I have a 20gig PS3 & i'm thinking about buying a laptop harddrive to upgrade the space for my PS3. Does anyone know the RPM & Cache for the 20gig harddrive that's currently within the system?

Your 20GB system has 5400RPM and reportedly only 2MB cache.

See this thread: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=35199
;)

Like Dogs Rule said - PS3 comes with a 5400RPM HDD with a 2MB cache. If you put in a new HDD though you can use 5400 or 7200 or solid state HDD's and any cache size.

Only 20GB models were 2MB cache. 40s, 60s and 80s are 8MB.

Thanks for the info & the forum Thread

Sort of irrelevant since it sounds like you're planning on replacing the drive anyway.

I'm assuming you're trying to find out what level of load time reductions you could expect to see with a higher performance drive.

I don't have the link, but switching to a 7200RPM drive was determined to provide minor, but noticeable differences in load times and file access times. Less than 2 seconds in most instances requiring extended load times. For most access times, you're looking at differences measured in miliseconds.

Depending upon your uses for a larger drive, it's a toss up between extra, cheaper storage with a standard 1.5Gb/s transfer, 5400RPM/8MB cache drive, or paying a premium for a faster 3.0Gb/s, 7200RPM/16MB cache drive.

If you don't have 320GB+ of downloaded media/videos to store on your PS3, the faster, more expensive, but smaller drive will probably be more beneficial.

Also keep in mind that some of the newer 5400RPM drives have the same 3.0Gb/s transfer rates as the 7200RPM drives, meaning drive spin rate alone is not the only factor in determining data transfer speeds. Also look at average seek time and latency.

Also keep in mind that HDD manufacturer is just as important in terms of drive noise and overall reliability. Going by the numbers, Seagate is widely regarded as the best, and typically cost more than drives made by Toshiba and Samsung (which are cheaper). Key point: don't just buy the cheapest drive with the highest storage if they are known not to be the most reliable.

WD are considered top tier as well although I've personally had one crap out on me in the past. But average user experience, not individual experiences carry more weight, so don't take this to mean WD drives are unreliable.

The PS3 will NOT benefit from 3Gb/s so your HDD will revert to 1.5Gb/s since the PS3 is not 3Gb/s compatible. DON'T SPEND extra money for 3Gb/s.

Then there's no point in buying any 7200RPM drives since the main advantage is the 3.0Gb/s transfer rate. Faster access rate, but no advantage for write speed.

That's good to know.

I've also heard users claiming they can't get the PS3 to recognize more than 250GB of drive space. Can anyone confirm, disprove?

HDDs over 250GB now work since a FW update. Follow the following links: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/post.php?id=1052037

Just read another interesting user review, and it looks like there is cause for a 7200RPM drive after all. The difference is quite a bit more significant than I had originally seen based upon informal tests.

I'm convinced enough to go with a 7200RPM drive.

http://palgn.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=363086&sid=08f626e140f44c91cb32f980dfa5f603


First, This is the drive I went with. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145181 to replace the 60gig 5400rpm drive that came with the PS3. The drive I got showed the best bang for the buck @ only $1 per gig. Lowest of all the 7200rpm drive I have seen. And capacity is not a concern to me since I have a machine with 2TB of storage space already. First the Tempature Test. This one has been WAY overhyped. I attached a temperature probe to both drives while they were inside the PS3. Now I did the test in Faherenheit. These temps were the highest temps noted w/ room temp of 78. 5400rpm - 111 degrees / 43.9c 7200rpm - 116 degrees / 46.6c Yep, only a 5 degree difference between the two. I can safely say there is no risk of using a 7200rpm from the heat. Maybe some of the older 7200's got hotter. But the newer ones don't seem to produce enough heat for this to be a concern.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: I changed over and ran some more tests to check exhaust temps. I played different games and even ran F@H just to check on some things and here's what I got. 5400rpm - 129 degrees or 53.9c 7200rpm - 131 degrees or 55.0c Now these temps are the highest I could hit before the fan kicked in to high. Once that happened, the temps dropped back down. So I don't think the 7200 drive really made much of an impact on temps. There might be some games out there that do a better job at stressing out the PS3, but I don't have any of those. note: Others may get different results depending on location, air flow, and room temps. For my temps, I tried to maintain a room temp of 78, my PS3 is vertical, and it sits about 3 feet from a cold air duct.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moving along to actual performance. I did this the most acurate way I could. I recorded the PS3 using a tuner card so that I can compare timestamps in the video to get a clear timeframe. I will post all the videos I used at the end of this thread. First. Install times. I used 4 games for this. And it tested how fast to install the game after downloading it from PSN. I went min:sec.ms. Note: they were not donloaded in order so their arrangement on the drive was unknown. Yes, this can play a factor in the final numbers. Also dealing with such large files. The cache of the HDD doesn't play as big a part as one would think. GT-HD 5400rpm - 1:42.636 7200rpm - 1:32.993 Almost 10 seconds off the install time. About 10% increase in speed. Jericho demo 5400rpm - 2:08.629 7200rpm - 1:58.685 Again, about 10 seconds off install time. And about 8% increase in speed. Tony Hawk demo 5400rpm - 4:11.184 7200rpm - 3:32.045 Almost 40 seconds off it's install time. Coming in at a nice 16% increase in speed. DiRT demo 5400rpm - 1:29.289 7200rpm - 1:25.385 This one had 4 seconds shaved off. Not as good, but still about 5% increase in speed. All said. The installs averaged about a 9 - 10% increase in speed. Not bad really. Now let's look at a file transfer. Although it still has the USB bottleneck of 480Mb/s and I am aware of this bottleneck. The results were different. I tested this with an external 7200rpm HDD. 188MB file transfer 5400rpm - 16.316 7200rpm - 14.882 That was 1.5 seconds off the transfer rate. Coming in at about 9% increase in speed. Again. This is not a bad increase in speed. Moving along to game loading times. I used 2 Demos and 1 full game for this part. Jericho level load 5400rpm - 17.417 7200rpm - 16.650 Shaved off almost a second. With almost 5% increase in speed. Tony Hawk startup load 5400rpm - 18.285 7200rpm - 17.351 Same, almost one second off load time and about 5% increase in speed. Now this last test I used Oblivion since it keeps a large amount of data on the HDD. This is a good way of seeing how games might act if future games incorporate the same abilities. I did 3 loading tests on this one. Oblivion Initial load 5400rpm - 21.355 7200rpm - 19.253 Just over 2 seconds off loading time. Close to 10% increase. 2nd load (map change) 5400rpm - 10.244 7200rpm - 09.543 Almost a second off load time. But a 7% increase in speed. 3rd load (another map change) 5400rpm - 12.479 7200rpm - 10.110 That one was nice at almost 2.5 seconds off. And a wopping 19% increase in speed. Note: A key thing to look at is the percentage times rather then the actual time. 1 second out of 100 is nothing, but 1 second out of 10 becomes more profound. When dealing with operations that take very little time to complete, it becomes increasingly difficult to gain performance. Even small gains in performance. That is the reason I do not blow off even a 1 second increase in performance. Conclusion: Honestly, from my findings, a 7200rpm does show an increase in performance. Some only a little, some a lot. But every single test the 7200rpm drive beat out the 5400rpm in speed. From this, I would say that a 7200rpm drive is safe and effective inside a PS3. Though being more expensive, the cost difference isn't really a whole hell of a lot. And if you are like me and you want speed more then capacity. By all means. Get a 7200rpm drive. If you want capacity at a lower cost, then stick with a 5400rpm. And here are the Videos I used to gather the data I used. All are in Divx format btw. Quality was a low priority. All the videos done on the 5400rpm drive. DiRT Install GT-HD Install Jericho Install Tony Hawk Install File Transfer Jericho Loading Tony Hawk Loading Oblivion Loading All the videos using the 7200rpm drive DiRT Install GT-HD Install Jericho Install Tony Hawk Install File Transfer Jericho Loading Tony Hawk Loading Oblivion Loading