I have a 500 gig Seagate Free Agent Pro USB 2.0 hard drive. I have plugged the hard drive into the ps3 usb port but the ps3 does not recognize it in the menu. Can someone please tell me how I can make the PS3 recognize my external hard drive? I'd like to stream video from it.

Thank you for your help!


Model: ST305004FPA1E3-RK for the hard drive.
I have a 40GB PS3.

Plug it into your PC and format it as FAT32.

Originally posted by glenquag:

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Plug it into your PC and format it as FAT32.

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Thanks. Now lets say I wanna play music from my 500GB WesternDigital HD, I just reformat it to FAT32 and place all my songs in a folder and I can view/play them? or is there anything else I would need to do?

The folders have to be named specific things, the first folder has to be named PS3 and then you put VIDEO MUSIC THEMES and so on inside the PS3 folder. Yes the folders have to be in cap-locks.

Originally posted by canuckerz:

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The folders have to be named specific things, the first folder has to be named PS3 and then you put VIDEO MUSIC THEMES and so on inside the PS3 folder. Yes the folders have to be in cap-locks.

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Ok, thats what I thought. I did this with my SD card and just checking to see if it was the same way with the external HD.

Thanks bud.

I had just purchased my PS3 so didn't know.

I decided to stream over the network with cyberlink instead to avoid formatting my hard drive.

However, most of my files are "not supported." Whether I am streaming through cyberlink or connecting directly to usb with an external hard drive, I will get the same support or no support for my video files right?

vnvc

Use this program to format your external HD (CompuAppps SwissKnife V3 Partition Utility)Google that,EASY TOO!

Use this program to format your external HD (CompuAppps SwissKnife V3 Partition Utility)Google that,EASY TOO!

Hey guys! Noob to the site, but I've been reading up on this issue as I've got a terrabyte external I want to use for storing media files to access with my PS3.

So, tried installing Swissknofe, but it won't install on my machine for some reason. Setup and swissknife are running in my processes, but nothing happens. That's fine. I heard that Partition Magic works just as well.

So I get partitions in FAT32 at roughly 191GB a piece. However, now when I plug it in to the PS3 it sees one USB drive. I open it up and sure enough there's nothing there. And yes I've put files in there.

Now question is:

1) How do I get it to see the other partitions?
2) How do I get it to see the files on these partitions?

Thanks for ANY help!

Right, so I managed to figure it out. SwissKnife, from what I hear is a problem with quite a few people. All had the same problem as I had. Partition Magic, not all that good for larger drives. What I suggest is Partition Expert. This allowed me to format the entire terabyte drive as one drive.

Sadly, you cannot have folders within folders. Makes for file management a real pain in the @$$. Just think, several thousand MP3 files all under the MUSIC folder alone..... urk. I know some of us have *ahem* a little more than just a few thousand. Being able to sort them by album folders or something would be nice.

So there you have it, this is how I got mine to work. Ugly as sin, but it works. Now, if anyone has any idea on how to get it to recognize subfolders, if at all possible, please let us know. Somehow I'm thinking that this just isn't supported as of yet. Wonder if they'll put out an update for it.... Fingers crossed.

** Oh yeah, you know how you are able to sort by album, artist, title...blah, blah, blah in the system? Well, guess what you aren't allowed to do in the external drives? D'oh!!!

And I'm writing again as I must admit an error in my previous statement.

Turns out that you can have folders... I managed to get it to see single folders in the Music section. However subfolders within those don't seem to show.

Problem is that the PS3 seems to be a little slow in reading the drive. Sho initially I would see folders with nothing in them and the information would say 0kb. If you wait... like, forever... they will eventually populate.

Odd thing is that I can't seem to make that work for videos yet though. For all you power users that know all this stuff already, I'm not posting for your benefit. I'm posting for guys like me that don't know and are working their way through it. Hope this is helpful to some of you.

Ahall77, while most videos work the PS3 still does not support every format out there. Yes, i also agree that sometimes it can take a while to load the folders.

As for viewing sub-folders, just go to the USB drive and press Triangle on your controller, then select display all from the sub-menu that appears. If your using a keyboard to view your files, use F1 instead of Triangle.

Hey stickweed - Thanks for the info, as it doesn't exactly work in my case I hope it does for others. I read that about folders on some other forums as well. Unfortunately it just doesn't want to work like that for Videos for me. Go figure.... the Music folders do though. Well... only one level in. a folder in a folder under music is not recognized.

As for video formats, yeah I've been well aware of the fact that only specific formats work.... however, I'm still trying to figure out why some AVI files will work while others will not. For example, I have a season of a show, all from the same source. Now episodes 1, 3, 8-10 will work, but 2, 4-7 will not. Got me scratching my head with that one.

Just a quick question. Does anyone know what programs to use and if its possible to create a FAT32 partition for an NTFS external HDD without losing the data that I already have inside?

Wish I could help. I would assume that it would be as simple as creating a FAT32 partition from the free space on the drive using one of the tools mentioned above.

CompuAppps SwissKnife V3 Partition Utility
Partition Magic
Partition Expert

Now I have no idea if that'll work or not to be honest. I've never done it myself, so if the existing files will remain intact.... your guess is as good as mine. I take it you don't have any space elsewhere (other HD) to back up the files?

** If not, let me know. I think I have a spare HD kickin' around I can run a couple tests on for you.

Originally posted by ahall77:

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Wish I could help. I would assume that it would be as simple as creating a FAT32 partition from the free space on the drive using one of the tools mentioned above.

CompuAppps SwissKnife V3 Partition Utility
Partition Magic
Partition Expert

Now I have no idea if that'll work or not to be honest. I've never done it myself, so if the existing files will remain intact.... your guess is as good as mine. I take it you don't have any space elsewhere (other HD) to back up the files?

** If not, let me know. I think I have a spare HD kickin' around I can run a couple tests on for you.

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I've been meaning to try this out for a while, I finaly got around to it... Great news!!! It worked.

Using a full version of Partition Magic I was able to set up a partition on my 320GB external HDD (270GB & 50GB), I then was able to format the 50GB section to FAT32, once again using Partition Magic. I tested it on my PS3 and it works fine, it only recognizes the FAT32 portion... which is the whole point.

I did this for pretty much one reason, to watch the main feature from a Blu-Ray disc before I decide to compress and archive.

I used tsMuxeR to remux a ripped BD back to Blu-Ray using the split feature (3.5GB chunks). To do this remux back to Blu-Ray, make a folder called AVCHD... place the BDMV & Certificate folders in the AVCHD folder, you then need to use a handy application called AVCHD-ME. Just place the application in teh AVCHD folder and run it, it takes one second.

After that place the AVCHD folder on the external FAT32 partition, plug into the PS3, press X on the USB icon, then X on the AVCHD folder.

How AVCHD-ME works, it renames the files within the BDMV folder and thus tricking the PS3 into thinking a USB drive is a BD.

Originally posted by odin24:

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I've been meaning to try this out for a while, I finaly got around to it... Great news!!! It worked.

Using a full version of Partition Magic I was able to set up a partition on my 320GB external HDD (270GB & 50GB), I then was able to format the 50GB section to FAT32, once again using Partition Magic. I tested it on my PS3 and it works fine, it only recognizes the FAT32 portion... which is the whole point.

I did this for pretty much one reason, to watch the main feature from a Blu-Ray disc before I decide to compress and archive.

I used tsMuxeR to remux a ripped BD back to Blu-Ray using the split feature (3.5GB chunks). To do this remux back to Blu-Ray, make a folder called AVCHD... place the BDMV & Certificate folders in the AVCHD folder, you then need to use a handy application called AVCHD-ME. Just place the application in teh AVCHD folder and run it, it takes one second.

After that place the AVCHD folder on the external FAT32 partition, plug into the PS3, press X on the USB icon, then X on the AVCHD folder.

How AVCHD-ME works, it renames the files within the BDMV folder and thus tricking the PS3 into thinking a USB drive is a BD.

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Sweet deal man! I'm confused though, were the BD files already on the drive prior to the addition of the FAT32 partion? Or did you place them on after the fact?

Originally posted by ahall77:

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Sweet deal man! I'm confused though, were the BD files already on the drive prior to the addition of the FAT32 partion? Or did you place them on after the fact?

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After the fact. But I did have files on my drive when I made the partition. BUT, I made the partition up of free space that was on the drive.

One other note, I just watched a BD (25+ GB) that was on the FAT32 drive... as I described earlier. When going from one m2ts file to the next the transition is ALMOST seamless... it goes automatically but with a very slight pause, nothing major though.

Any more questions feel free to ask.

BTW, Partition Magic DOES NOT work on Vista... which is my main PC. I do have another (XP) collecting dust though, this however worked like a charm. Once plugged in to my Vista everything works OK as well, partition recognized and both are usable.