OKAY. here's what happened.

I have this 500 GB Seagate internal hard drive i'm switching to my PS3. Ordered it from amazon, brand new. no problem.

I just bought a 1 TB external hard drive to back up my PS3, and my computer. 

I opened the external hard drive out of the box, and backed up my PS3 160 GB HDD. took about 3.5 hours and 113 GB. That's the only thing I did to the external hard drive

I don't think i had any problems

Replaced the 160 GB hard drive with the 500 GB one. Downloaded the system software and all that. Got it formatted and all that. it's ready to go. No problems.

THEN, I tried to restore the bacup utility from SYSTEM SETTINGS > BACKUP UTILITY > RESTORE

the PS3 detected the external hard drive, located the backup (in the form of a big long number), and I proceeded to restore using that backup data.

Here's where the problem happens

After attempting to restore, my PS3 kindly tells me that "There is no backup data. Check that you have connected only the storage media containing the backup data, and then try to restore again."

But, the external hard drive is the only thing connected to my PS3, other than the power cord, HDMI, and an optical cable.

Do I need to unplug the optical cable... or does the backup need to be in a specific folder on the external? I've looked on google but can't find a straight answer. Advice wouled be appreciated.

Edit: It appears that I needed to format my external hard drive before I backed it up.

Did you format your external hard drive before backing it up?

I took it right out of the box and backed it up. I thought that might have been my first mistake

You can't do that. You have to format your external drive before you back it up. I'm pretty sure I had the same problem.

lol, I hope you have your original 160GB HDD intact mysticwolf

So... how do i format my PS3 slim so I can back it up again?

I'm gonna have to put the old HDD back in the ps3. I'll do that now

If you do that, you'll lose all its data. The ps3 reformats and erases everything in all hard drives even if it was one previously in it.

I suggest finding another place to back it up and formatting your external drive and then recopying it back to it. You got yourself into a pickle here good luck with that lol.

okey dokey, so what do I do then? can I reformat the external without losing everything on the backup? i still have the 160 GB HDD, if I need that

Could I transfer the backup on the external to my laptop, and then reformat the external, and then put the backup back on to the formatted external?