External hard drive or internal hard drive?

[mcav]

Hey

I'm about to get a hard drive for my PS3. I was just wondering if there is any real advantage of getting an internal drive over an external one.

Aside from the fact that internal would look nicer, what would it do that the external one would not?

Also when it comes to backing up things on the existing drive, I'm guessing I don't have to back up full on game downloads, just game saves etc... the rest being possible to just re download??

Help appreciated.

Also - a guide as to the best internal/external drives to get would be good too.

[leukoplast]

Well, a external drive can probably be bigger and hold more data. But aside from that, not sure what advantages it could pose.

Heck, I wasn't even aware you could mount a external drive directly to the PS3 (its not a USB external your talking about right?)

[mcav]

Ah no...

I was not looking to mount an external hard drive - but apparently there is a way to do it.

I was simply talking about taking an external hard drive, plugging it into the USB port and going.

I'm wondering if you can save game installs/game saves to it as well as obviously media such as music and video.

If not, then I may just get an internal drive.

[snowthedirtbub]

I wanted to go this route to, but from what ive read, you cant save game saves, and demos on an external drive. you can only store your music, videos, and pics.

[Yip-Man]

The problem with an external drive, is that you cannot access, game installs , downlaoded games that you have moved on to the drive, you would have to move them to and from the external drive onto the PS3 Internal drives to get those sort of things to work.....

so you can store then on there, put ps3 can not play them from external so you would need to keep transfering.


Thats why i went for an internal drive....


Then you can use the old ps3 drive as external drive for backups etc, if you buy a cheap case....

As for backing up etc before putting in new drive - just do game saves as can redownload psn titles, obv, all your game installs and updages would need to be redone tho. takes a bit of time but not that much.

so if i were you mate, go internal as gives you full access to whole drive, and use the old ps3 one as smallish external, I keep all me photo's and music on there !!

Hope of some help

[kalishnikov]

The problem with an external drive, is that you cannot access, game installs , downlaoded games that you have moved on to the drive, you would have to move them to and from the external drive onto the PS3 Internal drives to get those sort of things to work.....

so you can store then on there, put ps3 can not play them from external so you would need to keep transfering.


Thats why i went for an internal drive....


Then you can use the old ps3 drive as external drive for backups etc, if you buy a cheap case....

As for backing up etc before putting in new drive - just do game saves as can redownload psn titles, obv, all your game installs and updages would need to be redone tho. takes a bit of time but not that much.

so if i were you mate, go internal as gives you full access to whole drive, and use the old ps3 one as smallish external, I keep all me photo's and music on there !!

Hope of some help

Great advice, spot on. Exactly what I was going to say.

OP follow this guy's advice, increase your internal HD size and pick up (or build yourself, its really easy) a case for your old internal HD and make it into a external HD. All you should need is the new HD, a case for the old HD and a plug converter to go from the odd connection on the HD to a USB (maybe some soldering/splicing? Dunno, I'm still in the planning/research stage of the project).

Then you'll get the best of both worlds, larger HD for games and such and an external for any music/photos/vids you'd like to store that don't fit on the internal or you just don't want to use the space, efficient use of all parts and no waste.

[Theft]

Ah no...

I was not looking to mount an external hard drive - but apparently there is a way to do it.

I was simply talking about taking an external hard drive, plugging it into the USB port and going.

I'm wondering if you can save game installs/game saves to it as well as obviously media such as music and video.

If not, then I may just get an internal drive.

I wondered the same thing when I was debating on external or internal and once I found out that I could not install games or download anything to it like demos on an external, I went and bought a 200gb internal. Problem solved.