**We are not liable if mistakes are made and hard drives, devices or hardware is damaged.**
Aaron here from Toronto Home Movies – came across some great info that may help you gamers and people using their Playstation 3 for movies, videos and music.
I had clients mentioning that they cannot get their external hard drives to work with their Playstation 3. The main issue with this is Playstation 3 will only support external hard drives that are formatted for FAT32. Unfortunately, the more current, popular file system is NTFS. The problem with FAT32 is it’s a very old file system that is not as stable as the newer NTFS file system. FAT32 is now “abandonware” where-as NTFS is under royalty to Microsoft, therefore, Sony can only support hard drives formatted for FAT32. Also, the Sony Playstation 3 will not work with the current MAC/Apple file system which is HFS.
The problem with FAT32 is that it was never designed to hold more than 32GB. If you have a 500GB or 1TB (1000GB) drive, it is much more unstable than if it were formatted for NTFS and much more prone to fail on you, potentially losing important files. NTFS on the other hand is able to store one single file that is 2TB, or 2000GB in size. Another issue with FAT32, at least if you are using it on your PC, is a hard drive formatted for FAT32 will not support files that are 4GB in size or larger. Video files, specifically, are known to exceed 4GB in one single file. If you are strictly using it for your Playstation 3, that should not affect you in any way.
One MAJOR problem now is that Windows Vista and Windows 7 does not allow you to format a hard drive into the old FAT32 file system through the Windows operating system. You must either A. reformat the drive into FAT32 on a MAC or B. download third party software to reformat the drive accordingly.
One tip if you are planning to reformat your hard drive is to back up all important files onto your computer prior to reformatting the drive. When you reformat the hard drive, all files are deleted and the drive is wiped clean. Another suggestion is, if you have multiple external drives connected to your computer, disconnect all drives except the one you wish to reformat. The LAST thing you want to do is reformat the wrong hard drive by mistake!
One program you can download to make reformatting your hard drive into FAT32 easier is SwissKnife.
Enjoy using your external hard drive with your Playstation 3! I hope this is of some help to you Playstation users. There will be more useful info coming soon!
Aaron Mortson
Toronto Home Movies
1-866-559-1163
