PS3 [TUTORIAL] Unlock up to 8% extra total space on the PS3 internal hard drive

Update: picard (a.k.a. 3141card) has released a homebrew app (available here) that changes the reserved space from 8% to 1% automatically. Running the app again will revert the changes.

https://mega.nz/file/zdk1lKqZ#aj4WFdOeosH_ncIB5flNtUxPs341PSYaXdLF2DdA45A

PS3 Unlock HDD Space by picard (aka 3141card)
All credits to einsteinx2 on psx-place.com for his great tutorial:
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/t...l-space-on-the-ps3-internal-hard-drive.20773/​

HOWTO:

• Install the package on your custom firmware PS3 and run it. It finds the active superblock of the gameOS partition and do the necessary patches. Usually 8 percent of the memory is reserved, the app sets this value to 1 percent.
  
• The optimization value is set to 1, for minimize disk fragmentation.
  
• The changes are permanent. The changed active superblock is written to the HDD with the system fs umount of the gameOS partition.
• Running the app again restores the original values, if desired.

You use this app at your own risk! I am not responsible for any damage caused to your PS3 system!​

If my PS3 app was useful to you, I would be very happy about a donation
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/3141card

picard (aka 3141card)

-- (Original Post Continued Below) --

Need some extra space on your internal PS3 HDD, if so then perhaps @einsteinx2 may have a genius method for unlocking upto 8% of space on your Internal HDD, while the space is more then likely allocated for performance reasons by Sony (use this guide at your own risk), some of this saved space could be considered overkill, as the creator of this method makes a valid point that some of this saved space on larger HDDs is more then some of the early model PS3 complete HDD size, so its likely some of that space allocation is a bit overkill on the part of Sony. einsteinx21 has provided a great tutorial found below explaining in detail about this recent discovery​

-STLcardsWS ​

Unlock up to 8% extra total space on the PS3 internal hard drive
​

About The How + Instructions Source Code Credits

• 
  The What
  
  By default, even on custom firmware, the PS3 reserves 8% of your total internal hard drive space. From my searching online, I don't believe anyone has ever successfully unlocked that wasted space, so I decided to give it a shot. Turns out not only is it possible, but it's relatively easy thanks to some existing tools created by the community. This guide will explain how to reclaim that wasted space by manually modifying the metadata of the UFS2 formatted GameOS partition using Linux, as well as the potential cons (primarily performance, though I haven't experienced any performance issues yet myself).
  
  I believe the pros outweigh the cons though, and have been using this now without issue on my personal PS3 with a 1.5TB drive for a few days now, installing tons of games without a hitch.
  
  The Why
  
  While external drives used with the PS3 are all FAT32 formatted (or NTFS if you have CFW), the GameOS partition on the internal hard drive is formatted using the UFS2 filesystem with a layer of encryption on top.
  
  Like other *nix file systems such as Ext2/3/4, UFS2 can reserve part of the drive's space to only be used by the system or the root user. This is to reduce fragmentation and also prevent the drive from completely filling up, possibly freezing the computer.
  
  By default, UFS2 reserves 8% of any drive's free space, in this case meaning it can't be used by the PS3 for installing games. This is why when you first install that shiny new 1.5TB hard drive you will see that not only is it only actually 1.36 TB because hard drive manufacturers really love counting in base 10, but you also lose another 111.4 GB.
  
  Now generally having this reserved space is not a bad thing, however the problem is that as drives grow larger, the amount of wasted space becomes larger than some of the smaller PS3's entire hard drives! Clearly that much isn't needed to prevent fragmentation.
  
  The tunefs documentation mentions that "the file system's ability to avoid fragmentation will be reduced when the total free space, including the reserve, drops below 15%. As free space approaches zero, throughput can degrade by up to a factor of three over the performance obtained at a 10% threshold." Note that these numbers are already higher than the 8% default that all UFS tools as well as Sony use. Also note that it says as free space drops to 0%, performance may be up to 3 times slower than normal. However, it's unclear whether that only affects newly written--presumably more fragmented files--or all files. It seems like this is a worthy tradeoff, especially since if you do notice any performance issues you can simply delete some games or other data to free up the space. By changing the minimum free space, performance is not changed at all unless you choose to fill the drive completely...but at least you can now make that choice.
  
  UFS2 supports two write optimization modes: time and space. Time optimization is the default--and is used by the PS3--and allows for faster writes at the expense of potentially higher fragmentation (though generally only as the drive reaches capacity). Since we're allowing ourselves to fill almost the entire drive, these instructions also change the optimization mode to space. That means that the filesystem will spend more time during writes to ensure the files are less fragmented, insinuating that it will shuffle blocks around to make contiguous space.
  
  The tunefs documentation says that "the file system can either try to minimize the time spent allocating blocks, or it can attempt to minimize the space fragmentation on the disk. Optimization for space has much higher overhead for file writes. The kernel normally changes the preference automatically as the percent fragmentation changes on the filesystem." However, since the PS3 uses a custom operating system and this documentation is from FreeBSD, I think it's best to manually set the space option anyway. I have not noticed any performance degradation so far since making this change, though I still have plenty of free space on my drive at the moment.
  
  Photos
  Here are the before and after photos. They were taken immediately before removing the drives and immediately after reinserting them.
  

  BEFORE	AFTER
  BEFORE	AFTER

• 
  
  The How
  
  While it's possible to mount a PS3 hard drive in Linux and view its decrypted partitions, unfortunately the tunefs.ufs tool doesn't appear to work. It always complains that it can't find the superblock. However, the file command does work fine to show the UFS2 filesystem info when tested on a dump of the start of the partition.
  
  So instead of using the tunefs utility to change the minimum free space and optimization type, I wrote a script to manually scan and test single byte changes to a dump of the partition's superblock using the file command until I found the correct locations to change.
  
  I tested this on 2 hard drives of vastly different sizes: 160 GB and 1.5 TB. On both drives, I found that the superblock was located in the same location--the standard 128 block aka 65,536 byte offset. I also found that the locations to set the minimum free space percentage and optimization type were in the same place on both drives--byte 65,599 and 65,667 respectively. However, I highly recommend running the find_ps3_ufs2_byte_locations script anyway just to confirm before making any changes to your drive.
  
  Once you know the correct offsets, changing the values is simple. To adjust the minimum free space, simply write the percent in hex to byte 65,599--e.g. for 1% free space write 0x01 or for the default 8% write 0x08. To change the optimization type, write a hex 0x01 to byte 65,667--the default is 0x00 for time optimization.
  
  I think this should be possible to do as a PS3 homebrew app so that it can just be done directly on the device without even removing the drive. Unfortunately I have zero experience with writing PS3 homebrew, but maybe someone else with more experience can use this information to do it. I'd love to see this as an option in the REBUG custom firmware settings.
  
  Instructions
  
  
  1. Dump your eid root key using IrisMan/MultiMan/etc
  2. Setup a computer or virtual machine with Ubuntu 16.04. The rest of these steps are done on that machine. I tested using Parallels on a MacBook Pro, but it should work on just about anything as well as other distros.
  3. Clone my repository: git clone https://github.com/einsteinx2/PS3-Reclaim-HDD-Space.git
  4. Change to the new directory as we'll do all of the work there: cd PS3-Reclaim-HDD-Space
  5. Rename your eid root key file to eid_root_key.bin and place it in the PS3-Reclaim-HDD-Space directory
  6. Generate your hdd keys: ./ps3hdd_keygen.sh
  7. Become root since most of this requires it: sudo -s
  8. Find the device name: fdisk -l (In my case, using an external USB enclosure, it was /dev/sdb)
  9. Make virtual byte swapped encrypted device
     1. If you have a drive 1TB or less (not confirmed the exact limit): ./makedev bswap16.512 /dev/sdb
     2. If you have a drive larger than 1TB (or maybe it's 1TB and larger, I don't have a 1TB drive to test): ./makedev bswap16.1024 /dev/sdb
  10. Create decrypted device: cryptsetup create -c aes-xts-plain64 -d ./hdd_key.bin -s 256 ps3hdd_crypt /dev/nbd0
  11. Map decrypted partitions: ./kpartx -a /dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt
  12. View decrypted partitions (ps3hdd_crypt2 is the UFS2 GameOS partition): ls -la /dev/mapper/
  13. View current free space: [ -d /mnt/PS3GameOS ] || mkdir /mnt/PS3GameOS && mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2,ro /dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt2 /mnt/PS3GameOS && df -h | grep "Avail\|ps3hdd_crypt2" && umount /mnt/PS3GameOS
  14. Dump the superblock of the GameOS partition: dd if=/dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt2 bs=512 count=256 of=GameOS_superblock.img
  15. Confirm the seek values for the next 2 commands: ./find_ps3_ufs2_byte_locations GameOS_superblock.img
  16. Set minimum free space to 1%: printf '\x01' | dd of=/dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt2 bs=1 seek=65599 count=1 conv=notrunc
  17. Set optimization type to "space": printf '\x01' | dd of=/dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt2 bs=1 seek=65667 count=1 conv=notrunc
  18. View the now larger free space: mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2,ro /dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt2 /mnt/PS3GameOS && df -h | grep "Avail\|ps3hdd_crypt2 && umount /mnt/PS3GameOS
  19. Disconnect device: kpartx -d /dev/mapper/ps3hdd_crypt && cryptsetup remove ps3hdd_crypt && ./stop-nbd0
  20. Pop the drive back in your PS3 and enjoy the extra space! Note that I left 1% reserved space rather than going all the way to 0% to ensure that the drive never completely fills up, as I'm unsure what problems that would cause for the PS3's operating system.
• 
  Source code
  
  For ease of use, this repo contains precompiled binaries for Ubuntu 16.04 64bit. If you need or prefer to compile yourself, here are the tools used:
  
  bswap16: https://github.com/sguerrini97/nbdcpp (note that for >1TB drives you must change <unsigned BS=512> to <unsigned BS=1024>)
  
  kpartx: https://git.opensvc.com/multipath-tools/.git/
  
  ps3hdd_keygen.sh: http://www.psx-place.com/threads/hdd-keys-generating-scripts.10610/page-2#post-125197
  
  
• 
  Credits
  
  I would never have figured this out if it weren't for others' hard work.
  
  Huge thanks to Berion at PSX-Place for the hdd key generation script as well as pointing me to the information on mounting a PS3 HDD in Linux. His post here contains the script and the link: http://www.psx-place.com/threads/hdd-keys-generating-scripts.10610/page-2#post-125197
  
  Huge thanks to sguerrini97 at Playstation Hax for implemnenting PS3 hard drive mounting support for modern Linux kernels. Here's the post about it: https://playstationhax.xyz/forums/topic/4671-mounting-ps3-hdd-on-newer-linux-kernels and the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sguerrini97/nbdcpp.
  
  Thanks to dsroche for writing the original nbdcpp implementation that sguerrini97 forked, and thanks to Glevand for the original work on mounting the PS3 hard drive in OtherOS and for the great information here on the PS3 dev wiki: http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Mounting_HDD_on_PC. Also thanks to anyone else that worked on PS3 hard drive mounting or anything else I'm not aware of.
  

​

 

I use an app named MHDD booted from a CD, is my favourite for hdd manteinance and checks (surface scans specially to detect "slow" or damaged sectors), but it allows to manage all smart functions too such HPA, some hdd manufactures can disable the HPA, not sure if is a common practise

And is better to connect the hdd directly to the PC motherboard first SATA0 connector (and disconnect all other sata drives just incase because you dont need them while doing this)
Then boot MHDD and choose the only hdd shown

 

i have a 500Gb HDD. i did your strcture exactly but i get this error :
when i use this command :
" cryptsetup create -c aes-xts-plain64 -d ./hdd_key.bin -s 32 ps3hdd_crypt /dev/nbd0 "
this error shown :
" Requested offset is beyond real size of device /dev/nbd0 "

 

Incompatible Linux distro with nbd server version, and/or bswap16 incompatibility (to be honest, it is better to compile it himself instead of use binary, trust me, and this is easy in this case), or loop0 slot occupied.

I.e last Linux Mint on which I can mount PS3 HDD is 18.3, on 19.0 it doesn't work in the same point. I have almost finished tutorial to similar goal, but unfortunately many business keep my focus yet far away from the scene.

 

i have a 500Gb HDD. i did your strcture exactly but i get this error :
when i use this command :
" cryptsetup create -c aes-xts-plain64 -d ./hdd_key.bin -s 32 ps3hdd_crypt /dev/nbd0 "
this error shown :
" Requested offset is beyond real size of device /dev/nbd0 "

Hmm, are you using Ubuntu 16.04 or another distro? In any case it sounds like the makedev command likely didn't work so the /dev/nbd0 device isn't valid.

 

Hmm, are you using Ubuntu 16.04 or another distro? In any case it sounds like the makedev command likely didn't work so the /dev/nbd0 device isn't valid.

i used ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04. Both had same result.
any idea?

 

Incompatible Linux distro with nbd server version, and/or bswap16 incompatibility (to be honest, it is better to compile it himself instead of use binary, trust me, and this is easy in this case), or loop0 slot occupied.

I.e last Linux Mint on which I can mount PS3 HDD is 18.3, on 19.0 it doesn't work in the same point. I have almost finished tutorial to similar goal, but unfortunately many business keep my focus yet far away from the scene.

I dont have enough linux information.
How exactly can i do this mod?(to be honest i need a step by step guide)

 

Good tutorial.
Just saying that its dangerous to put a 1.5Tb in your ps3 because it cant handle that size it can brick your ps3.

 

@Agoni212 It is NOT dangerous to the console itself and it CANNOT brick it. In worst scenario You'll lost Your user data...

@x23are If You need step by step guide with many things explained in details, You need to wait a little longer (one or two weeks). My tutorial is not for fs table manipulation but for write access to the partitions on Linux, outside PS3 environment, but it will definitely cover up the step where You stuck. I have almost completed, ten pages.

 

Good tutorial.
Just saying that its dangerous to put a 1.5Tb in your ps3 because it cant handle that size it can brick your ps3.

It absolutely can handle that size and in no way can it possibly brick your PS3. Please don't spread misinformation.

 

I dont have enough linux information.
How exactly can i do this mod?(to be honest i need a step by step guide)

This tutorial is about as step by step as I can make it. If you are not familiar enough with Linux to follow it I strongly recommend waiting for the PS3 app I'm working on.

This guide is really just a proof of concept. There's no reason than a tool running directly on the PS3 can't do the same thing and much easier.

No ETA, but I'm working on it in my free time. Once I've made some progress I'll share a beta and then release it once it's been tested by enough people.

 

@Agoni212 It is NOT dangerous to the console itself and it CANNOT brick it. In worst scenario You'll lost Your user data...

@x23are If You need step by step guide with many things explained in details, You need to wait a little longer (one or two weeks). My tutorial is not for fs table manipulation but for write access to the partitions on Linux, outside PS3 environment, but it will definitely cover up the step where You stuck. I have almost completed, ten pages.

View attachment 13499

I noticed you are going to include the table from wiki with the hdd partition info, do you need or want me to do some change or update to that table ?

 

@sandungas I have only mentioned in intro that there are much more partitions than those 3 which tutorial covering up (other than dev_flash2, dev_hdd0 and dev_hdd1). So the tables is just an example of all, and it is pasted as a curiosity. But if You have new informations about it, feel free to share, I would happy to update it.

 

" Requested offset is beyond real size of device /dev/nbd0 "

Same here... :/

 

@fresh You will get this error in cases of:

• when bswap somehow is incompatible with nbd-server/linux distro
• when You have occupied loop0 slot (it needs to be empty for nbd0 mapping... somehow )

Solution:

• compile bswap by Yourself from source (You need as I remember g++ to be installed)
  
• use Linux Mint 18.1 .2 or .3 and do not update it (just install newest available nbd-server)
• install it where ever You want, even on deadly slow pendrive, just don't use Live session as this one using loop0 slot for SquashFS mount

Author said it works on Ubuntu 16.04 with precompiled binaries. I didn't test it so I mentioned only about Mint which is enough stupid-proof for me and have normal GUI (I hate Unity and Gnome3).

 

@fresh You will get this error in cases of:

• when bswap somehow is incompatible with nbd-server/linux distro
• when You have occupied loop0 slot (it needs to be empty for nbd0 mapping... somehow )

Solution:

• compile bswap by Yourself from source (You need as I remember g++ to be installed)
  
• use Linux Mint 18.1 .2 or .3 and do not update it (just install newest available nbd-server)
• install it where ever You want, even on deadly slow pendrive, just don't use Live session as this one using loop0 slot for SquashFS mount

Author said it works on Ubuntu 16.04 with precompiled binaries. I didn't test it so I mentioned only about Mint which is enough stupid-proof for me and have normal GUI (I hate Unity and Gnome3).

Hi!

I tried the ubuntu16 as it is my quick&dirty pxe-netboot linux.
As i read mint, i thought i will make a mint netboot image and try it again.

Greets.

 

I believe this will not work either. ;p

 

@sandungas I have only mentioned in intro that there are much more partitions than those 3 which tutorial covering up (other than dev_flash2, dev_hdd0 and dev_hdd1). So the tables is just an example of all, and it is pasted as a curiosity. But if You have new informations about it, feel free to share, I would happy to update it.

No, i dont have more info to add in it, the last change i made to it was when 3141cards wrote a list with the exact encryption type for each partition and how overlaps that 2 "encryption layers" on some of the partitions
My table had a mistake with that so i "fixed it" and since that day i consider that columns of the table good enought

I was asking just incase you had some suggestion of what to do with the table, or if you consider is good enought
That table was made with the purpose of moving it later to the frontpage, but is so complex that im not confident in telling all the info inside it is "perfect"

One of the first decissions i took when starting making the table was to represent all posible partitions in it from all PS3 models together... just because the PS3 firmware have predefined codenames and access paths for all them

But in the practise is imposible to have all that partitions of the table in the same PS3, either because the official "linux" partition is going to be missing, or because VFLASH is not located inside HDD for NAND models

Sometimes i regret of the decission i took and i wonder if it could be better to split the table, but im not even sure how to do it
And now with eMMC flash im wondering if if is going to be posible to include them in the table, or will be better to make another table for them
Technically, a eMMC flash chip is composed by a controller + a NAND storage
So... a eMMC flash chip contains a NAND flash (but dont tell to noobs of they will go crazy, shhh), and i guess sony have repurposed a lot of the code and access paths

-----------
In resume, i would love if someone tells me if the table:
- is good enought to move it to the front page
- if there is some "bug"
- if is better to split it, and have a suggestion about how to split it
- if is needed to add something

I know, hard to tell because the table contains lot of info and the way how is represented is a bit weird, but dunno, just telling, if someone have an idea of what to do with that table is welcome, it scares me a bit though

Edit: for people interested in helping/research, i mean this table: http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Talk:Harddrive#HDD_partitions

 

But I'm working on it in my free time. Once I've made some progress I'll share a beta and then release it once it's been tested by enough people.

I personally have a launch Model 60 gig PS3 running a 1.75 TB hard drive and would be more than happy to try out this program when you need beta testers.

 

@sandungas This table is hard to read on first sight but looks ok for me. I only don't known what numbers under OOS mnt points means. ;p

 

@sandungas This table is hard to read on first sight but looks ok for me. I only don't known what numbers under OOS mnt points means. ;p

The numbers are because it seems every partition has a number associated in otherOS and the hdd (ps3d) have the number 3
I dont remember where i saw this numbers mentioned, but i guess it was in some info posted by glevand
Now im thinking maybe are used in the bootloader (petitboot) ?