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"PS3 Upgrade" 2009-08-19
By Erik A. Vega (Kansas, USA)
As someone before me has stated, it's possible to use this as a PS3 upgrade. And that's sure what I did.
I do, unlike previous reviewer, use it for a movie collection. And BOY, it doesn't disappoint. With as much information stored on there, and all the space used up, it would seem like the PS3 or the hard drive would slow down, but I can assure everyone it runs at the same exact speed, and takes the same amount of time, as my 80 gb (factory installed) hard drive took to run. It works for all my uses.
Since this is more of a review over the hard drive I will stick with that. Currently been using for over a few months, and it hasn't had one single error thrown out of it, or one problem. Perhaps it's the reason I'm using it for that has left this working well, since I can't give expert advice on how it would react on a laptop or desktop. But it works fine.
Worth definitely the look into if it fits your needs, as I'm happy with it.
"Highly recommended for a laptop or PS3 upgrade" 2009-06-02
By A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
QUICK EVALUATION: The Western Digital 500GB 2.5" SATA II is a quiet, fast, easy to install, drive. Based on my experience with WD (I own several), the Scorpios are reliable drives. The 2.5" SATAs easily and perfectly mount inside the PS3's drive bay where they can replace PS3's original 20-40-60-80-160 GB drive without voiding Sony's warranty.
______________________________________
PS3 Upgrade:
I have replaced my original PS3 drive with a 320 GB WD quite a while ago but, over the last weekend, I helped a friend of mine upgrade his PS3's with this one. He decided to pick this model and, since I had a great experience with the 320GB version, I encouraged him to go WD.
My friend believes that the 500GB is at the peak of price/performance curve at this time. Like me, he has no plans of storing a movie library on the PS3 so he expects for the 500 GB to be sufficient for the life of his console. After that, it's likely that he'll be buying the next generation game/multimedia machine. The 320 GB model that I used some time ago is still available but the 500 GB is only $30 more so it makes a lot of sense to spend a little more and enjoy the extra storage.
Advice to the PS3 upgraders from someone who, after some hesitation, actually did it and then did it again a few more times for friends and family since:
- If you need to format this drive or any drive to FAT32 - and you need a FAT32 partition for the PS3 backup - the best utility I found was FAT32FORMAT.EXE - Google it and you shall find it out there. I'm not reviewing the formatter utility but I can tell you that it does a drive in less than 10 seconds AND it works on Vista too.
- It helps to have a USB-connected drive handy to back up your PS3 content before upgrading. With one of these as the backup device, the PS3 fully restores EVERYTHING, including whatever copywrited or protected objects, such as, in my case the PS2 memory cards emulations and all the game saves.
I will not go into upgrade details because there are lots of guides on the Net including great Youtube videos on how to do it but, if anyone has any questions, do leave a note and I shall reply as soon as I get to read it.
To conclude, the upgrade proceeded without any glitches and my friend has now a perfectly working console where storage won't be an issue for some time to come. PS3 performance appears to the same, which is how it should be. I haven't heard back from my friend in 8 days now so, my assumption is that all is working well and he's busy enjoying his upgraded PS3.
______________________________________
Laptop Upgrade:
My 2 year old Thinkpad T60 came with a wimpy 60GB SATA drive. I needed the ability to upgrade to the much larger 500GB and do it without having to reinstall the OS, apply the service packs and then reinstall and configure 100 different little apps.
Acronis True Image Home 2009 PC Backup & Recovery allowed me to do all of the above in about one hour. Its Utilities section has a 'clone' option that would copy EVERYTHING, including the Master Boot Record/Sector (MBR) from the puny 60GB drive unto the 500GB while allowing me to control the size of the active partition - this while the 500GB was connected through a USB wire and the laptop booted off the program's CD.
Once the operation completed (50 minutes) I simply removed the old 60GB drive off my laptop and replaced it with the 500GB drive. Once the laptop was turned back on it booted up happily, with a 200GB master partition and a 300GB second partition. There are 3 words that I have to use to describe the process: PERFECTION and COMPLETE SATISFACTION. This capability alone is worth the price of this product.
To my surprise, with the new drive, the Primary Hard Disk score as computed by Microsoft (right click on 'My computer' then select 'Properties') jumped from a decent 4.8 to an unexpected 5.7.
"Perfect for a PS3, laptop upgrade" 2009-03-12
By A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
QUICK EVALUATION: The Western Digital 500GB 2.5" SATA II is a quiet, fast, easy to install, drive. Based on my experience with WD (I own several), the Scorpios are reliable drives. The 2.5" SATAs easily and perfectly mount inside the PS3's drive bay where they can replace PS3's original 20-40-60-80-160 GB drive without voiding Sony's warranty.
______________________________________
PS3 Upgrade:
I have replaced my original PS3 drive with a 320 GB WD quite a while ago but, over the last weekend, I helped a friend of mine upgrade his PS3's with this one. He decided to pick this model and, since I had a great experience with the 320GB version, I encouraged him to go WD.
My friend believes that the 500GB is at the peak of price/performance curve at this time. Like me, he has no plans of storing a movie library on the PS3 so he expects for the 500 GB to be sufficient for the life of his console. After that, it's likely that he'll be buying the next generation game/multimedia machine. The 320 GB model that I used some time ago is still available but the 500 GB is only $30 more so it makes a lot of sense to spend a little more and enjoy the extra storage.
Advice to the PS3 upgraders from someone who, after some hesitation, actually did it and then did it again a few more times for friends and family since:
- If you need to format this drive or any drive to FAT32 - and you need a FAT32 partition for the PS3 backup - the best utility I found was FAT32FORMAT.EXE - Google it and you shall find it out there. I'm not reviewing the formatter utility but I can tell you that it does a drive in less than 10 seconds AND it works on Vista too.
- It helps to have a USB-connected drive handy to back up your PS3 content before upgrading. With one of these as the backup device, the PS3 fully restores EVERYTHING, including whatever copywrited or protected objects, such as, in my case the PS2 memory cards emulations and all the game saves.
I will not go into upgrade details because there are lots of guides on the Net including great Youtube videos on how to do it but, if anyone has any questions, do leave a note and I shall reply as soon as I get to read it.
To conclude, the upgrade proceeded without any glitches and my friend has now a perfectly working console where storage won't be an issue for some time to come. PS3 performance appears to the same, which is how it should be. I haven't heard back from my friend in 8 days now so, my assumption is that all is working well and he's busy enjoying his upgraded PS3.
______________________________________
Laptop Upgrade:
My 2 year old Thinkpad T60 came with a wimpy 60GB SATA drive. I needed the ability to upgrade to the much larger 500GB and do it without having to reinstall the OS, apply the service packs and then reinstall and configure 100 different little apps.
Acronis True Image Home 2009 PC Backup & Recovery allowed me to do all of the above in about one hour. Its Utilities section has a 'clone' option that would copy EVERYTHING, including the Master Boot Record/Sector (MBR) from the puny 60GB drive unto the 500GB while allowing me to control the size of the active partition - this while the 500GB was connected through a USB wire and the laptop booted off the program's CD.
Once the operation completed (50 minutes) I simply removed the old 60GB drive off my laptop and replaced it with the 500GB drive. Once the laptop was turned back on it booted up happily, with a 200GB master partition and a 300GB second partition. There are 3 words that I have to use to describe the process: PERFECTION and COMPLETE SATISFACTION. This capability alone is worth the price of this product.
To my surprise, with the new drive, the Primary Hard Disk score as computed by Microsoft (right click on 'My computer' then select 'Properties') jumped from a decent 4.8 to an unexpected 5.7.
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