This is a copy paste from the PSX discord.
Hey guys, ive got a phat ps3 CECHC02 7A bought around when it launched here in australia. firmware still on 4.50.
I have some photos of my kids and some photos that i could of thought were there but suspect they were deleted as i literally havnt touched this console since maybe 2013.
im farelly confident because of a 60gb storage it hasnt been filled ever that no deleted images were overwritten by how ps3 handles hdd encryption.
Im unplugged HDD to my windows 11 desktop, and blindly not understanding i was prompted with initializing the drive to either MBR or GPT, which i stupidly clicked GPT.
not aware of this i plugged HDD back to ps3 and the ps is telling me to format the disk as there is a operating system issue.
I learnt GPT initalising overwrites 32-33 or 34 sectors of the affected drive to be read by windows as MBR only does 1 sector at 512 byte zone.
I downloaded a image downloader to read its data through HxD and its confirmed my mistake did infact happen because of GPT.
Im discussed with another member here about what to do and i was suggested using a donor HDD in its exact size of 60gb and have the ps3 format to that drive, uninstall and put into my main pc and copy paste the damage sectors as a form of recovery to get the HDD to work again.
later in the stage im going to extract the id_root_key to read all the data and find any deleted info on the device
Does anyone have any opinions on this?
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Ive discussed with other individuals and one other method is to use a HDD mount script or a HDD decryption helper, as im aware PS3's encryption method encrypts everything each by sector so a damaged partition of 32 sectors really only affects the ability for the HDD to be used in the PS3 again
