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Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
So I've been trying to upgrade my PS3's original 80GB (Motorstorm Package) to a 500GB Seagate Momentus HDD.

I went to Best Buy and bought this one: Seagate Momentus 500GB

So I get home, power down the system, take out the blue screw, slide the tray out, take 80GB out and put 500GB in. Screw everything back together and power on.

"Hard Drive not recognized"

Oh I thought, dummy me, I forgot that hard drives are RAW out of the box. So I unscrewed my PS3 again and put the 500GB in an enclosure, plugged it into my Mac, and my Mac said "Hard disk not initialized". Okay I thought, that's normal. So I go ahead and open disk utility and format the disk FAT32.

That should do it!

Rescrew, reconnect, power on. Yay success! PS3 reformats the hard drive and it's done. I go to system info and it recognized the 445GBs free. Cool I thought. Let me power down and load my backup later.

I power back up and I get the "Hard Drive not recognized" message again. I've tried everything on the drive, even exchanged it for a new one and I get the same problem. Can anyone help?
 

Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
That's what I would like to know because I've researched online and there are some people who have 500GB PS3s. And I did replace the hard drive, what are the chances I got two bad hard drives in a row?
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
I guess it's possible.

From a lot of googling it seems that there is nothing definitive about HDD. Some report it works - others that they couldn't.

Only thing left to suggest is try a different brand of HDD. The Samsung M6 500GB 2.5" HDD supposedly works.
 

Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
Well I'm gonna go return this Seagate and get a WD instead later today and see what happens.
 

e²Studios

macrumors 68020
Apr 12, 2005
2,104
5
I guess it's possible.

From a lot of googling it seems that there is nothing definitive about HDD. Some report it works - others that they couldn't.

Only thing left to suggest is try a different brand of HDD. The Samsung M6 500GB 2.5" HDD supposedly works.

The PS3 is technically capable of using a 2.8TB drive, which doesn't exist yet :p

I have a 500GB Seagate drive in my PS3, never had any issues either. You may want to check Seagates site, maybe its a FW issue with the drive and the PS3. Pop the drive in a PC/Mac and flash the drives FW with the latest one from Seagates site.
 

Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
That's a good idea. Would you be so kind as to link to me Seagates site with the FW download? I find their site kind of confusing.
 

2nyRiggz

macrumors 603
Aug 20, 2005
6,161
76
Thank you Jah...I'm so Blessed
Thats the same HDD I have in my PS3 so I would suggest trying again...only problem I ran into was the four screws on the HDD tray.

One question I'm asking myself...howcome its not recognizing it from the start. the PS3 should be able to see the HDD and format it to FAT32 for you out of the box.



Bless
 

Mufasa804

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
232
78
So I went ahead and bought a WD 500GB instead and it works perfectly. I guess Seagate is not PS3 friendly.
 

spaceballl

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2003
2,891
285
San Francisco, CA
So I went ahead and bought a WD 500GB instead and it works perfectly. I guess Seagate is not PS3 friendly.
I think it's' weird how certain drives don't work out well with consoles or STBs. For example, I'm getting ready to upgrade my tivo HD's drive to 1TB. Man the number of drives that don't work properly with it is mind boggling - no real reason it seems...
 
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