>> No matter how big your PS3's hard drive is, you can always use more storage space. And thankfully, Sony made it really easy to upgrade. Hey there, I'm Rich DeMuro joined by CNET executive editor, David Carnoy. And in this edition of Insider Secrets, we are going to show you how to swap out your old drive a new bigger and better one.
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You'll need a few things before you start. A new, higher capacity hard drive, a Phillips head screwdriver, and some sort of external drive to back up your old PS3 files. So David, what kind of hard drive should we buy and how big can we go?
>> Well the drives in the PS3 are right now 60 and 80 gigs, so you're obviously going to want to go bigger than that. The one we're using today is 160 gigabytes. And you can go as high as 250 now and it is a laptop drive, so they're more expensive than the desktop drive.
>> Okay. A little smaller too I guess in size wise.
>> Yeah.
>> Not capacity.
>> Not capacity, but they are the small drives and smaller usually means more expensive.
>> More expensive, smaller is. All right, so let's start by backing up our system. So there's a built in backup utility on your PS3. You can find it under system settings, then select backup utility. You can either copy over all of your stuff if you have a big enough external drive or you can just copy what you really want to save if you have a smaller flash USB device. Now keep in mind your device must be formatted FAT32 so your PS3 can recognize it. So now what about the system settings, the log in info, all that stuff? Is that onboard the PS3 or is that in the hard drive we're pulling out?
>> That's all onboard the PS3. It's really what your saved games, any other data that you might want to get off your hard drive, that's what you want to get off on the external drive.
>> Okay, so there's no operating system that we need to reinstall later on?
>> No. It isn't like a situation where you have to, with TIVO for instance, you have to bless you're TIVO hard drive. It's a little bit more complicated than this.
>> Okay, got you. Okay, so we're going to start by taking out the old hard drive. So you want to hold down the front power button on your PS3 for two seconds, and then turn off the main power switch. Then you want to unplug the AC cord and any other cables you have plugged in. Make sure your system is cooled down before you go any further. Now find the hard drive bay cover on the left side of the PS3. Use the space on the right side to pop it off. Now be careful. You can use a screwdriver if you can't really get it, but you don't want to mess up the shiny look of your system. We're going to remove the blue screw, then raise the metal handle and slide the disk to the right. Then you can pull it out. So your old hard drive is now in a metal frame and there are four screws holding it in. You want to pop these screws out, don't lose them, and then put the new drive in the frame. Just be sure not to over tighten the screws. Now slip the new drive into the bay that we took the old one out of, then slide it to the left till you hear a click. You'll know that it's in the slot it's supposed to be. Then put the blue screw back in place to lock the drive where it should be. Finally, put the bay cover back on. Then attach all of your cables and you can start up your system. Follow the on screen instructions to format and set up the drive. So that's all there is to it, thanks to David Carnoid for all his help. And now we've got this extra hard drive hanging around. What do we do with it?
>> You can probably buy an enclosure for it and use it as another back up drive.
>> That sounds like another Insider Secret to me. David, thanks so much. I'm Rich DeMuro with CNET TV. See you next time.
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