• PS3HEN is now supporting 4.93 Firmware

    View Official Release Post for additional information HERE

Super slim upgrade

@ElGris Not all SSD works, with some there are problems leading to filesystem damages or just mystic slowdowns. No one know why and it is hard to track issue because even producer changing hw spec without notice across the same models. Not to mention the price. So it is mostly a roulette. :( If You want risking, avoid SSD with QLC chips (but producers often mark chips as MLC... because well, technically it is valid for all chips using more than single type cell, but unofficially there are SLC (for single), MLC (for two), TLC (for triple) and QLC (for quadruple) - and producers followed this nomenclature until people start to avoid early TLC and QLC). The more cell states in single cell, the less reliable cell is in long term usage. And QLC are horribly slow after first write per cell.

Because of that, I recommend to avoid SSD in PS3. :( Few years ago it was quite safe, but this train has gone (and buying used SSD is suicide too).

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@RoboKing's Cosmos Sell it or use as external drive. Or just as backup drive in case of storage die in future.
 
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RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Some people reported that this drive worked on their PS3
Click to expand...
The PS3 doesn't support formatting internal UFS2 partitions > 1.5Tb or checks on UFS2 file systems > 1Tb.
The recovery environment will fail to create a 5Tb partition.

If you wanna experience no issues, you should stick to 1Tb, if you have lots of games, you should use NTFS external storage to store your iso files.
 
RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Can I manually format it as UFS2 so that the PS3 will recognize it?
Click to expand...
probably not, at the top of that filesystem, its also encrypted. so you cant just plop a preformatted drive and expect it to work, this is not a PC.

to be honest, ill probably just stick with the current hdd and just look for a network attach storage or a openwrt router that can run ps3netsrv, at least with this you basically dont have to worry what type of drive you use here, as long as the computer can see the iso files in there, it should work.
 
RoboKing's Cosmos said:
Can I manually format it as UFS2 so that the PS3 will recognize it?
Click to expand...
In theory everything is possible within hardware and logic limitations (which may or may not be a problem for 5Tb) however even if it were possible, in practice you may find it quite complex to achieve such a thing unless you have the required skills to attempt it, the HDD does not contain just an encrypted (with eid_root_key) UFS2 partition but also other custom data and system partitions that you would also need to recreate and populate appropriately otherwise any discrepancy found on boot will lead the PS3 to try to reformat in recovery mode (and fail obviously).

Moreover at the slightest issue with GameOS, the recovery environment features would no longer work, it would be a problem every time the disk needs checked or reformatted, and that happens every now and again on PS3, especially when using customised firmwares, hacks and homebrews.
You would need to create a tool that takes a eid_root_key and with it prepares a HDD > 1.5Tb whenever required and then you would have to take care of file system checks in an alternate way from the recovery environment, maybe with a custom self or whatever.

It's just not worth the trouble imho.

What we really need is a custom recovery environment that allows us to do things like partition management, boot options, syscon management, flash memory management etc.. Then you would have the possibility to use large drives safely.
But coding a custom replacement for emer_init.self that can do this is not a casual job and it would require a fair amount of research.
 
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In addition, UFS2 using by PS3 is not standard. FreeBSD rejecting to mount it (in decrypted form obviously) and this is bad sign as this is native fs for this family of OS. So TBH we even haven't any tools to create it on PC.

Such task demand then:
  1. PS3 partition table modifications.
  2. Recreating of filesystems mapping for all FATs. UFS2 and Linux's one e.g EXT4 using relative addressing, not sticking to specific LBA like FAT16 and FAT32 (so they are flexible, I could call them 'portable' ;]).
  3. Tool which will make UFS2 seen by PS3 (differences are unknown, at least for me).
  4. Tool which will be able to check and repair PS3's UFS2 in exchange of CellOS tools in case of fs damages.
For sure it is doable but no one did it yet and no one is interesting in it. Especially that this needs covering NAND consoles, NOR consoles, with and without Linux partition, with and without none standard VFLASH "region" mappings (made for OOS+ usage). That's not a trivial thing.

And all of this without warranty that everything else besides formatting and checking tools will work with larger than currently partition. :D

Easiest setup for test purposes is NAND consoles without OOS/OOS+, because there, first partition is dev_hdd1 (FAT32) and second dev_hdd0 (UFS2). So if anyone in future want try to mess with it, choose NAND environment as significantly simplified test subject which in other words reducing modifications to last user partition sector in partition table and enlarging UFS2 until end of HDD.
 
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