PlayStation®3 Support

[Winscar_Shinobi]

I've swapped a few hard drives out before (mine included) but I've seemed to have run into a dilemma here.

Usually when something happens outside of my control (people trying an incompatible HDD, or a broken HDD that people try and have me shove in their ps3) I always use the standby "just throw the old HDD inside" as all the data is still there and it's as if nothing was taken out.

For the first time today though, I put a new HDD in a ps3, it worked, but they hadnt backed the old one up, and wanted to put the old one back in to back it up (just wanted to check if the new drive worked) but when I put the old drive in, they system treated it as a new drive and wants to reformat it.

This is the first time I've had something like this occur, where putting the original system drive in prompted a reformat of it.

Is there any way to remedy the situation or is the data essentially lost?

(Has ps+ so besides for a few hours of game time he will be ok on games) the main problem is he buys movies off the ps store left and right ._.

[Winscar_Shinobi]

Ok after looking through everything I think I MAY have the problem figured out. The new drive I put in is firmware 4.31 (4.30 being mandatory and 4.31 was optional)
The old drive is on 4.30, so when I put the old drive in it says "system cannot run etc. plug in storage media with firmware 4.31 or later"

Would that be why the old drive isn't being recognized anymore? Because the system is 4.31? Despite it being a optional update?

So would anyone know if pressing start/select to search for 4.31 data (which I have) just update the drive and allow it to be read or will it wipe it completely?

[gkpama00 · Accepted solution]

The PS3 just wants to update the old hard drive to 4.31. Once you boot the PS3 with 4.31, it will never run an earlier System version again, on any drive.  If you install a drive that the PS3 formatted earlier, it will insist on updating it to at least the highest System version that it has run, before it will boot from the old drive. If the PS3 didn't say anything about formatting the drive, then it won't.

[Winscar_Shinobi]

Thank you very much. I didn't want to go past the "plug storage media with 4.31" screen just because I don't want to mess up anything lol.

Now I'm having a bit of another problem.

I'm on the "preparing to update" screen and it has been sitting at 99% for about 5 minutes now. It says do not turn off system so I'm a bit hesitant to do that but at the same time nothing is happening... What should I do?

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

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Winscar_Shinobi wrote:
Thank you very much. I didn't want to go past the "plug storage media with 4.31" screen just because I don't want to mess up anything lol.

Now I'm having a bit of another problem.

I'm on the "preparing to update" screen and it has been sitting at 99% for about 5 minutes now. It says do not turn off system so I'm a bit hesitant to do that but at the same time nothing is happening... What should I do?

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i'd still wait a while just to be safe.