PS3 games stuttering on external hard drive

[jmcr100]

Never had this problem until I updated the internal HDD on the PS3 - up until then every backup played off the external hard drive without any problems.

I upgraded the HDD on the PS3 a while back and since then a number of backups stored on 2 external hard drives stutter on video and audio BUT only in the cut scenes and not in actual gameplay! So when I start up COD Black Ops I, the start of the story stutters terribly but during actual gameplay it's fine. It doesn't happen with all games but it's at 50/50 at the moment.

When I transfer the games to the PS3's internal HDD then the problem is gone! The 2 external hard drives I have used with the old HDD in the PS3 without problems but since changing the internal HDD, the stuttering is driving me crazy! Both external hard drives are from Western Digital but I don't get how changing the internal drive can affect the external drive!

Has anyone any idea what could be causing it??? Not down to the CFW because it's just as bad on Rogero 4.30 as it was on KEAW 3.55

Any help greatly appreciated!

[corpse101]

Changing the internal should have no affect on the external. Unless hypothetically, sony randomly places files on their drives and you upgraded to a very large drive. Thus reducing performance. LOL that would make no sense

Fragmentation is a big killer on load times. Maybe it causes your stutter. Stick your external on a pc and defragment it. I know my external got way defraged from copying and deleting games/pkg/rom/movies If your drive is too filled (needs 15% free i think) copy stuff off,defrag, then copy back on

The easiest solution is if you have the space, is to copy everything off, format and copy back on thoug.

[jmcr100]

Never thought of that, to be honest! The drives have been used constantly over the last year or so without any defragmentation. I'll give it a go and if that doesn't work then I'll copy everything over to an empty hard drive, format the whole thing and copy back. Hope that solves it!

Thanks for the advice, in any case!

[Tranced]

I agree with the dead dude above. Try defragmentation, also check the HDD for errors via CHKDSK.

Another note: I have a PS3 with a 160GB internal, never upgraded (Yet). Bought a 2TB external and had issues when playing my backups. Games would freeze etc. What fixed that was proper folder structure. In the beginning I had a mess of files in the root of the HDD. Once I filed everything in corresponding folders the performance was much better. What I mean is keep the root of the drive as clean as possible.

EG:

GAMES
PICTURES
MOVIES
SERIES
VIDEO

Hope this helps.

[jmcr100]

Well, I took the first of the hard drives and defragged it yesterday - took nearly all night so I was hopeful that that was the cause of the stuttering. Connected it up again this morning and loaded a game and...................................exactly the same problem :-(

I'll copy everything over to my laptop tonight and then format it and see if that helps. Just don't understand why it does it on some games and not others - they're all on the same drive and why only on the cutscenes. Gameplay is unaffected.

Oh well, I'll let you know if formatting made any difference :-)

[jmcr100]

So didn't yet get a chance to format the external drives yet (busy transferring the backups off the drives) but decided to do an experiment - I transferred one of the backups which stuttered onto a new 16GB USB stick (formatted to FAT32) and tried it out on the PS3 and the game played flawlessly - not only no stuttering or loss of audio but the game loaded far faster than on the external drives!!!!

So now I don't know what is wrong - could it be the 2 external drives that is the problem???? Why would some games work and others not on the same drive?

[jmcr100]

Ok, problem solved but what an idiot I am!!!

I was using a usb hub to connect the two external drives to the PS3 but it was a passive hub and clearly wasn't getting enough power to drive the two external hard drives so that was causing the stuttering. Thank God that got sorted - was driving me crazy!!!!