Upgrade Your PS3 Storage

1. Pick the right drive

1. A 2.5″ SATA drive, 9.5 mm thick or thinner. Any ordinary laptop hard drive fits, including thinner 7 mm ones. Thicker 12.5 or 15 mm drives won’t.
2. 1 TB is the sweet spot. Drives up to 1 TB work without problems. Bigger ones are often not detected on newer firmware and can break the PS3’s file system recovery, so only go above 1 TB if you accept that risk. The drive must use 512-byte sectors: ordinary laptop drives do, but some newer “4Kn” drives don’t.
3. A hard drive is the safe choice. The PS3 only talks to drives at SATA I speed (1.5 Gbps), so how much an SSD helps depends on the game: Gran Turismo 5 races load in about half the time and installs run about four times faster, Skyrim saves load faster and stutter less, but games like Battlefield 3 load no faster at all. Some SSDs also don’t work in a PS3, reportedly because of their sector size or controller, so check others have used the same model first.
4. SSD drawbacks to know about. The PS3 never sends TRIM, the command that tells an SSD which space is free, so after a lot of filling and deleting its writes and installs slow down and it does a little more internal writing. Load times are mostly unaffected because the PS3’s SATA I link is the bottleneck anyway, and a PS3 writes too little to wear out a modern SSD. Leave some free space, let the PS3 sit idle now and then so the drive can tidy up, and pick an SSD with a DRAM cache. Reformatting restores full speed but erases everything. SSDs also cost more per gigabyte, so for the same money a 1 TB hard drive holds far more games.
5. Expect about 15% less than the box says. The PS3 counts storage in binary units, so a 1 TB drive shows as about 931 GB, then it reserves around 8% and most models’ firmware takes another 240 MB. A 1 TB drive gives roughly 850 GB free, and a 500 GB drive about 425 GB.

2. Back up first

The PS3 encrypts its drive to that one console, so you can’t read the old drive in a PC or move it to another PS3. Back up everything you want to keep before you swap.

1. Use the Backup Utility. Plug in a USB drive formatted as FAT32 with enough free space for everything on the PS3 (one as big as the PS3’s drive is safest), then go to Settings → System Settings → Backup Utility → Back Up. On models that need a firmware file after the swap (see the table below), ConsoleMods also recommends a second USB stick of 256 MB or more. Don’t rename the backup folder, or the PS3 may not be able to restore it, and some copy-protected saves and videos may not restore correctly.
2. Save your trophies separately. The backup doesn’t include them. Sync them to PSN first (PlayStation Network → Trophy Collection, press Triangle, Sync with Server). On a hacked PS3 you can also copy /dev_hdd0/home/ to a PC over FTP, or with Apollo Save Tool or multiMAN.
3. Hacked PS3? Also copy anything you added by hand, like /dev_hdd0/GAMES/ and /dev_hdd0/packages/, over FTP.
4. Get the firmware ready if your model needs it (see the table below). Put the update file on a FAT32 USB stick as PS3/UPDATE/PS3UPDAT.PUP:
   • Not hacked: the latest official firmware (4.93).
   • CFW: the same CFW you’re running now, or a newer one.
   • HEN: HFW 4.93.1, then reinstall HEN afterwards with the Setup Wizard steps.

4. First start-up and restore

1. Turn the PS3 on. It sees the new drive and asks to format it. Say yes.
2. If it asks for an update file (on any model), plug in the USB stick with PS3/UPDATE/PS3UPDAT.PUP and install it. CFW users must install CFW here, not official firmware, or they lose CFW.
3. Restore your backup with Settings → System Settings → Backup Utility → Restore.
4. Get your trophies back. If you synced them, sign in to PSN and sync again from Trophy Collection. On a hacked PS3, copy /dev_hdd0/home/ and any hand-copied folders back over FTP, then start the PS3 in Safe Mode and choose Rebuild Database. To reach Safe Mode, turn the PS3 off, hold the power button until it turns on and off again, let go, then hold it again until you hear a quick double beep. Rebuilding can take a while and resets any folders you made on the XMB.
5. On HEN, reinstall HEN, then copy back your homebrew and games.

Stuck at 100% while formatting? Put the old drive back, update it to a newer firmware, then try again. New drive not detected? Format it on a PC with an MBR partition table first, and stick to 1 TB or less.

Or add USB storage instead

1. Any PS3 can use a USB drive formatted as FAT32 (or the older FAT16) for music, videos, photos, saves and backups, but not for installing or playing games on official firmware. Files can’t be over 4 GB, the drive needs a single partition with an MBR partition table, and it has to be formatted on a PC: the PS3 can’t format it. Windows won’t offer FAT32 on drives over 32 GB, so use Rufus (choose Non bootable) or GUIFormat; a 64 KB cluster size is a good choice for big drives.
2. On a hacked PS3, games can run from USB. webMAN MOD, multiMAN and IRISMAN load games from a FAT32 drive. Games with a file over 4 GB need to be stored as a split ISO (or rejoined if multiMAN split them). For bigger drives, webMAN MOD and multiMAN can also load ISOs (not extracted game folders) from drives formatted as NTFS or exFAT, which have no 4 GB limit: webMAN finds ISOs on NTFS by itself, and prepISO handles exFAT and multiMAN. That’s the usual way to use drives over 2 TB. You can also play games straight from a PC over your network with ps3netsrv.
3. Drive not showing up in webMAN? In its settings, set “Wait for any USB device to be ready” and “Wait additionally for each selected USB device to be ready” to 5 seconds or more.

Using an external hard drive

1. Portable or desktop both work. A 2.5″ portable drive powered by the USB cable is the tidiest option. If it disconnects or isn’t detected, the PS3’s port may not be giving it enough power: use a drive with its own power supply (most 3.5″ desktop drives) or a powered USB hub.
2. Format it on a PC first. For the PS3 to see it without homebrew, it needs FAT32 with one MBR partition. ConsoleMods suggests 32 KB clusters for 2–4 TB drives and 64 KB for 4–8 TB, using GUIFormat (Windows’ own tools stop at 2 TB for FAT32). Drives over 8 TB need NTFS (or exFAT), which only works on a hacked PS3. Those drives only load game ISOs, and you need prepISO: run it after adding new ISOs so multiMAN, or webMAN MOD on exFAT drives, can see them (webMAN finds ISOs on NTFS drives by itself).
3. It’s slower than the internal drive. The PS3’s ports are USB 2.0, so games loaded from USB on a hacked PS3 can take longer to load than from the internal drive. Fine for most games; keep the ones you play most on the internal drive.
4. What it can’t do. Games and add-ons from the PlayStation Store, and game installs, always go on the internal drive. An external drive is for media, backups and (on a hacked PS3) game ISOs and folders.
5. Don’t unplug it while it’s in use. Pulling the drive out mid-game or mid-copy can corrupt files. Quit to the XMB first.

Information checked 28 October 2026. Sources: ConsoleMods: Upgrading your Storage and Safe Mode, iFixit: PS3 Slim hard drive replacement, webMAN MOD, Sony’s PS3 User’s Guide and CECH-ZCD1 manual, and published load-time tests, Kingston: garbage collection and TRIM.