PS3 backup will not work 'USB device cannot be accessed'

[#1]

I have an 80GB hard drive in my PS3 which has become full so I have purchasesd a 500GB drive as an upgrade.

I have borrowed a mate's External 1TB USB Buffalo drive to use on the backup utility which is formatted as FAT32.  It reads fine on the PS3 but when I run the backup utility it failed about 30% of the way through saying there wasn't enough space on the drive despite there being over 900GB free. 

I re-formatted the drive as FAT32 again and now the backup utility does not even start to begin as it gets to the point where it is 'calculating' the time to run the backup and fails with the error 'USB device cannot be accessed'.

The drive is connected with USB and an external power supply so it is not a case of not enough power getting to the drive and it plays video off the drive fine without issue.

Can anyone help?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for all the help, it looks like a combination of formatting with the FAT32 Formatter tool and a different smaller drive slipped into a docker done the trick first time.  I would guess that the 1TB drive would have worked if formatted with FAT32 correctly using the tool but I wasn't prepared to wait that long as the 250GB drive took over 2 hours via USB!

One thing I also had to do which I didn't realise at first was download the latest PS3 Update file onto a flash drive when booting up with the new drive installed.  I was hoping this whole experience would have gone a bit smoother but I got there in the end.

It's worth mentioning with regards to other post topics on what the backup utility doesn't backup, I lost my 3D dragon theme which I had from my free 1 month of PS+.  This is probably becuase i'm not a member of PS+ anymore.  Only a small gripe, I loved that Dragon but i'm too tight to pay for it!

Thanks again.

[#3]

DId you use the utility "FAT32 Formatter" to format the drive?

[#4]

No I used Easeus.  I tried it a 3rd time and it got to 32% this time and then failed.

[#5]

It might be a problem with how Easeus formats the drive.

Look for FAT32FORMAT. That will format large capacity drives. I used it ages ago to format a 1TB external hard drive, and more recently a 1TB internal drive for my PS3 as well

[#6]

I will try FAT32 FORMAT this evening.  As a backup I aslo have a 250GB WD drive that I will connect via a SATA dock.  One should at least work I hope.

[edit]

Just to confirm, should I use FAT32 FORMAT or FAT32 FORMATTER? They appear to be different products.  I'm assuming you guys had the same issue as me at some point with this device error message too?

[#7]

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@mdstone wrote:

I will try FAT32 FORMAT this evening.  As a backup I aslo have a 250GB WD drive that I will connect via a SATA dock.  One should at least work I hope.

[edit]

Just to confirm, should I use FAT32 FORMAT or FAT32 FORMATTER? They appear to be different products.  I'm assuming you guys had the same issue as me at some point with this device error message too?

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Please let us know how you get on.

[#8]

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@mdstone wrote:

I will try FAT32 FORMAT this evening.  As a backup I aslo have a 250GB WD drive that I will connect via a SATA dock.  One should at least work I hope.

[edit]

Just to confirm, should I use FAT32 FORMAT or FAT32 FORMATTER? They appear to be different products.  I'm assuming you guys had the same issue as me at some point with this device error message too?

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This is the site for FAT32FORMAT

[#9]

Any of those two will do fine, if ti still fails make sure the HDD is not damaged in any way.

[#10]

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@foxsevent wrote:

Any of those two will do fine, if ti still fails make sure the HDD is not damaged in any way.

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Yep, either should work but this is the one I used. Be wary not to format the windows partition though!

[#11 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for all the help, it looks like a combination of formatting with the FAT32 Formatter tool and a different smaller drive slipped into a docker done the trick first time.  I would guess that the 1TB drive would have worked if formatted with FAT32 correctly using the tool but I wasn't prepared to wait that long as the 250GB drive took over 2 hours via USB!

One thing I also had to do which I didn't realise at first was download the latest PS3 Update file onto a flash drive when booting up with the new drive installed.  I was hoping this whole experience would have gone a bit smoother but I got there in the end.

It's worth mentioning with regards to other post topics on what the backup utility doesn't backup, I lost my 3D dragon theme which I had from my free 1 month of PS+.  This is probably becuase i'm not a member of PS+ anymore.  Only a small gripe, I loved that Dragon but i'm too tight to pay for it!

Thanks again.

[#12]

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@mdstone wrote:

Thanks for all the help, it looks like a combination of formatting with the FAT32 Formatter tool and a different smaller drive slipped into a docker done the trick first time.  I would guess that the 1TB drive would have worked if formatted with FAT32 correctly using the tool but I wasn't prepared to wait that long as the 250GB drive took over 2 hours via USB!

One thing I also had to do which I didn't realise at first was download the latest PS3 Update file onto a flash drive when booting up with the new drive installed.  I was hoping this whole experience would have gone a bit smoother but I got there in the end.

It's worth mentioning with regards to other post topics on what the backup utility doesn't backup, I lost my 3D dragon theme which I had from my free 1 month of PS+.  This is probably becuase i'm not a member of PS+ anymore.  Only a small gripe, I loved that Dragon but i'm too tight to pay for it!

Thanks again.

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The link I supplied does the formatting of a 1TB drive in seconds.

[#13]

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@Kermit1970 wrote:

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@mdstone wrote:

Thanks for all the help, it looks like a combination of formatting with the FAT32 Formatter tool and a different smaller drive slipped into a docker done the trick first time.  I would guess that the 1TB drive would have worked if formatted with FAT32 correctly using the tool but I wasn't prepared to wait that long as the 250GB drive took over 2 hours via USB!

One thing I also had to do which I didn't realise at first was download the latest PS3 Update file onto a flash drive when booting up with the new drive installed.  I was hoping this whole experience would have gone a bit smoother but I got there in the end.

It's worth mentioning with regards to other post topics on what the backup utility doesn't backup, I lost my 3D dragon theme which I had from my free 1 month of PS+.  This is probably becuase i'm not a member of PS+ anymore.  Only a small gripe, I loved that Dragon but i'm too tight to pay for it!

Thanks again.

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The link I supplied does the formatting of a 1TB drive in seconds.

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Thanks, i'll be saving this link for future reference, I assumed they would both take the same time but when you start formatting its not a good idea to abort it.

[#14]

You will be suprised at how quick it is. I was. When I first formatted my 1TB external drive I thought "It can't have done it already". But I did a quick check using windows DIR function and it checked out perfectly.