Topic: PS3 Harddrive Question

[Maverick]

Maybe someone here with a PS3 can help me.  I recently bought The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen on Blu-Ray.  When I inserted it into my PS3, the disc didn't appear in my menu.  At first I was freaked out thinking my BR drive had died, and that I'd have to send in my PS3 to the chop shop.  Fortunately after I removed the disc and put it back in, it appeared just fine.  So maybe it was just a random glitch or something.

Even though it hasn't happened yet, it made me worried about the Blu-Ray drive dying, as I've heard that some people with 60gig PS3s have had their BR drives die after playing GTA IV extensively, which I have been.  When my roommate had to send in his PS3, they wouldn't allow him to keep his hard drive, so he lost all of his data in the process of getting a new one.  So I was just wondering the best way to back up PS3 hard drive data in case I end up having to do the same.  Can I use an external HDD and plug it in via USB and just transfer?  Do I have to use a bunch of flash drives?  SD cards?  I really have no idea and I'm too lazy to look it up, so hopefully someone here can help.

TL,DR:  What's the best way to backup data on the PS3's HDD to an external source?

[Pale]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a built in back up utility on the PS3 os?

I think you can just plug an external usb drive into the front and run that utility and be done.

[Pale]

Cnet's article on doing a hard drive swap touches on doing a backup...

http://asia.cnet.com/digitalliving/tips/0,3800004921,62032875,00.htm

[Maverick]

Thanks Pale, much appreciated.  Looks like I'll be needing to borrow my roommates external drive after all.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Take note when you backup stuff from a PS3 HD it does not save your account data or OS data on to the external as those are kept in the PS3 itself I guess Sony transfers them on to your replacement. You basically back up game, game saves, virtual PS1 and PS2 memory cards and other media data with the backup utility.

[Maverick]

Thanks for the heads up.  That's the stuff I was most concerned about anyway.