Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
PS3 hardrive
I have the hardrive for my now-dead 60gig PS3... Is it somehow possible for me to salvage the data that's on the drive and port it over to another PS3? I connected it via USB to my PC and I realized that it's not partitioned and it wasn't visible to my OS.
I've also read that if I connect directly to new PS3 it would be formatted before it's usable. :-/
I really wanted to salvage my saves, I had some great games on there too.
I don't have the original PS3 anymore I had to disect it in order to remove a disc for my wife... It had the super-YLOD, I couldn't even get it to eject a disc even with the fan-cycle trick.
Comments
I'm sorry to say that there is no way to recover your information. As you stated the moment you put the HD in a new PS3 the data will be wiped (assume this stops people sharing saves/downloaded games). Plugging the HD into your PC won't show anything as the file systems are completely different and windows doesn't know how to read it. I speak from experience as I had the same problem with my PS3 last week, but luckly I was able to reflow it and its been working ever since. I feel you pain.
Darn, I was affraid that this was the case... Oh well. :-/
If your familiar with Linux or OS X, you can use the dd command to do a raw data dump, the OS doesn't even need to recognize the file structure at all. If the data is good, dd can salvage it.
http://serverfault.com/questions/4906/using-dd-for-disk-cloning
If your not familiar with it, some 3rd party hard drive utilities have hard drive cloning features that are a lot more powerful than Windows (they are generally Linux-based and just provide a GUI for dd).
There is a version of dd for windows, I've never tried it out though - may be worth a look:
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
My neighbor could help me with this, but once I copy the files - what then? Will I be able to transfer this data over to a new PS3, or is this just a theory?
Thank you in advance - some hope is better than none.
Well I was assuming you were putting the new hard drive back in your PS3, but if not, there's other options too:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071229165210AAASZrN
this lists a lot - I've not tried any of them though. Sony supports old PS3 to new PS3
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/44392/how-to-transfer-all-your-information-to-a-new-ps3/
This guide talks about "upgrading" your hard drive - which is essentially what you are doing, and would copy data from the old hard drive to the new.
http://vgstrategies.about.com/od/ps3cheatsandcodes/a/PS3HDDDriveSwap.htm
It's also possible to plug the recovered HD into a USB enclosure (about $20), and then plug that straight into the PS3.
http://www.wikihow.com/Add-an-External-Hard-Drive-to-a-PlayStation-3
I love you.