PS3 (Question) Is SSD vs HDD worth it or not?

Nator said:
For example, if i buy a 1TB laptop HDD, is any model/brand fine or are there known incompatibility problems?
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If you want largest capacity a 1.5/1.75tb is gonna do it for you. They are slightly slower being only 5400rpm so if you want a happy middle ground a 1tb 7200rpm is a great choice. Or if you're wanting a cheap solution they have 5400rpm 1tb drives for cheap.
 
I saw this and felt the need to sign up and offer my opinion/experience. The answer to this question depends on how you're using your PS3.

Are you loading it up with hundreds of gigabytes of games and playing them off the drive? In that scenario I would hesitate to use an SSD. As others have pointed out, the PS3 doesn't have TRIM support, which is going to accelerate wear on any SSD you install in the system. Because of this, I'd use a regular HDD or hybrid SSHD.

If you're just using the drive like a normal PS3, then I think the SSD has enough advantages to make it a compelling option. While you won't see much if any improvement in load times using it, the SSD will have big advantage in seek times and random read/writes. You'll notice this when installing patches or just moving around the OS. The lack of TRIM won't be as big of a deal here as you won't be reading/writing all that much from the drive. The system will also run a bit quieter and you won't have to worry about vibrations/shocks causing issues with the drive.

My PS3 is used more like the second scenario I listed above, so I installed an old 120 GB SSD I had laying around. Most PS3 games I want to play run under RPCS3 nowadays, so I don't need that much storage in my system for the few games I still use it for.
 
Evanft said:
I saw this and felt the need to sign up and offer my opinion/experience. The answer to this question depends on how you're using your PS3.

Are you loading it up with hundreds of gigabytes of games and playing them off the drive? In that scenario I would hesitate to use an SSD. As others have pointed out, the PS3 doesn't have TRIM support, which is going to accelerate wear on any SSD you install in the system. Because of this, I'd use a regular HDD or hybrid SSHD.

If you're just using the drive like a normal PS3, then I think the SSD has enough advantages to make it a compelling option. While you won't see much if any improvement in load times using it, the SSD will have big advantage in seek times and random read/writes. You'll notice this when installing patches or just moving around the OS. The lack of TRIM won't be as big of a deal here as you won't be reading/writing all that much from the drive. The system will also run a bit quieter and you won't have to worry about vibrations/shocks causing issues with the drive.

My PS3 is used more like the second scenario I listed above, so I installed an old 120 GB SSD I had laying around. Most PS3 games I want to play run under RPCS3 nowadays, so I don't need that much storage in my system for the few games I still use it for.
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Thanks for sharing your experience. I had heard about RPCS3 in the past and completely forgotten about it. How is it now? Can the graphics also be improved like PCSX2?
 
Nator said:
Thanks for sharing your experience. I had heard about RPCS3 in the past and completely forgotten about it. How is it now? Can the graphics also be improved like PCSX2?
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Indeed. It will obviously depend on your PC, but most games I've tried have no issue running at much higher frame rates and resolutions than they did on ps3. I played through Drakengard 3, for example, which ran horribly on the ps3 but had no problem running at 4k60 with the emulator.
 
Evanft said:
Indeed. It will obviously depend on your PC, but most games I've tried have no issue running at much higher frame rates and resolutions than they did on ps3. I played through Drakengard 3, for example, which ran horribly on the ps3 but had no problem running at 4k60 with the emulator.
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What are the specifications of your PC?
 
GuilloteTesla said:
I'm not talking about endurance, but data corruption. The PS3 doesn't have TRIM implemented, so all the data is handled in a non-optimized way. With time, the disk became corrupt because of this, and the PS3 (with all the encryption and stuff) is very sensitive to any "bad sector" that may appear from a bad data handling of the PS3 itself.

There are plenty of cases here on the forums about the consecuences of using a SSD for a long time.



It's the console itself. Think of it as the PS3 doing a lot of fragmentation on the SSD, and then the disk becomes so slow and fragmentated that the performance degrades. With time, the data is going to be stored where it fits, increasing the risk of data corruption. As the PS3 encrypts the drive, a minor change in a sector will render the data unsuable.



You misunderstood. There are no conflicting opinions, all what was said here are real cases (that's how "robust and safe" is to use an SSD on a PS3... a complete lottery).

The PS3 is not made for SSDs, it has nothing to do with the SATA interface (TRIM is a command to handle store data, not data transfer).

Using an SSD will improve a little the loading speeds of the games, but that's all. It will not improve the boot speed or the XMB.
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Could you expand on this? I am not able to find posts regarding this.
 
quake said:
Could you expand on this? I am not able to find posts regarding this.
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Google doesn't bite. In short, if your SSD has to move files to new empty pages on each write, you are increasing the data relocation rate, and with that your are reducing the writing cycles (meaning, the lifespan of the memory cells). As the PS3 still thinks that the SSD is an HDD, it will treat it as an HDD. It won't perform any checks on data consistency whatsoever.

A well known case to corrupt an SSD (of sizes greater than 1 TiB if my memory serves me right) is to launch the Restore File System opton in the Recovery Menu.

Issues with using SSDs without TRIM:
PSX-Place threads about SSDs:
 
People who say that ssds are not worth it in a ps3 are spreading misinformation, even more puzzling is the moderators agreeing with such misinformation and providing links to even further misinform individuals. Most ssds self trim using a built in chip that needs no user interaction the samsung evo 870 I use in mine does so very effectively and the chip is INDEPENDENT of the ps3. There are 0 issues using a ps3 ssd, it would be nice if people stopped the fearmongering and spreading misinformation over it. I use my 1tb ssd and notice improvements from the moment I boot my jb. The best SSD for the ps3 is the Samsung Evo 870 1TB. A hard disk is going to fail much much sooner and be far less reliable.
 
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There is no such thing like "self trim"... TRIM is functionality which depend of OS because OS must tell SSD which sectors aren't in use on target filesystem. SSD firmware don't understand any logic structure on his mass exposed to user, that's why it is OS dependent and always will be. Not to mention, disk is encrypted so even if he could understand it, then not in PS3 case due to encryption sector based which makes impossible to determine which is in use and which not.

There are plenty of issues with SSDs if you have bad luck and found incompatible one:
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/guide-ssd-for-playstation-3.42499/

So actually it is you who spreading misinformation...
 
Kevstah2004 said:
Is a hybrid 7200rpm still quicker than a ssd drive though, what about the memory cache difference?
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In read/write speed you will not gain any SSD advantage. But sector access is far way quicker which makes huge difference in some cases (eg. in games mipmaps load times) plus cache size. In theory it is worth to use, in practice turned to be Russian roulette, which IMO is not worth all the hassle.
 
GuilloteTesla said:
PS3 is not SATA 2 capable, only SATA 1 (up to 150 MB/s).
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psdevwiki says there were/are some Toshiba HDD models from later versions that were listed as "SATA-300" different than "SATA-150" from the previous ones. Which according to a google search SATA-300 is up to 300 MB/s. Is the ps3 sata port really Sata 1 in every model which limit it to 150mb/s transfer speed?
 
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Look at the I/O controller or bridge chip, they probably threw in SATA-300 because it was cheaper to mass produce than SATA-150 after so many revisions, it's probably the same case for the PS4 with USB 3.0 & 3.1 on the Pro but capped at 3.0 for compatibility.
 
PS3s use SATA-150, what the drives are capable of doesn't really matter. Sony just used whatever drives were cheap and available at the sizes they needed.
 
gmanarte said:
psdevwiki says there were/are some Toshiba HDD models from later versions that were listed as "SATA-300" different than "SATA-150" from the previous ones. Which according to a google search SATA-300 is up to 300 MB/s. Is the ps3 sata port really Sata 1 in every model which limit it to 150mb/s transfer speed?
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The wiki clearly states the features and interfaces of those newer HDDs to be SATA 2 but that corresponds to the drive itself, not the PS3 harddrive controller (which is SATA 1 in every model). As @Kevstah2004 and @fdm have pointed out, Sony grabbed the cheapest available HDDs at the time (SATA 2) and put them in newer PS3 models.

In fact, the wiki also mentions that you may need to use jumpers on a SATA 2 or SATA 3 HDD in order to make it work on SATA 1 "mode".

https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Harddrive#Replacing_the_internal_harddrive
 
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