PS3 Does Not Detect External Hard Drive

[#1]

Hi!

I just bought an external hard drive for my PS3 and to my frustration the PS3 does not detect it but the circle spins around for about 5 seconds at the top right when I plug it in.

I would really appreciate any help given  :manhappy:

Many thanks!!!!! 

[#2]

hi there, my 500gb does this. but only when i have something else plugged into the usb's. Try taking everything out of the usb slots then plug in the Ext. HD.

 it wasn't always like this though. I think the external hard drive must have become damaged in some way. At least that's what i think about mine. Because it crashes my pc  until it's warmed up a bit.

[#3]

1st things 1st is the external harddrive formatted in fat32 or NTFS? for ps3 to see it it needs to be fat32

[#4]

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f430scu wrote:

Hi!

I just bought an external hard drive for my PS3 and to my frustration the PS3 does not detect it but the circle spins around for about 5 seconds at the top right when I plug it in.

I would really appreciate any help given  :manhappy:

Many thanks!!!!! 

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If you have a Windows PC, search for SwissKnife. It's freeware and will help you to format the disk with the FAT32 file system. Formatting large drives in FAT32 using the windows format command will not work....

Message Edited by andyrome64 on 17-04-2009 11:00 AM

[#5]

and for those who have an 1TB ExTernal ?

when i put my devise on fat32 it says its 400 Gb

and when its ntfs it just doesnt detect it.

when i first bought it it used to work with

1TB ntfs so after i formatted it just dont work

[#6]

You also need to add the PS3 folders manually - Create a folder system identical to that on the Playstation 3 by creating folders labeled "Picture" (not Photo), "Music", "Video" and "Game

[#7]

I recently got a 500gb external drive, did the whole fat32 thing, which is just a huge faff, got it all running, took about... 4 hours total. Totally not worth it. I moved about 4gb of music and 2gb of pics, but the bulk of memory was taken up by installs, saves and demos etc - none of which you can put on the external HDD. If I hadn't scratched the HDD casing so much I'd have taken it back.
Now I have 320gb internal also - much better Internal is defo the way to go.

Hope this helps.

Well, see ya!

[#8]

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richzx6r wrote:
I recently got a 500gb external drive, did the whole fat32 thing, which is just a huge faff, got it all running, took about... 4 hours total. Totally not worth it. I moved about 4gb of music and 2gb of pics, but the bulk of memory was taken up by installs, saves and demos etc - none of which you can put on the external HDD. If I hadn't scratched the HDD casing so much I'd have taken it back.
Now I have 320gb internal also - much better Internal is defo the way to go.

Hope this helps.

Well, see ya!

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I use the external drive as a backup to the 500gb drive that is installed in mine.

internal is the best bet.

[#9]

And, bloody aaaand the internal took about 5 minutes, MAX to fit. It was awesome. I now consider myself a fully qualified electrician.

[#10]

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molemole wrote:
You also need to add the PS3 folders manually - Create a folder system identical to that on the Playstation 3 by creating folders labeled "Picture" (not Photo), "Music", "Video" and "Game

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well no you dont have to do that . and "game" wont do anything as you cant store games on it . game saves as back up is a much as you can do 

i have 1TB drive along side my 320 internal . mine was formated allready to fat 32 and the free space is about 900-920gigs. you can quick format it as there was nothing on it to start with (should take 5 minutes) , but if that doesnt work do a full format , but that takes hours .

im going to need a another 1tb drive as i have about 20 gigs left between the both of them :(

[#11]

Your drive will already be formatted, even if it is formatted to NTFS which the PS3 won't recognise.

The good part about that is that you then only need a quickformat convertion utility due to the existing formatting.

Follow the instructions and download the free fat32format utlity here:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Worked for me.  Converted a 1TB drive in seconds and yes, you won't get the full drive size back but then that's a major factor in fat32 being dropped as a prefered format in PCs.  The overheads in the file allocation table get silly at larger sizes and that's before you start considering minimum block sizes which will affect storage space a lot if you intend to save a lot of small files.

Use the converter I've linked to.  Don't moan about the drop in drive size. as it's not that bad, really.  Enjoy having a large drive attached to the PS3.  Sorted. :)

Mine's just for backups.

If that fails then make sure your external drive is powered rather than drawing power via the USB socket.  If not, consider a cheap, powered USB hub.

Message Edited by Pendrake on 07-07-2009 12:57 PM

[#12]

It doesn't really matter whether the drive gets it's power from a USB connection, or a wallsocket. I have 2 external drives, both USB-powered. One gets recognized by the PS3 with no problems, and everything I got on it(Music, Videos, Pictures, etc. can be played, shown,...) but the other wont get recognized by the PS3 since I recently NTFS formatted it. And again, both my external drives are USB-powered, so that doesn't have anything to do with the PS3 not being able to recognize the drive.

[#13]

worked a treat :-) thanks mate was about to tear my hair out until...

Got a 1TB Seagate external hard drive had the same problem (was formatted in NTFS) used the above link and worked fine afterwards.

[#14]

I ended up booting of a linux install disc in order to format my external drive to fat32,  Should have thought to search for a utility.

[#15]

Please can someone help, I need to connect an external hard drive to my PS3 to be able to go on Disney Infinity.  I have a 1TB Seagate Expansion Hard Drive and it's been formatted to FAT32 but still can't get it to show up on the PS3.  Please can someone help I have been trying to do it for hours now :(  Thank you 

[#16]

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tntgaming1 wrote:

Please can someone help, I need to connect an external hard drive to my PS3 to be able to go on Disney Infinity.  I have a 1TB Seagate Expansion Hard Drive and it's been formatted to FAT32 but still can't get it to show up on the PS3.  Please can someone help I have been trying to do it for hours now :(  Thank you 

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What exactly are you trying to do? External hard drives are only for films, music and saved data. If you're trying to download the game from the store and copy it to your external hard drive, to play it from there, you won't be able to. You can't play games like that. 

[#17]

I have bought the Disney Infinity Game from Game and I was told that if I used an external hard drive for extra space that would be fine.  Is this not the case?

[#18]

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tntgaming1 wrote:

I have bought the Disney Infinity Game from Game and I was told that if I used an external hard drive for extra space that would be fine.  Is this not the case?

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[#19]

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tntgaming1 wrote:

I have bought the Disney Infinity Game from Game and I was told that if I used an external hard drive for extra space that would be fine.  Is this not the case?

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What do you need the "extra space" for? This decides on if you'll be able to use the external hard drive. However, as it's a game, i'm going to say that you were told wrong, you can't save game data on an external hard drive on any playstation systems, this is an xbox only thing and the employees of GAME should know that. In future, i wouldn't trust the advice directly given from anyone to you in your local GAME store if that's the sort of thing they are telling you. 

Now, assuming you can't take both your game and hard drive back for false information, there are two things you can do. 

1. Use the hard drive for other things, and on your ps3 go into the folder GAME DATA UTILITY under the GAME tab and delete anything in here from games you aren't playing. Don't worry as this won't delete any of your game saves, it only deletes data necassary for games to play and will be re-installed when you re-insert the disk. This will only be effective if you are playing on a PS3 with more than 40gb. If you're playing on a 40gb, 20gb or 12gb console then i would advise that you upgrade your hard drive.
2. IF AND ONLY IF your external hard drive is a 2.5 inch SATA drive, you can remove the casing of the hard drive leaving you with an internal hard drive. You can then use one of the various walkthroughs to upgrade your PS3's hard drive to a larger size (again, if the external hard drive you are using is not larger than 50gb then don't bother doing this). If your external hard drive is NOT a 2.5" sata drive over 50gb (for example it's an SSD, Hybrid or is a 3.5" disk, or over 1TB i believe which is the limit for ps3's although you'd want to check this) then you'll want to buy an internal hard drive (i'd suggest a 500gb one) and install that yourself. This will wipe all the data on your ps3 though so you'll want to back up saved game data before doing this. 

[#20]

Thank you very much for this, I'm fuming at Game, when it wouldn't work I phoned there customer services and they told me to buy the hard drive, which has cost me another £50!!! Not happy! I'll try what you said, thank you again for your help.

[#21]

Amazing advice, deleted one of the games off like you said and hey presto Disney infinity loading, I'm going to have one happy little boy in the morning, thank you soooooooo much xx