Playstation Plus

[fuse]

So er, after much deliberation I bought a 1TB drive off Amazon which is turning up today. Looking online at a guide it would seem that the actual physical swap-over process is a piece of piss, however a few Google searches are suggesting that the only way to get data onto the new drive is to download it again. Is this right? I currently have a 250GB drive full of crap, and to get it back I need to sync all the user-created content (saves) to PS+, and then just go over my download history grabbing all of the store-bought stuff I had before?

This seems... less convenient than I had hoped.

[Brad]

Got an external USB drive? Back up, put new drive in, let ps3 format it, restore. Simples!

[fuse]

I bought a 2gb NAS thing a year or so back that's been sat there doing nothing, I wonder if I can get that to do the trick. Failing that, no I don't. Buggerations.

[Brad]

How full is your current PS hard drive? If it's less than 120 gig I'll lend you a 120gig USB drive to do it.

[fuse]

It's to the brim, unfortunately - thanks for the offer though. I think the good lady might have one, so I will check with her before this gets any bigger than it needs to

[Brad]

lol, ok mate. When I did it (many years ago) I did have an issue in that it only restored my main (first) account correctly so if you have multiple accounts on there you might want to read up on the current situation here.

[ETC]

The absolute easiest way is the Ethernet PS3 to PS3 its a full copy but you need 2 ps3 systems

[fuse]

I have two, but the other's a 12gb super slim, and therefore about as helpful as a chocolate teapot.

[Jei]

Fuse - I can lend you a 750gb external or do the whole transfer for you if you want?

[fuse]

Cheers dude! I'm still hopeful I should be able to sort it out with gubbins we've already got in the flat, but if it all comes up short I'll let you know

[85 78 73 81 85 69]

So er, after much deliberation I bought a 1TB drive off Amazon which is turning up today. Looking online at a guide it would seem that the actual physical swap-over process is a piece of piss, however a few Google searches are suggesting that the only way to get data onto the new drive is to download it again. Is this right? I currently have a 250GB drive full of crap, and to get it back I need to sync all the user-created content (saves) to PS+, and then just go over my download history grabbing all of the store-bought stuff I had before?

This seems... less convenient than I had hoped.

Depending on how much "crap" you've got on the drive it may acyually be better for you to not bother using the backup/restore option on the PS3.

It's a handy facility but time it takes doesn't seem to be constant with some people reporting 8 hours or more for drives of a similar size to the one you're using, that time is for the backup only and restoring can take just as long or even longer.

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of consistency in how long these things take so I'd guess it was down to something to do with actually hard drives being used, the PS3 hardware you're using and the individual game data that's on the hard drive.

You may be lucky as other people have used the backup/restore facility with a similar amount of data and it's been a couple of hours but there doesn't seem to be any way to estimate how long it will take you to do it because nobody knows the variables that decide.

If you've backed up all your game saves to the Plus cloud then it's worth thinking about how much of the game data you actually want/need on the console straight away and how much of it you aren't in a desperate hurry to have available to you.

We upgraded to a 1TB drive a while ago as our 750GB drive was close to full and much of the content hadn't even been looked at for years so most of it we just weren't bothered about. Because we have Plus we could then use that to download less important content over time.

The slowest part of doing it this way wasn't downloading games but downloading updates but again we just used Plus for the games we wanted to use. If there are any games that have substantial updates just boot them up and when it starts downloading them cancel it and it will then be included in the next Plus update.

I'd love to be able to tell you that it's quicker to backup/restore or to do it this way but there appears to be no way to judge in advance and it depends on the circumstances who's doing it. I can guarantee you that if we ever needed to upgrade again that we wouldn't even consider the backup/restore due to how long it's taken in the past but I can't tell you that it's the wrong way for you to do it.

[MartyG]

So er, after much deliberation I bought a 1TB drive off Amazon which is turning up today. Looking online at a guide it would seem that the actual physical swap-over process is a piece of piss, however a few Google searches are suggesting that the only way to get data onto the new drive is to download it again. Is this right? I currently have a 250GB drive full of crap, and to get it back I need to sync all the user-created content (saves) to PS+, and then just go over my download history grabbing all of the store-bought stuff I had before?

This seems... less convenient than I had hoped.

The backup restore to an external drive works well, but as said above it can take a while to do - I swapped out a 250GB drive last year and it took about 6 hours to complete the process.

Make sure you get everything backed up from the drive before you swap them out, because once you've done that and turned the machine on, you won't be able to put the old drive back in as the first thing the PS3 does is wipe the drive.

[fuse]

Cheers all, plenty of good info above.

If all goes to plan I can just leave it chugging away and do something else, so I'm not too worried on that front. I downloaded Demon's Souls the other day, and having it take nearly as long to install as it took to download was a nice warm-up exercise for the mundane extravangaza that's to follow.

[kryss]

NA PS+ users get Saints Row 3rd in June.

..Still haven't played 2nd we got last year yet.

[BIG EDD]

Here's 12th June playstation plus releases

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2013/06/06/playstation-plus-more-new-games-coming-your-way/