NEED HELP: PS3 Internal HDD Corrupted

[AcuraKidd]

I took out my internal HDD from the PS3, and connected it to my Windows 7 PC using a SATA cable. It wasn't being recognized, so I went into the Disk Management utility in Windows, and there was a pop up asking me to choose between MBR or GPT, so I chose MBR thinking that the HDD would now be recognized by Windows, but it wasn't.

Now I put the HDD back into my PS3 and its asking to reformat it, when I select NO, it says "Cannot Start, the correct hard disk was not found"

I need help, I have not reformatted the HDD, the only thing that happened was that stupid MBR thing. Does anyone know how to undo it?

I have lots of game saves and other things on my HDD that I'd like to recover.

[Grazeholder]

Hi!
If you would like to check you hdd for errors you should connect the drive to your pc (as you did) and then run a diagnostic tool like seatools for seagate hdd or WDTools for WD hdd, the program can recognize the drive and make the tests without damaging your data.
It is obvious that windows would not recognize the drive couse it`s encrypted with an unknown format for them...
I am not sure if you have lost your data when you choose the MBR setting (couse i dont know if you wrote a new mbr on the disk or whatever the prog did) but i would suggest you to scan your drive for errors and if it`s clean and ps3 keeps giving you the same message i am afraid you have to re-format the drive.

[AcuraKidd]

Thanks,

I just ran WDTools and did a Quick Test, and it passed everything. I am now running a full test, but what can I do to make it work with my PS3? How do I undo the MBR changes?

What is an MBR anyways?

[badboyz80]

i would say you will have to reformat your hdd in your ps3 but 1 question why did you connect it to your pc anyway and yes you will loose everything or you could try getting your ps3 into recovery mode and try the different options but i think you will still need to format the hdd UNLUCKY lesson learned i think

[owen420]

when you put it into your PC and went into disk manager it asked you to format it

asked MBR or GPT...

that ment select a partition to throw on it, cause it didnt reconize the PS3 partition format...

meaning all of your data is now gone...

the only way you will get your ps3 going again will be to format the drive and reinstall

there is nothing else that can be done

next time read before doing things.

[BahumatLord]

The PS3 uses encrypted SPUFS file system. You are NOT going to be able to access it on your pc for any reason. You might be able to try a partition recovery tool to restore it to before you Set it as MBR. I don't know which one is going to be able to help you with the PS3 partition but I've had a lot of success with this tool for similar problems with PC hard drives. It's worth a shot to try it first. If it doesn't work then google "partition recovery" and try some other tools

Active@ Partition Recovery.Restoring lost partition.Recovering MBR.

Edit: All your data is NOT GONE. Just think of it as misplaced

[coolhardy]

The PS3 uses encrypted SPUFS file system. You are NOT going to be able to access it on your pc for any reason. You might be able to try a partition recovery tool to restore it to before you Set it as MBR. I don't know which one is going to be able to help you with the PS3 partition but I've had a lot of success with this tool for similar problems with PC hard drives. It's worth a shot to try it first. If it doesn't work then google "partition recovery" and try some other tools

Active@ Partition Recovery.Restoring lost partition.Recovering MBR.

Edit: All your data is NOT GONE. Just think of it as misplaced

partition tools wont work cause it only can restore partitions that it knows and there is no partition tools that know the file system of the ps3 just reformat the HDD you already lost all your data anyways so it wouldnt matter or make a different

[BahumatLord]

partition tools wont work cause it only can restore partitions that it knows and there is no partition tools that know the file system of the ps3 just reformat the HDD you already lost all your data anyways so it wouldnt matter or make a different

normally I'd say that's true but he might be able to find one that does restorations based on time/date stamps regardless of the actual partition format. It's not going to hurt anything to try a few before he resorts to deleting the partition and created a new unformatted one so the PS3 can format it

I did say "You MIGHT be able to try...." . If it doesn't work then he's only wasted a little bit of time. If it does work then he's got his data back. It's worth at least an attempt in my opinion plus it would help him learn about partitioning and formatting a little better.

[AcuraKidd]

wow, this completely sucks. When I chose MBR, it didn't seem like it reformatted the drive, just like applied a setting or something.
I'm trying Active@ Partition Recovery right now, but I'm not sure what its gonna do...

There must be someone who knows of a way to fix this

[BahumatLord]

Your data is still there, just the info about how the drive is set up was changed when you selected MBR. It didn't actually format the drive. If there is going to be an answer it's going to be through partition recovery software or higher end forensic tools but that can be expensive if you can't find a freeware fix

Edit: also I never checked this but gPARTED on Linux might be something to look into. I've seen that people have accessed the PS3 drive on linux. Not sure if it was real or bullshit because they never said how they decypted the drive. IDK... best info I can give you. Sorry to say that is most likely a lost cause