Making the Jump: PS3 Fat to PS3 Slim
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Just before Christmas, I was concerned about the amount of noise my creaky (yet shiny) PS3 was making.
Having diligently hoovered the original PS every month since the day one purchase, I think that there was dust in places that there really ought not to have been. The fan would kick in after being on for only 10 minutes and the heat coming off of it was a concern to say the least.
In January, the kind folks at my day job gave me a bonus for the hard work over the past year (thanks guys!), which I decided I would put towards trading in my old PS3 for a new Slim. I did some digging, and it seemed the best solution.
Turns out there a few things I should have known…
The day came, and I backed up the PS3 using the backup/restore procedure I had used countless times before. I then replaced the 200Gb HDD I had put into the PS3 with the original 60Gb one. I de-authorized the PS3 and set the settings back to factory default.
I didn’t have the option to transfer from one PS3 directly to the new one, as I had to do the trade in first; I was not sure they would have accepted the old one because of the small plane taking off every time the machine was on for more than 10 minutes.
As it turned out, the trade went just fine and before long I was at home like a giddy child on Christmas morning with a new toy to open. Sure enough, everything was as it should be – documentation you never read, power cable, DualShock 3, standard A/V cable and the brand new teeny tiny PS3.
Having gone from the old to the new, it has to be said that the difference is quite something. Whereas the original PS3 had a footprint large enough to make a sasquatch blush, the new one is far more compact. In every dimension, there has been a considerable amount of renovation. The weight of the new redesign is worth noting as well; should you have to take the PS3 anywhere in a rucksack or carry case, it will not break your back like the old version threatened to.
So, we skip ahead a few minutes, and there I am in my front room with the PS3 on and looking to transfer all my lovely data onto the equally-lovely new machine. I can literally feel my pupils change into the shape of love-hearts as the PS3 remains silent beyond the ten minute mark. Swoon!
Oh yeah - it's cool.
In goes the USB cable for the external HDD, over to settings and the backup/restore feature and… nothing. ”There is no backup data on the connected storage media”, proclaims the PS3.
I double take. Twice.
I unplug the drive and stick it into the laptop and sure enough, there’s the folder with all the data. And look – there’s the data itself, all snug and happy, sitting right where it needs to be.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Back to the PS3, still no joy. I move it from the HDD to the laptop, format the HDD and put the hierarchy back as it needs to be – I even check online and no-one in the history of anyone, ever, has had this happen before. Just me.
But it’s ok, because I still have the old 200Gb HDD from the other PS3, eh? Again, I take everything out, remove the sliding door hiding the same ‘blue screw of doom’ as was present in the old PS3 and change out the HDD. Everything goes back together (with the blue screw changed for a nice sturdy silver one I have spare) and I turn on the PS3.
“The system information does not match the HDD information. Please update to the latest firmware using an external storage device.” I can actually feel my blood drain from my face. I jump online and grab the latest firmware update, fire it onto a handy USB flash drive and stick it into the PS3.
Oh yeah – I forgot that there are only two USB slots on the new machine. And no card reader. This new machine is starting to make my eye twitch…
A few minutes later, and a bar comes up stating that the PS3 is formatting. FORMATTING?!? Oh sweet lord no…
So long PS3, so long game saves! *sniff*
Three years. Three years of game saves, purchases, downloads, trophies and unknown hours of gaming all lost in one fell swoop, apparently without alternative.
Sure enough, after a sullen 20 minutes of waiting, the new PS3 finally decides to creep to life, showing the fancy new logo which matches just nicely with the new font on the machine. The new machine devoid of any of my content. The same new machine I secretly loathe now.
Granted, some of this was my own fault – I could have backed up some of my game saves – not the copy protected ones, mind. I could have copied all of my videos, music and images over to an HDD and manually restored them later. Hell, I could even have used that data transfer option, had I had the confidence that the old PS3 would be accepted for trade in.
But no. Even though I knew people had been fine before, I didn’t do everything I could have done to safeguard against data loss.
The upside is that I did de-authorize my old machine for both video and games before the trade-in, so I have re-downloaded all of my previous games. This took quite a while to do. I also had to put every disc I own into the PS3 in order to make sure I had the latest update before installing any DLC for said game.
The only issue? SingStore.
SingStore no-go? *twitch twitch*
The nature of Sony’s online karaoke beast means that Sony have to be super-careful about how they allow downloads. Even though I was in an authorized account, even though the previous one had been de-authorized, I still was not allowed to download my purchased songs. Which were numerous to say the least.
Fortunately, I called Sony directly on this, and explained my situation to the rep on the other end of the phone. He was not much use, being honest. I advised him of my predicament, and he flat-out stated there was nothing that could be done.
I hesitated, then stressed that I had de-authorized my previous machine, had the new machine authorized and that I only wanted the content that I had paid for. I was not looking for Sony to provide me with the entire Nirvana back-catalogue. That was a different call entirely…
After a bit of moaning and mumbling, the guy finally stated that he could permit the machine to download the tracks once more, but only after some point over the next 48 hours would this be allowed – no notification given, just to keep on checking. I got the impression that he wasn’t keen on allowing me to do this, but given that my backup data had apparently gone bad, I think he had a modicum of sympathy.
Overall? The PS3 Slim is a cracking wee machine.
It runs silently, does everything it ought to do and even looks slightly better than I thought it would. Even the dust seems to be avoiding the matte surface, which is a bonus.
However, if you are planning on changing up to a PS3 Slim from a PS3 Fat, do everything you can to back everything up in as many different places as possible – it is monumentally frustrating to lose everything you have spent years amassing. I know that it sounds obvious, but it is so easy to assume that you have done enough.
The upside is that I now have the pleasure of re-visiting some old friends…
Why hello Uncharted, it’s been far too long… How’s your mother these days?
I’m still loving life with my fat PS3.
It always amazes me the issues which other gamers have with dust. Do any of you actually ever clean your homes? tut tut
The next series of How Clean Is Your House could focus on showing gamers how to do a bit of housework.
Haha! Yeah something like that.
Unfortunately, I live literally sandwiched between a railway line and a main road, which kicks up a ton of dust. I also have 2 kittehs and a guinea pig, which doesn’t help much.
But, that is why I hoovered it so damn much – trying to be proactive in my YLOD-preventing techniques. Fortunately, it seemed to work long enough to get an upgrade!
I’ve never seen the point in doing a full system backup.
Sure, it copies everything onto the external hard drive, but if you install it onto a different PS3 than the one you copied it from, then the only things that it copies are non-protected game saves, photos, music, and non-purchased videos.
That means that even if your backup works properly, you still lose all your protected saves, PSN games, Game Data (installs and patches) and purchased videos from the Vid Store.
Doesn’t really seem worth it to me – you’re better off just manually copying all your game saves onto a memory stick or something (unless of course that you have shedloads of photos and music, in which case a full backup is probably just about worth it.
I do a full back up around once a month. because I do have 100+ albums, hundreds of photos and the usual crowd of game saves.
My machine did crash and die about a year ago and I had it replaced with another 60gb first gen all the memory slots machine.
I had the same problem, refusal to recognise the 250gb drive.
And I had the similar run round with Sony. Though I think mine was not so complicated because they swapped out my machine and could track what was going on.
I have toyed with the idea of getting a second ’slim’ machine but will reserve this for when I’m rich and/or famous.
Hey Phreaky, Great read! Just a heads up.. I bet I know why your new Slim will not recognize your backup save. Its probably the fact that the External HDD that you stored your PS3 backup on was an NTFS… the PS3 ONLY recognizes FAT32… If you could find an old FAT32 HDD… maybe a flash drive..or just partition your External HDD (and make it half Fat32 and Half NTFS) I can just about promise you you’ll have all your saves and stuff back! You should try it and post a follow up, after all 3 years of game saves lost.. is a lot of time lost. Let us know if it works!
What this man says is correct, I hope it work and good thinking foo’!
Hey FMP. Yeah I thought of that – I’ve done backups before with the PS3 and have a dedicated partition for just that.
But, doubting myself, I formatted the HDD again, and alas, it means that I am up a certain creek without a paddle.
…no matter! I am loving working through Assassin’s Creed 2 for now – came with the console!
I’m perfectly happy with my launch day phat PS3, don’t think it makes too much noise, doesn’t attract too much dust and looks beautiful! I have put a 500GB under the hood though.
For some reason my backup utility on my 60GB PS3 always gave an error, so I was only ever able to save things manually to my external drive. Probably a good thing that I do this regularly, as just before the new year I was hit with the YLOD and I’m now waiting for my new slim to arrive in the post, while I try and get hold of a slim PS2 as well. I think the only copy protected saves that I have lost are for Singstar, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Killzone 2. Don’t think I’ll be playing through Elite difficulty again though.
Unlucky Phreaky, you have my sympathy! Had a similar thing happen to me last year, although my backup worked fine (probably the FAT32/NTSC thing), although as it was a new machine, I lost KZ2, Dragon Age and a few other key “non-transferables”. Very much think that non-copyable game saves should be a thing of the past (although I do think they should still be locked to individual accounts, a la Burnout).
In terms of the card reader and the USB issue, grab yourself a USB hub and a card reader and you’ll be fine. One thing I noticed with (and to look out for) is that PlayTV struggled a bit through the USB hub, so I changed it to two USB hubs (one piggy-backed on the other) and PlayTV in the front.
I had the same predicament as Phreaky in this case, although my phat PS3 died of the orange light, which game me no chance of backing anything up. I must say though, its been fun regaining all my 100% game saves the hard way.
Thank god my trophies were intact though!
Well I’m glad you’re atleast looking at the bright side of the situation…my Game Backlog is so large.. I feel like i’d be taking away so much time if i were to replay all my gamesaves… however if my 80GB kicked the bucket.. I would probably have to find another fatty. They only Main feature that I like about the Slim is that Bravia-Link..since I have a Bravia TV.. other than that.. all other pro’s are minor.