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AdvocateUK

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
185
45
Billingham, United Kingdom
Hi all,

I've decided to trade in one of my PS3 consoles. I currently own an original PS3 "fat" with an upgraded 320Gb HDD, and a later PS3 "slim" that was given to me by a friend, which also has a 320Gb HDD in it.

The system that will be traded in is the PS3 slim, unfortunately this is also the system that is used/played on the most and as such contains all the games we have bought from the PSN (or downloaded through PS Plus Instant Game Collection) as well as all of our Saves etc.

Can I just swap the 320Gb hard drives over from the PS3 fat to the PS3 slim and vice versa?

If not what would be my best plan for migrating my PS3 gaming from the PS3 slim to the PS3 fat
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Make sure that you go into settings and change the name of your PS3 to the same name on both PS3's

Then try swapping them - it may work.

In my case it didn't but other have had success that way.
 

IlikeMacsSoMuch

macrumors 6502
Dec 30, 2009
346
2
Blainville, Province of Quebec
I've never done this with a PS3 but with an xbox 360 it is pretty straight forward, no need to swap hdd, just plug the new hdd into the console's usb port (you need an adapter) and in the settings you can transfer the content from one hdd to the other. As long as the new console is connected to the same XBL account, it works.
I'm sure there is something like that for the PS3
 

AdvocateUK

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
185
45
Billingham, United Kingdom
Yeah there's a data transfer utility but that's been running for nearly 24 hours now and is only up to 91%.

Do I even need to transfer the data? Isn't everything backed up to "the cloud"?

I'd have to re-download my PS Plus and PSN games but I don't mind doing that tbh.
 

skottichan

macrumors 65816
Oct 23, 2007
1,083
1,264
Columbus, OH
Yeah there's a data transfer utility but that's been running for nearly 24 hours now and is only up to 91%.

Do I even need to transfer the data? Isn't everything backed up to "the cloud"?

I'd have to re-download my PS Plus and PSN games but I don't mind doing that tbh.

As far as I know, it's impossible to do a drive swap, as the new PS3 will want to reformat the new drive.

There's two ways to transfer;

1. back up all your game saves to the cloud. (Go into Game Saves Utility, hit triangle, and there should be a Copy/Copy Multiple option, it's all pretty easy). When you get your new one, log in, go into the Game Save Utility, this time go to Online Storage, and repeat original instructions)

With this, you will have to redownload all games as well as all updates, etc.

2. Plug in a USB HDD (MS-DOS/FAT formatted), you can back up your saves to that as a targeted drive, as well as game info (updates and the like). Then move onto the new PS3.

With this, you'll have to redownload all your games, but most updates and the like will be there (if you backed them up to the external HDD).

I'd suggest Option 1, unless you have a slow/crappy internet connection.
 
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