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Need one for my PS3, advice?

Basically I want to load it with movies and play them off the HD on the PS3.

All drives need to be in FAT32 format. I had to reformat one that was NTFS out of the box. I've used properly formatted USB flash drive and portable hard drives (meaning USB-powered) with no problems. I suppose external drives with a wall outlet should work. If the PS3 doesn't see any video files on the device, you may need to bring up the options (triangle) menu and "show all files".

Yep, that's the plan. Just wondering which would be the best bang for my buck.

I see some 1TB ones for about $90-100, not sure about the quality.

My brother-in-law formatted my HD once and the PS3 still didn't pick it up. So I just copy what I want to watch onto a flash drive and watch it on that.

Yeah I've used Flash Drives before but it's such a pain to move/watch/delete/move etc

Oh, I getcha, believe me. It's a pain. I've done it for a few years now, so I've just gotten used to it.

You just have to make a "PS3" directory on the hard drive and put a "movies" or "video" folder in that directory(I can't remember which). It should then get you right where you need to go. The PS3 is kind of stupid about directory paths, so you have to hand hold it.

I thought the ps3 had streaming? I have a TV that supports DNLA and the media server I use is PS3 Media Server. If both your PC and your PS3 are ethernet then there should be no problem getting the to see eachother.

Yeah but I also want a drive I can take from one house to another.

Thanks for the advice though grub, I didn't know it could do that.

grub said:

I thought the ps3 had streaming? I have a TV that supports DNLA and the media server I use is PS3 Media Server. If both your PC and your PS3 are ethernet then there should be no problem getting the to see eachother.

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Yeah, the PS3 natively supports windows streaming media over a network, but I did get the feeling that wasn't what she wanted to do.

On my PS3, my home network shows up no problem. The only issue is that not all codecs are supported by the PS3, but I don't think that'd be a problem for Shego, seeing as she's most likely jailbroken her PS3.

As far as quality of drives, I hadn't priced them in a while, and 90-120 seems to be the price range for external hard drives on new egg. And that's the good brands. They won't have the read speed of an internal hard drive for that price range, but you don't need speed for portable media, really.

On a semi-related note, if the drive is required to be in FAT32 format, make sure you buy a drive with 512-byte sectors. That is, make sure the drive is NOT one of the new "advanced format," 4096-byte (4kB)/sector drives. Also make sure it is less than or equal to 2TB in size. Additionally, this means you will not be able to copy any file larger than 4GB onto the drive.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

On a semi-related note, if the drive is required to be in FAT32 format, make sure you buy a drive with 512-byte sectors. That is, make sure the drive is NOT one of the new "advanced format," 4096-byte (4kB)/sector drives. Also make sure it is less than or equal to 2TB in size. Additionally, this means you will not be able to copy any file larger than 4GB onto the drive.

--Patrick

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Why so if it's for an external data drive?

Also, you should not feed it after midnight.

Bowielee said:

Why so if it's for an external data drive?

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Those are just limitations of the FAT32 file system, regardless of whether the drive is internal or external.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Those are just limitations of the FAT32 file system, regardless of whether the drive is internal or external.

--Patrick

Click to expand...

Yes, but if you're not running programs off of them, what difference does it make?

Bowielee said:

...what difference does it make?

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Your disk formatted with FAT32 is going to expect to be able to move data in 512-byte chunks, and this is what it will be told to do. Since the new drives are forced to eat everything in 4k chunk size minimum, this means there is quite a potential for slowdown if things aren't aligned to those 4k sector edges. I don't know enough about PS3s to know if using an AF drive will make it sluggish (or even noticeable), but this is a HUGE deal for people using WinXP and earlier, as well as anyone still using a PowerPC Macintosh.

--Patrick

I use a current generation USB Drive and I don't have any issues.

Since most people still use XP, most current drives automatically internally translate/virtualize between 4k/512 sector sizes. It might be nothing (and I have zero experience with PS3s), but felt it needed mentioning. It might explain if anyone runs into any kind of weirdness.

--Patrick