edited by GoldenShaka
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Thanks both for your speedy answers! After posting the topic, a light-bulb went off in my head and I thought to ask a colleague from our IT department. "Easy", she said, "I'll come get it".

 

So I'm not sure what she did with the drive, but it sounds like what you guys have posted because she said something about the volume not having a letter attached to it (C: drive, E: drive, etc.). Hopefully your information will be useful for the next person who encounters the problem!

Edited by StrickenBiged
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Open up a run dialogue (Windows key + R) or a command prompt.

Type "diskmgmt.msc"

 

Hopefully you can see the 500GB HDD there, if you can (and it has some weird sort of partition on it) just right click and delete that partition, then right click and create a new partition on that drive. Just follow the onscreen prompts to create a new partition your PC can access.

(Be careful what you're doing here, don't start deleting partitions of your other drives or drives with assigned letters - if you delete one of your actual (none PS3) HDD partitions then you're opening up a giant and messy can of data-recovery nightmare worms. Happy face ^_^)

 

 

Hope the above helps anyone else who looks at this thread - I've never connected a PS4 HDD to my PC before, but if it has the same filesystem or methodology as the PS3 HDD. Then you just need to delete the PS3/PS4 specific partition and create your own, new, NTFS partition.

 

 

[[in short, the filesystem used on most consoles isn't directly accessible via a regular, Windows, PC. And thus stops tampering of the drive when it's removed from the console. If you plan to never re-use the drive in your console, then deleting and creating a Windows usable (NTFS) partition is the way forwards for yourself]]

Edited by Takara
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has someone actually got this right with a PS3 drive cause i tried it a while back

and i'm sure the drive was working/spinning but i could not get it to read/appear anywhere

i tried windows PE, win7, xp, puppy linux and some partition tool app before i lost patience

even tried my luck connecting it to PS3's usb

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@jujmint

 

I had no problems connecting an 80GB "PS3" HDD via SATA.

Booted up PS3 with 80GB HDD, checked it was all fine, swapped my 320GB out of my dead PS3 (which it had to format, lovely >.>) into my new, dropped the 80GB into my computer via SATA, found it in Disk Management and setup an NTFS partition on it.

 

I know it sounds silly, but does the HDD work fine in a donor PS3? If so, then I'm somewhat stumped as to why, unless you've got a SATA data cable fault. I almost ruled out a dying drive due to a cable fault once xD

 

It should show up in Disk Management under windows, but, you could give a liveboot of Gparted or Linux Mint a try.

 

Best of luck!

 

Regards,

TakVap

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i used the same external enclosure i used with other drives

and mind you i think i upgraded to a larger drive and tried reusing the old to no avail

and when the new one croaked and i ended up reusing the old

its been a while since and it really baked my noodle so i will only revisit later if i must lol

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