PS3 NEED OPINION

I have a 40 gig ps3(broken) that I have purchased from ebay for 50.00. It plays demos under 800mb perfectly fine, but demos over that amount download fine, install fine and then freeze. Actual(the actual hard copy) games freeze at 50% during install. Movies play fine if it isnt a blue-ray movie. I know a tech that repairs ps3's that lives near me and he said he will fix it for 60-120$$ depending on what is wrong. I was just seeing if anyone could tell me what their diagnosis would be before I pay to get it fixed(i dont mind paying for it at all, just want to make sure.) I thought maybe the bd, then i thought the heating core, then maybe the mobo but I can play demos for hours on end without hesitation,then maybe the hdd is bad seeing that it freezes during install of the game.

Heavenly sword-50% then froze
Mgs4-65% then froze
Dbz Burst limit-53% then froze
Ninja Gaiden Z-60% then froze
Darkness-Played for 20 mins then froze-no install

 

It sounds like a bad hdd to me. You got quite a deal if thats the case.

 

how will i know if its not the bd controller board?

 

Because if it was just the bd controller board then demos would play fine. The reason dvd's play fine and not bluray movies is because dvd's dont touch the hdd and bluray movies store a bit of data on it so that when you put the bluray disk in the next time it knows exactly where you stopped at. Even the darkness which you mentioned had no instalation data has game save data.

Thats how I came to the conclusion that it is likely the hdd. I'd say this would be a good time to upgrade the hdd becasue I'm almost sure thats the problem, and if it isn't you'd still have a bigger hdd and have eliminated one of the possible problems.

 

A big thanks to you! I am on my way to purchasing a new hdd.

 

Just make sure its a 2.5" sata @ 5400rpm, and the diffrence in price between sizes isnt really that big so go big if you can.

 

You may be very lucky. The first owner may have installed a new hard drive and not partentioned it properly. Do you know if it is the origonal hard drive?

 

I dont know? Couldnt i just take out the hard drive and see if it is from sony? Or did sony use another company for this hardware?

 

nevermind its hitachi.

 

Wow, lucky you. $50 for a (so far) perfectly fine PS3 that just needs a HDD replacement.

Even if you get a nice 200-300 GB hard drive, that's only like... an extra $100.

So you just got yourself a 300 GB PS3 for $150. Lucky.

(Now all you need to do is sell it for like $300, get a "broken" 60GB model for $50, and buy another HDD for another $100. Which means you'd basically have a free 300GB PS3 with backwards compatibility and all the trimmings. It's a long shot, but man, if your luck hold out, I'd be cheering for you... after I try to steal it. Just sayin'.)

 

Its rare to find a broken ps3 when its only the hdd, especially a 60 gig this far along.

 

The Hard Drive MAY be the problem. If it is a new one and someone partentioned it at 500 meg, that seams to describe the problem that he is having.

 

Yeah, of course. Hence the whole "if your luck holds out" statement.

 

yeh we will see. now sometimes after it freezes it does green yellow red and doesnt come on. so I just let it sit for a few minutes then its all good to play. Its only after I try to download a demo thats over 800mb. I was just giving things a last try before I buy a new hdd.

 

So when i buy the hdd will i have to partition it on my laptop first and do i have to to make a file on a jump drive for the firmware when installing the new hdd?

 

Just plug it into the ps3, it will format it. And the firmware is stored on a flash drive on the mobo, it doesn't get erased with the HDD.

 

what do u think about the lights flashing and the system not coming on.
Its only happened a few times. Still think it is Hdd related?

 

The yellow light of doom indicates hardware failure in general so it could be anything though it seems likely that its the hdd.

 

SO i bought a western digital 320 gig hdd. Just have to install it. Update soon!

 

That's happened to me once or twice; however without the yellow light of death. It's okay, if the hdd has been removed its your ps3 resetting the defaults making sure there isn't any critical errors. As far as formatting it goes, technically the ps3 doesn't any real formatting like what windows or apple does, but that's not what this is about.

I'm curious about your first hdd, have you tried hooking that one up yet to a pc to find out how much has been used? Taking a queue from glassd I'm wondering if just erasing that outright may fix the problem as well. However before doing that back up any thing on that drive. At least this way you don't have to redo all those demos. You can put them on a flash drive, make sure its formatted for fat 32 or the ps3 will not see the data, and you ought to be able to easily put this stuff back on. I bring this up because if your old drive is still good you can find out by putting into an enclosure and trying to use it as an external hard drive for data back up. If it works then from there you can always return the WD you bought... I would if I wanted to get the money back, but hell having a large hdd is always better!