PS3 HDD swap for 7200rpm heat output question

[FuryofFive]

I picked up a ps3 a couple weeks ago, since then ive bought maybe 6 games.
i rented another game that literally took like 10-15mins to install on the drive, which is a WoW,

On top of the extra storage.

for those who have done this, how is the heat ouput for the faster drive? is it something to worry about?

 

[Queasy]

It isn't the speed of the HDD that causes the slow installs. It is the speed of the Blu-Ray drive.

 

[nakedfrog]

Yeah, when I popped in Ratchet & Clank Future on my birthday, it was lame having to sit through an install before I could start playing.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Queasy
It isn't the speed of the HDD that causes the slow installs. It is the speed of the Blu-Ray drive.

theoretically. shouldnt it be faster because its moving larger chunks of data?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Queasy
It isn't the speed of the HDD that causes the slow installs. It is the speed of the Blu-Ray drive.

theoretically. shouldnt it be faster because its moving larger chunks of data?

Nope. The size of the date on the disk has nothing to do with the speed of the data transfer because of the read speed of the Blu-Ray drive itself. That's why many PS3 games duplicate and triplicate data across the disk to help with read speeds.

There was an article the other day about one of those extreme tech sites putting a Solid State Hard Drive in a PS3 to see if it would help increase performance. It didn't do much because the bottleneck is still the Blu-Ray drive.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Queasy
It isn't the speed of the HDD that causes the slow installs. It is the speed of the Blu-Ray drive.

theoretically. shouldnt it be faster because its moving larger chunks of data?

Nope. The size of the date on the disk has nothing to do with the speed of the data transfer because of the read speed of the Blu-Ray drive itself. That's why many PS3 games duplicate and triplicate data across the disk to help with read speeds.

There was an article the other day about one of those extreme tech sites putting a Solid State Hard Drive in a PS3 to see if it would help increase performance. It didn't do much because the bottleneck is still the Blu-Ray drive.

ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

Gamepro ran a test and they showed only a couple of seconds are gained during load times.

The main reason for upgrading a PS3 to a larger HDD will be space space, not speed.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

Gamepro ran a test and they showed only a couple of seconds are gained during load times.

The main reason for upgrading a PS3 to a larger HDD will be space space, not speed.

yeah i read that..those test are simply done with simple tasks

what about loading a 1-2gb file on to the drive? instead of taking 10-15mins, maybe take 5...or installing a demo, instead of taking 15mins...taking like i said 5?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

Gamepro ran a test and they showed only a couple of seconds are gained during load times.

The main reason for upgrading a PS3 to a larger HDD will be space space, not speed.

yeah i read that..those test are simply done with simple tasks

what about loading a 1-2gb file on to the drive? instead of taking 10-15mins, maybe take 5...or installing a demo, instead of taking 15mins...taking like i said 5?

Haven't seen any tests on something like that. I would imagine there would be some kind of improvement for anything where the Blu-Ray drive wasn't the bottleneck. Don't know how much of one though.

 

[FuryofFive]

awesome 🙂 so there is some hope hah!

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

Gamepro ran a test and they showed only a couple of seconds are gained during load times.

The main reason for upgrading a PS3 to a larger HDD will be space space, not speed.

yeah i read that..those test are simply done with simple tasks

what about loading a 1-2gb file on to the drive? instead of taking 10-15mins, maybe take 5...or installing a demo, instead of taking 15mins...taking like i said 5?

Loading a file to the internal HDD (150 MB/sec, SATA 1.0) will be bottlenecked by onboard GbE (125 MB/sec), external HDD (due to USB 2.0 interface, 60 MB/sec), or USB thumb drive (60 MB/sec). Installing a demo is mainly a file decompression task (think WinZip, WinRAR, or 7-Zip), which is CPU limited. Even one of the top of the line Intel X-25E SSD drives will max out at 150 MB/sec due to the SATA 1.0 interface.

My advice, buy the cheapest 5400rpm, GB/$ drive you can find for the PS3 when you need to upgrade.

 

[Krazy4Real]

I installed a 320 GB 5400 rpm drive in my PS3. During game downloads or installations I just switch the input over to cable tv until I notice the hard drive light stop flashing. The bottleneck is definitely the blu-ray drive and not the hard drive.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Golgatha

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
ahhh ok, wont i see a different though when loading games though? and when loading stuff off say a usb drive? cuz i probaly will be using this for a makeshift HTPC

Gamepro ran a test and they showed only a couple of seconds are gained during load times.

The main reason for upgrading a PS3 to a larger HDD will be space space, not speed.

yeah i read that..those test are simply done with simple tasks

what about loading a 1-2gb file on to the drive? instead of taking 10-15mins, maybe take 5...or installing a demo, instead of taking 15mins...taking like i said 5?

Loading a file to the internal HDD (150 MB/sec, SATA 1.0) will be bottlenecked by onboard GbE (125 MB/sec), external HDD (due to USB 2.0 interface, 60 MB/sec), or USB thumb drive (60 MB/sec). Installing a demo is mainly a file decompression task (think WinZip, WinRAR, or 7-Zip), which is CPU limited. Even one of the top of the line Intel X-25E SSD drives will max out at 150 MB/sec due to the SATA 1.0 interface.

My advice, buy the cheapest 5400rpm, GB/$ drive you can find for the PS3 when you need to upgrade.

ok but still, if the drive is spinning faster, shouldnt that still cut time off, maybe not in half, but a decent chunk?

 

[FuryofFive]

is there a site where someone tested this out? not just the small gamepro tests but on a larger scale. and not based on specs

 

[thilanliyan]

I've read that putting a 7200rpm one in there may not help because of some sort of encryption that has to be done by the system itself (which would be the bottleneck for HDD speeds). It was in one of those tutorials on how to change the HDD. I ended up just putting a 160gb 5400rpm drive in there. It'll run cooler anyway and I don't do large file copies or anything like that. Plus, installing is only done once.

 

[FuryofFive]

yeah,i think im considering probaly doing just that, gettign a 200gb 5400rpm drive, what speed are the drives to begin wth...i know they like to stick slow cheap drives in there

 

[Dari]

Sounds to me like you've convinced yourself of buying a 7200RPM drive and want outside confirmation. But, as others have said, a higher RPM doesn't give you much, if any, advantage. Worse, it may cause overheating in the long run.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: Dari
Sounds to me like you've convinced yourself of buying a 7200RPM drive and want outside confirmation. But, as others have said, a higher RPM doesn't give you much, if any, advantage. Worse, it may cause overheating in the long run.

wow lol did u not read the post just before this one.. im amazed at how silly you are... i said clearly that ill probaly get a 5400... but i guess u got me there 🙂

 

[Dari]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive

Originally posted by: Dari
Sounds to me like you've convinced yourself of buying a 7200RPM drive and want outside confirmation. But, as others have said, a higher RPM doesn't give you much, if any, advantage. Worse, it may cause overheating in the long run.

wow lol did u not read the post just before this one.. im amazed at how silly you are... i said clearly that ill probaly get a 5400... but i guess u got me there 🙂

I didn't read the last one. But the drives are dirt cheap now. Most are under $100.

 

[randay]

first of all: how big is the hard drive in there now? and are you running out of space?

secondly: you wont get faster installs no matter what hdd you upgrade to. if anything you will get faster load times when playing games off the harddrive, but those load times should be pretty non-existant already.

i would say to upgrade only if you need more space... but this has all been said already.

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: randay
first of all: how big is the hard drive in there now? and are you running out of space?

secondly: you wont get faster installs no matter what hdd you upgrade to. if anything you will get faster load times when playing games off the harddrive, but those load times should be pretty non-existant already.

i would say to upgrade only if you need more space... but this has all been said already.

i have the 80gb, with the demos i have now, that took up like a good chunk, had like 30gb's left over, and i havent even put movies on it. waiting to upgrade the drive first.

 

[Thraxen]

People need to clarify what they are saying here. There are two types of installs. You won't see any increase in speeds for installs retail games like MGS4 do off of the discs. It's the BR drive that the bottleneck in those cases. You will see slightly lower load times for installs of downloaded content.

IMO, the few seconds saved is trivial. I don't care if I save 10 seconds on a one-time install or 2 seconds on loading a game off the HDD. I'm about to spend 20 minutes to several hours playing games... it's trivial. I'd rather spend the cash I would have spent on a faster drive on a bigger one instead. But if the biggest drives are available at both speeds and I had the money for either, I don't think there are any major reason to not get the faster drive.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: FuryofFive
yeah,i think im considering probaly doing just that, gettign a 200gb 5400rpm drive, what speed are the drives to begin wth...i know they like to stick slow cheap drives in there

It's either a 4200rpm or 5400rpm...mine was a Seagate 40GB I think...I don't have it with me to check the speed though.

 

[Schfifty Five]

If i've filled up my stock 80gb HD and want to upgrade to something larger, how would I go about transferring the data over to the new HD?

 

[Trader05]

the only thing i know that works is backing it up to an external drive, has to be formatted FAT32. Backup, install new hard drive, restore. Worked for me 2 times without a hiccup.