How to Troubleshoot a PS3 External Hard Drive

The Playstation 3 (PS3) has an internal hard drive, but many people believe that it's too small to store all of your media. To fix this, many users buy an external hard drive to increase storage capacity. However, if you have connected your hard drive and it is not recognized, then your PS3 external hard drive could be having problems and you need to troubleshoot it.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Format your external hard drive to FAT32 using your PC. The PS3 only recognizes FAT32 and will not recognize the NFTS file system that most hard drives are formatted to.

2. Encode your music files to the MP3 format, your video files in DiVX or MP4 format and your pictures in JPG format. These formats are the only media formats that the PS3 recognizes.

3. Create "Music," "Video," "Picture" and "Game" folders in your external hard drive and place all of your media in the correct folder. If you do not create or place your media in these folders, then the PS3 won't find any of the media that you load onto your external hard drive.

4. Connect your external hard drive using a USB cable and turn on your PS3. If your PS3 cannot find or recognize your hard drive, then make sure that the USB cord is firmly connected, and your external hard drive can be host powered. If it cannot be host powered, you need an adapter to power your external hard drive.

Tips & Warnings

• The "Games" folder allows you to download, store and save game files onto your external hard drive. This option is particularly useful if your internal hard drive is full.

[patvid]

on 9/10/2009 My PS3 sees all folders on my USB HDD. Photo music video can be seen. When I try to play a game PS3 says not enough room to load game. Do I have to make USB HDD the default drive, how can I make PS3 see USB HDD for gaming. The four folders are on USB HDD Photo music video game.

THANKS