rant: The PS3 backup utility

[jim]

8001002A.

Whatever that means. My son is trying to upgrade his harddisk, and step one was backing up everything to a USB external hard drive. First of course you have to reformat it to FAT32 which means you have to download a utility on your PC to do it. After messing with that last night, tonight we try the backup which fails with the cryptic code above. Call to Sony indicates that this means that there is a compatibility issue. Never mind that the PS3 sees the drive, knows the amount of space, and even lets you copy files individually. The little old lady who couldn't pronounce "USB" told him it was a compatibility issue.

Fine, Sony support is nonexistent.

Turns out he has one file on the disk that is corrupted, and when you try to get rid of it it gives that same error above. No way that I can tell to delete it, other than reformatting the PS3 disk. So at this point I'm not sure what he is going to do, but the backup utility just plain doesn't work.

Google searches produce tons of similiar stories without resolution, so I don't know about this little project.

I hate computers.

[Leroy]

There should be a power cord somewhere attached to the computer. Unplug it.

[TheoSqua]

i like the 360 method. a new hard drive comes with a transfer cable. you put in the new hard drive, then plug in the old one to the transfer cable, hit transfer button, whala.

amazing that microsoft actually did something simple.

[jim]

i like the 360 method. a new hard drive comes with a transfer cable. you put in the new hard drive, then plug in the old one to the transfer cable, hit transfer button, whala.

amazing that microsoft actually did something simple.

This is a major flaw in the PS3 design. Searching online people are going through hell and back trying to put a new disk in. Not only the logical part, but apparently one of the screws has a tendency to strip. My son is debating whether he wants to do this, he could send the hard drive back, get a refund, and use it toward a 360.

I think the issue is a corrupt piece of data. One file that is corrupt (it calls it that on the interface), when you try to delete it you get the exact same error code (8001002A).

[cardinalkarp]

What causes you to have to do this? Is it once you've saved so much stuff on the PS3?

[jim]

What causes you to have to do this? Is it once you've saved so much stuff on the PS3?

Yeah, some of these games take up to 5GB per game. A 60GB hard disk gets filled up pretty fast. He has about 1GB in movies/pics/music, so that's not the issue

We are going to think about saving things piecemill, install the new disk and have him reinstall all the games, and then copy the saved game data over and hope he gets most of it. But this is one of those projects that sounded very simple to start and has gotten very complicated.

[cardinalkarp]

What causes you to have to do this? Is it once you've saved so much stuff on the PS3?

Yeah, some of these games take up to 5GB per game. A 60GB hard disk gets filled up pretty fast. He has about 1GB in movies/pics/music, so that's not the issue

We are going to think about saving things piecemill, install the new disk and have him reinstall all the games, and then copy the saved game data over and hope he gets most of it. But this is one of those projects that sounded very simple to start and has gotten very complicated.

Cool, I've only got a couple games and don't really save much so I don't think I'll run into any problems.

[TheoSqua]

What causes you to have to do this? Is it once you've saved so much stuff on the PS3?

Yeah, some of these games take up to 5GB per game. A 60GB hard disk gets filled up pretty fast. He has about 1GB in movies/pics/music, so that's not the issue

We are going to think about saving things piecemill, install the new disk and have him reinstall all the games, and then copy the saved game data over and hope he gets most of it. But this is one of those projects that sounded very simple to start and has gotten very complicated.

Cool, I've only got a couple games and don't really save much so I don't think I'll run into any problems.

I'm really wanting to get a PS3. I already have an xbox360, but I want a blu ray player, and buying the one that can also play MLB The Game is very appealing.

[cardinalkarp]

What causes you to have to do this? Is it once you've saved so much stuff on the PS3?

Yeah, some of these games take up to 5GB per game. A 60GB hard disk gets filled up pretty fast. He has about 1GB in movies/pics/music, so that's not the issue

We are going to think about saving things piecemill, install the new disk and have him reinstall all the games, and then copy the saved game data over and hope he gets most of it. But this is one of those projects that sounded very simple to start and has gotten very complicated.

Cool, I've only got a couple games and don't really save much so I don't think I'll run into any problems.

I'm really wanting to get a PS3. I already have an xbox360, but I want a blu ray player, and buying the one that can also play MLB The Game is very appealing.

That's really the only game I play for it. I've got NHL and Gran Turismo but don't play them all that often.

[AdmiralKird]

Can't you just uninstall the games you no longer play often and reinstall it later?