Ok. I have an 80 gb PS3 from 2009. I now have run out of space on my hard drive. Luckily, my laptop died, so I now have access to a 160 gb hd that is 2.5 inches long and 5400 rpm, which, according to every source I find, is compatible. Now before my laptop died, I knew it had problems, so I borrowed an external drive(500gb) from my friend to back it up, and move it to my computer. I finished that task and now have an external drive(temporarily) and a hard drive, so I have decided to attempt to upgrade my ps3's hard drive. I tried using dos commands on my windows 7 computer to format it to fat 32, but after 6 hours of waiting, it claimed the volume was too large or some crap like that. I then tried dos commands on my windows XP computer. It took about 2 hours and the problem was the same. I then found out fat 32 couldn't support large volumes or some crap like that, so I partitioned my drive into multiple 30 gb drives. I then used wizard on my windows 7 computer to format them to fat 32. It took like 5 seconds(why couldn't dos have been as fast? -_-). I now had 4 partitions, three 30 gb sections (all formatted in fat 32) and 1 larger one in NTFS. I thought my torture was over, but it wasn't. I plug my external drive(or rather my friend's) and it finally recognized it! The only problem was it only recognized one 30 gb partition. I tried to back it up on that, and of course, it claimed that there was not enough space and it would not do it. I then went back to wizard, and tried to make a partition of 80 gb(after recombining everything in NTFS) but Fat 32 was no longer an option. exFat was though. I tried that, and my ps3 wouldn't recognize it. Now what? I am not a tech savvy person, and this just keeps giving me headaches. I would prefer to not use freeware junk because I do want to download anything I don't have to. How the heck did you guys do it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNSytaL9hnI

Not sure why video isn't showing... but it looks pretty easy to me.

You guys missed the point. I was trying to back up my data on an external drive, but it wouldn't read it because it wasn't in fat 32. The external drive won't fit in my ps3. I know how to fit everything in my ps3(my manual explains that). Never mind anyways. I feel like a fool. Mods shut this thread down. My brother walked into my room and fixed it in like five seconds on his mac after he found out what I was trying to do. My ps3 is backing it up as I type this. -_-

JUST plug the drive on the PS3 and let it format it for YOU!... If you're so lost use Google and Youtube for references and tutorials first...

When I changed the HDD on my original 60Gb Ps3 the biggest problem was the little bastard screws. When my original Ps3 got the YLOD it took my 500Gb HDD with it, which was very annoying. Getting a new 500Gb HDD for my Ps3 is on my 'To Do' list.