Oh guys... this thread is full of misunderstandings.
Let's talk about technical aspects with memory:
Point of view from a processor:
A modern processor is extremely powerful and fast in calculations but obviously it needs *data* to calculate. The first location to get data from is (cpu!-)cache. This is extremely fast memory but sadly very small in size. When the cpu does not get data from the local cache there is a cache-miss and the data has to be fetched from bigger, but slower memory. Few years ago this was ram, nowadays there is l2-cache (or sometimes even l3-cache) to close the gap between l1-cache and ram. While data is gathered from "external" memory the cpu is in a "stall"-state. This is called "io-wait". It should be obvious that fetching data from an hdd (this is, when data is not even present in ram (so we had several misses by then) takes almost forever if you imagine the processor. swapping is an absolute unwanted case in *every* computer-related case. what makes an hdd extremely slow is especially the access-time - a ps3 has a 2.5"-hdd which usually has an access-time of ~12ms. This is the time some packages need in the internet to reach other servers, in comparison. And this is where the hdd just begins to transmit data!
so, using the hdd in ps3 to circumvent the small size of ram is... well, let's say, not a good idea.
