Upgrading Your
PS3 Hard Drive
Is Easy

Unlike the alternative game consoles, Sony lets you easily upgrade your PS3 hard drive. They designed the hard drive bay for easy access and they let you know that it won't void your warranty to swap in a larger hard disk drive.

The stock PS3 consoles come with varying options for hard drive sizes: 80GB, 60GB, 40GB, and 20GB are common. Depending on how much you've downloaded and the size of your drive, you may be ready for an upgrade. Happily, large hard drives are inexpensive and easy to find.

The Playstation 3 console uses a standard 2.5-inch, 9.5mm, SATA notebook hard drive. The height is important, because some of the larger drives have a 12.5mm height and these drives will not fit in to the PS3 console. You can pick any manufacturer: Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, or Fujitsu. The manual doesn’t say how large of a drive the PS3 console supports but other users have had no trouble upgrading the PS3 with a 500GB laptop hard drive.

5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM

The stock hard drive has an RPM of 5400. If you have a choice for the upgrade drive, it's better to save your money and stick with the 5400 RPM drive. Over at GamePro, they compared the performance between these two drives and found the speed increase to be tiny.

Backup Your PS3 Hard Drive

Be sure to backup your data from the PS3 hard drive before you remove it from the console. You can use the system backup utility to save your data to an external hard drive.

PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade

The tools required for the upgrade are:

1. Mini flathead screwdriver


2. Mini phillips screwdriver


3. Small pliers

The following steps explain how to upgrade your internal hard drive. Pay close attention to the tip about loosening the caddy screws with pliers before using your screwdriver.

1. Pry off the cover with the flathead screw driver.


2. Remove three screws.


3. Pull out the lever and slide the caddy to the right.


4. Remove the four screws that hold the drive to the caddy. TIP: loosen the screws with a pair of pliers or you may strip the screw heads.


5. Mount the new hard drive in the caddy.


6. Slide the caddy back into the slot, push the lever to the left to insure a good mount into the SATA connector.


7. Replace the screws and the cover.

Now, when you start your Playstation, it will detect that the new hard drive is not formatted. Just answer yes to both questions to start the formatting process.

Here is a 3 and a half minute video showing you how to replace your hard drive:

Xbox 360 vs PS3 Hard Drive

Microsoft chose to use draconian measures to lock their customers into buying a proprietary external hard drive upgrade. In sharp contrast, Sony makes it easy for you to upgrade your drive using the common notebook hard drive.

The Xbox 360 has an external hard drive but Microsoft does not allow you to replace it with just any hard drive. You'll have to buy one of their hard drives and the largest size is currently at 120GB. It is possible to put a non-approved hard drive into an Xbox 360 but the process requires some expertise in using a specialized utility to craft a new security signature. Read more about the Xbox 360 hard drive.

Wii vs PS3 Hard Drive

Nintendo Wii doesn't support any hard drive. Wii external storage is limited to the largest available SD flash card. It seems that they would have served their users better if they would have at least provided the ability to plug in a USB hard drive.

Return from PS3 Hard Drive to External Hard Drive