Upgrade you HDD NOW!

Amazon is having a sale on the Western Digital 320 GB HDD. The same one I installed in my PS3 last week! $80 is an amazing price. If you have not upgraded yet, go there now! It qualifies for free shipping! While you wait for it to arrive, you can prepare for the upgrade process.

Hard Drive Upgrade

Do you own a PS3? I expect that someday soon, you will need to upgrade your hard drive (HDD). My PS3 was born with a 40GB drive - it was full in 3 months. (Assassin's Creed would not install; when I restarted my PS3, a warning appeared saying I had less than 500 MB left.) Yes, I play a lot of different games and download demos, but I did not have any full length movies or music files. My new drive from Western Digital is 320 GB. That should hold me for about 2 years. The process of upgrading is not difficult. Read the Sony manuals first then search the web for help. I found this site useful: DoomSpace. My hints:

• Have the right screwdriver (small Philips)
• Have a USB Thumb drive ready with the boot firmware.
• You will need around 32 MB on another drive to back up your existing data. I used an external hard drive with a 32MB partition. My backup file was 28 MB - it saved everything: demos, game data, saved data, trailers... If you delete what you don't mind downloading again, you backup file will be smaller.
• Be encouraged - I did it myself with no problems in one evening.

I lost one day of gaming to upgrading my PS3. But I will reap the benefits of no storage worries for years.