The hard disks database will be rebuilt....?.....?

[Shin Asura]

What the hell, I just turned my system on and I was FORCED to do this, why and what is going on here

all my old friend messages have been deleted............

[surtur]

i can't help with what it is or what caused it but i do have a question.. did you lose all your data or was everything still there after ?

[mickice]

Many people believe it is like a Defrag, moving the files so it is easier to be read.

[surtur]

Many people believe it is like a Defrag, moving the files so it is easier to be read.
that would be nice i was wondering if the PS3 had some way of defraging the HDD.

[Shin Asura]

i can't help with what it is or what caused it but i do have a question.. did you lose all your data or was everything still there after ?

All my old messages are gone , game saves are still there though

[Shin Asura]

Many people believe it is like a Defrag, moving the files so it is easier to be read.

I see, well if it moved my old messages I can't find them

My received box is totally empty

[Stoffinator]

I just had it done to me ago, I do believe also its the PS3 defrag feature.

[surtur]

I just had it done to me ago, I do believe also its the PS3 defrag feature.did you notice any performance increase after i know when i defrag my PC it speeds up dramatically and my PS seems to be getting slow when accessing the HDD for music or demos so i am thinking it is getting fragmented.

[Phantasmn]

I highly doubt that this thing is a defrag, since the OS is based on Linux, and Linux OSes don't have a defrag option because they use smart memory management. Defragmenting the HDD is only done in Windows because of the crappy OS not having good memory management.

Back to the main topic, I'm pretty sure that this happens when the system is turned off while the HDD access indicator light is still blinking. It happened to me about 2 weeks ago and scared the daylights out of me. The reason why I say that part about the HDD being in use before this message popping up is because I was in a hurry to turn off my PS3 one day when I was playing MGO, and the next time I booted it up, I got the "Press OK to begin Hard Disk Rebuild" message.

And also, it can't be defragging the HDD because why would it say "re-building" when it were just re-organizing files for defragmenting the files? It makes no sense to me logically....

[coolguy]

at least game saves are still there .. thats what counts

[danlisa]

I can actually make this happen on demand. Which leads me to believe it's the PS3 correcting it's referencing system (or shortcuts/registry, if you want to think of it like that).

What I did was to download Album Art for my MP3's and place them into a grouped folder in my Photos. I then applied each image to the relevent MP3 folder. I thought that the images would be embedded into the MP3's, so I deleted the originals from my Photos folder. The images were still displayed on the MP3 albums for the rest of my session. Only when I restarted my PS3 did the "Rebuilding Database" message come up and afterwards, the MP3 album no longer had the art applied to them.

In short, the PS3 fixes itself. Nothing to worry about.

[Illumin]

This has happened to me three times and it is such a pain in the *** because I have to reassign all 200 South Parks, 100 Family Guys, 30 Boondocks and many other videos into their appropriate folders ONE BY ONE. So annoying.

[wig2903]

I got this message for the first time just now and notice this thread is quite new. Without causing speculation, maybe it's due to the new firmware update as I haven't used my PS3 since I updated. I've always been cautious about not turning it off till the light goes red though...

Regardless, what information do you lose/keep? Is it just the friend messages? How about photo and video downloads?

[seanviera]

so this is happening to me, but it keeps cycling over and over again. I can't get pass the message to restore the hdd. How did anyone fix this issue?

[tjbo1m]

I keep hearing about this helping out people's systems. I hope it happens to me. can always re-upload my music and vids if I lose em.

[factorx691]

It is hard to speculate whether or not this is a defrag feature simply because very little is known about the actual file system that the PS3 uses. It is quite likely that it is one but typically defrags move the physical address on the drive to one that will lead to better access times with more concurrent data but typically there is very little that the user notices in terms of moved content.

EX. I defrag my hard drive and after I go into my videos folder but everything is still the way I left it on the gui but on the physical data level it is not.

If it speeds the PS3 up then it is likely to be a defrag and Sony being the company they are probably frigged it up when they wrote it so it makes a physical impact that the consumer notices when it shouldn't.

[factorx691]

so this is happening to me, but it keeps cycling over and over again. I can't get pass the message to restore the hdd. How did anyone fix this issue?

Hope you have a backup sounds kinda like a PC that boots up every time and runs checkdsk. Typically means the hard drive keeps failing a checksum of sorts and is on its way out.

OR an infamous S.M.A.R.T failure...

[-Deadpool-]

I find it strange that there's really nothing 'official' from Sony on what this is?!

[hillybilly]

Perhaps you didnt shut down your PS3 properly, Ive heard that can cause many problems such as that

[Dimitrius]

The same thing just happend to me like 5 minutes ago when I turn my PS3 on. The last time I use it was like an hour before an turn it off after deleating a bunch of demos and movies. Also before deleating all that stuff I quit the GTA:IV game without checking if the were accesing the HDD. Atleast when the console bootup everything was there eccept fot the messages like you guys said.

[Tyler Durden]

Has someone that has experienced this got his/her PS1/PS2 virtual memory card files deleted?

[Shin Asura]

Has someone that has experienced this got his/her PS1/PS2 virtual memory card files deleted?

All mine are still there, i haven't played any ps1/ps2 games in awhile

Maybe yours got corrupted or whatever

[kalishnikov]

Has someone that has experienced this got his/her PS1/PS2 virtual memory card files deleted?

I had to rebuild once and it kept my PS1/PS2 saves. Would have been so pissed if I had to redo the 178% I've done so far in Castlevannia.... ;)