PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade

Around Christmas time I bought a Sony PS3, with a 40Gb hard drive, feeling this would be more that sufficient. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself having to delete demo, audio and video file, just so I can install games.

Last weekend I bought Ghostbusters (blog coming soon), but was unable to play the game as it insisted on installing content to the hard drive before I could play, so time for an upgrade.

I browsed the web and found a pretty cheap “Western Digital 500GB 2.5″ Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm 8MB Cache – OEM Scorpio Blue” hard drive, which turned up yesterday and last night I went about the upgrade, I have to say this had to be one of the easiest upgrades I’ve ever done.

Basically, there is a small plastic plate on the bottom, you remove this, your then met by a crosshead screw, remove this, pull up the small metal handle and the drive slides to the right…remove the drive. The drive is held in by 4 screws remove these, replace the drive, and reverse the above steps.

I then fired up the PS3, and was met by the prompt of “New Hard drive, would you like to format”, selected yes, and 30 seconds later I was met by my normal PS3 dashboard, checked the system setting, and I had 465Gb free ! Success !

I was happy that all the system settings were still intact, and all that was missing was any game data.

I then spent the rest of last night re-installing all my games, as everyone seemed to have an update it wanted to download, or had the option to install to hard drive (which I think is a brilliant idea, and glad they’ve finally copied the 360 way), and set downloading all my DLC (DownLoadable Content). With all games that could be installed, all the DLC downloaded, and all games updated I still have over 400Gb free !

I do however have a slight annoyance, I know I could have done a full system backup, and restore, but instead decided to just backup my save game and do a fresh install (far to many years working in the computer industry), however there were a number of games that wouldn’t allow me to copy my save games till memory stick. Street Fighter 4, KillZone 2, NFS Carbon wouldn’t allow me to back up the save games, Street Fighter I can understand as I person could unlock all characters, and then hand around the save game to every man and it’s dog. NFS Carbon, I wasn’t too bothered about this, as I was only 2 races into the game, but the one that really annoyed me was KillZone 2, as I was about halfway through this extremely hard game…..oh well rough with the smooth I guess.

Tags: 40gb hard drive, 8mb cache, annoyance, audio, backup, brilliant idea, Carbon, Christmas, christmas time, computer industry, content, couple, dashboard, demo, DLC, downloadable content, drive, fighter, free success, game, game data, ghostbusters, hard, KillZone, new hard drive, NFS, night, PS3, scorpio, screws, sony, sony ps3, street, system, system backup, system settings, time, upgrade, video file, western digital

Windows 7 Beta, a couple of weeks in.

I’ve now been using windows 7 beta on my spare machine for a couple of weeks, and it pains me to say, I’m impressed.  It’s rock solid, and not fallen over once.

The machine I’m running it on is a Dell Vostro 220 that I bought toward the end of last year.

The Spec is as follows

2Ghz Core 2 Duo

2Gb Ram

2 x 150Gb Sata Hard Drives

ATI 3450 256Mb Dedicated Graphics

Onboard sound

All driver I’m using are in inbuilt Windows drivers, apart from the ATI drivers which are beta.

I’m currently running, Tversity, Utorrent, MKV2VOB, Imgburn, Epson CDprint. Now granted I’m not really pushing it, well apart from the Vob encoding, and the Tversity encoding, but it’s worked flawlessly since I installed it on the 21st Jan 2009.

Taking the above into consideration, I decided to ghost my hard drive on my main gaming PC, and install it on the main drive, big mistake !

Now I will be honest, my machine isn’t the best example of a standard machine, as I’ve had a number of issues with it. There is nothing phyically wrong with it, hardware wise, it’s just have had some (Microsoft hates ATI, and ATI can’t write drivers for toffee issues)

The spec is as follows

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Dual Core CPU
4GB DDR2 5400 OCZ Memory
Asus M2R32-MVP SB600 chipset Motherboard
1 x Pioneer 212 DVD-Multi Drive
1 x WD 500Gb 7200 Hard Drive
2 x WB 250GB 7200 Hard Drive
ATI 2900HD 1Gb Video Card

Now the initial problems I had were with the installation, As I have a SATA DVD drive the AHCI doesn’t like working, however I was able to crowbar the operating system on, this worked ok, however the system paused every couple of seconds, and the hard drive light lit up like a Christmas tree.

So based on this, I put the hard drives into IDE Native mode, and reinstalled, and this fixed the pausing problem.

Driver support….well apart from ATI, NONE ! I know the software is in beta stages, but Geeez, didn’t manufacturers learn thier lesson from the Vista release, I remember waiting for months for Soundblaster to release stable drivers, I ended up taking my XFI card out and using the onboard card instead.

The ATI drivers were Video only, so I have no motherboard drivers, which mean much slowness. I attempted to use the Vista drivers, nope, forget it, just hung. I found that any vista drivers I tried, just made the system hang (fair enough, they ain’t for Windows 7)

I tried to run a few games with the current machine, and they run bad. If they would run at all, they were slow and choppy.

Now I do understand, that the majority of the issues are driver related, so I’ll keep an eye on these and retest at a later date.

As an operating system, I actually can’t wait for it to come out, it’s what Vista should have, and hopefully everybody will forget Vista even happened (kinda like Windows ME).

I like the way the Widgets are no longer on the windows sidebar, I love the preview Window when you scroll over the bottom bar, like the management of the taskbar menu.

Will update when more drivers are available, but at the moment a 2 thumbs up

Tags: 2900, 7, asus, athlon 64 x2 6000, ati, ati drivers, Beta, beta stages, card, chipset motherboard, christmas tree, core, couple, dell, Dell Vostro, drive, drive ati, driver, drivers, dual core cpu, duo, gaming pc, graphics, hard, HD, imgburn, initial problems, M2R32, machine, Me, mkv2vob, Motherboard, MVP, native mode, ocz memory, Onboard, rock, sata, sata hard drives, sb600, Spec, system, toffee, tversity, utorrent, Video, video card, vista, vob, vostro, windows, windows drivers, XFI

Soon I will be free from the Micrsosoft pain and suffering.

As with most Windows users, we all get used to it’s little quirks, think “oh well”, when you see the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), hold the power button down when it decided to lock up and show all your open apps as (Not Responding)….well I’ve had enough.

I’ve used non-linux based operating systems for many many moons, since that day that everything was branded as “IBM Compatible”, when DOS was a sold operating system, and DOS Shell was a simple way of managing your files. These days I talk about where when you had an option to fire up windows, or just run at a command prompt …..ah simple times.

I saw Windows 3, then add sound in 3.1, then add network support in 3.11 for workgroups. I saw them make Windows the primary operating System in Windows 95, add 32-bit support in Windows 98 SE, really not sure what ME was all about, apart from it had prettier icons, and a higher crash rate than a destruction derby….NT, 2000, 2003, 2008, XP, Vista…….and with Windows 7, with Direct X 11 on the horizon (I wonder if it’s a sign ….7/11), but I think it’s time for me to leave the Windows gravy train, and head for greener pastures…that’s right people, I’m heading to the dark side.

On Friday, I’ve order myself a new shiny Macbook Pro ! Woot !

I bought an Apple Ipod Touch 32Gb a month or so ago, and had forgotten what it was like for something just to work !

Now I know apple aren’t the cheapest, but you do get what you pay for. The touch is a £250 MP3 player…..I know, however once you’ve got one in your hand and start to add apps, add your own music you will instantly fall in love with it. This I hope is what is going to happy with the MacBook.

Specs are as follows

Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4GHz) processor.
2GB DDR2 RAM.
250GB hard drive.
15.4in glossy TFT widescreen display.
Slot-loading 8X SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW).
nVidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics with dedicated 256MB memory.
802.11 N WiFi.
Bluetooth.
Built-in iSIGHT camera.
MAC OS X v10.5 Leopard and iLIFE 08.

It’s due for delivery on the 14th (don’t ask, I found a bargain that saved me over £200, so willing to wait)

Only 11 days to go

Tags: 256mb memory, Apple, Apple Ipod, Blue, blue screen of death, book, bsod, button, Compatible, crash rate, day, death, destruction derby, direct x, dos, dos shell, DVD, dvd r dl, everything, gravy train, greener pastures, IBM, ilife, ipod, M GT, mac, Mac OS, mac os x, macbook, many moons, Microsoft, N WiFi, nvidia geforce, operating, own music, power, power button, pro, quirks, R DL, screen, Shell, slot loading, support, system, touch, unix, way, windows, woot, workgroups, X SuperDrive