How can I hook up an External USB Hard Drive to my PS3?

Question

I have an AcomData 120 GB, 7200 rpm, NTFS formatted, USB External Hard Drive. When I hook it up to my PS3's USB port, the system can't seem to even recognize the drive. It gives the little "loading" icon, so I know it's receiving a signal (and the drive works fine on my PC), but after a few seconds, the loading icon goes away and I can't find the drive listed as a connected device.

How would I go about getting the PS3 to even recognize my drive, let alone getting files off of it? Thanks.

Answer 1

I think the problem is the NTFS format. On a USB flash drive the PS3 reads the drive. The only diff. is the format. The flash drive has a Fat 32 format. The Fat 32 format works with other operating systems. I'm in the testing faze of repartitioning a 120 gig drive into 4-partitions in Fat 32. You can only format in Fat 32 up to 32 gigs. Thus you need to repartition the big drives down below to 32 gigs and use Fat 32. This is my guess and I will report back once I'm done.
Update! The external drive has to be Fat32. Windows will only let you format a drive up to 32 gig in Fat32. You have to use another software to format a 120 gig drive to Fat32 without partitioning the drive. Once you have the external USB drive in Fat32 you need to put the raw files (No Folders) in the drive to read them. When the external drive shows up on the PS3 main screen you need to highlight the external drive then hit the triangle button and highlight the "show all" . If you have music on the drive all the music files will show up. If you have pixs on the drive and you have to go back to the main PS3 screen and highlight the Picture icon and hightlight the external hard drive then hit the triangle button "View All" The pixs will show up.
I have found that if you copy the files to your hard drive you get a whole set of other options you don't when you use an external drive. I have 48 gig of music and have upgraded my PS3 to a 120gig hard drive so I can put all my Music, Pixs and Home videos on the PS3 hard drive. When the files are on the PS3 hard drive it shows you a thumbnail of your Video's and when the video's are on a external hard drive it does not? The internal PS3 drive will take your pixs and file them for you by date (Month) and tell you how many pixs are in the (Month) folder and give you a thumbnail of the folder. You don't get this with an external hard drive???

Answer 2

I also share this same problem. I'm guessing mine (SimpleTech 100 GB external hard-drive) is NTFS formatted (never reformatted, straight out of the box). Not sure if I need to reformat the hard drive to work with the PS3 or vice versa. Wouldn't it be a bit dicey to try to reformat the PS3 to accomodate the external HD?

Answer 3

the same thing happens when i put in my external hard drive i keep movies on for my computer... maybe a new software update will fix this