Two drives, one for Homebrew, one for PSN?

Did a number of searches, but couldn't find anyone asking this question.

I am wanting to run homebrew apps (Not game backups. GeoHot's v3.55 patch is enough for me.) on the PS3, but I know that it logs the apps I'm running and reports it back to Sony (if I go online), and that Sony is banning people for running apps.

I don't know where these logs are stored, but I'm hoping it's on the HD. Would it be possible to have two hard drives (a "Homebrew drive" and a clean "PSN drive" that has never run homebrew), and then just swap to the PSN drive whenever I want to go online?

Feel free to get as technical as you can. I love learning about this stuff =)

You can't get online with 3.55.

You can only have 1 hard drive associated with a PS3 at a time. As soon as you stick in the 2nd hard drive it will ask to format it.

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Originally Posted by Nicodimus

You can't get online with 3.55.

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Well shyte, there goes that idea =/

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Originally Posted by chesh

You can only have 1 hard drive associated with a PS3 at a time. As soon as you stick in the 2nd hard drive it will ask to format it.

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I was expecting to have to format the 2nd drive. That was the point. I didn't know that you could only have one HD associated with the PS3 at a time, though. :(

How does the PS3 keep track of the HD that is associated with it? Does it store the HD serial number somewhere in its NAND?

Encryption key. Either when booting it can decrypt or it cannot. If it can't or there is no encryption set, then it asks you to format. Pretty much the same thing as the original xbox if you've ever played with it's HDD's

If it's just encryption, does that mean I could take the original drive to my PC, clone it onto a second drive, and then be able to use both drives?

I had the 80gb hard drive that came with my PS3, sitting in an external case. When I swapped it with my 500 gb, it did not ask to reformat it.

Interesting :chinscrat

I recall graf saying that he could update the console version through his modded Linux and install any update_files from a pup.

Would it be possible to use graf's Linux kernel to disable the encryption of the hard drive on 3.55, then update through his Linux and have a 3.60 decrypted hard drive? Would that lead to any 3.60 information we don't already have?

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Originally Posted by chesh

You can only have 1 hard drive associated with a PS3 at a time. As soon as you stick in the 2nd hard drive it will ask to format it.

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Partly correct. The 2nd drive will be formatted yes, but the 1st hard drive will still be able to be read from the PS3 when you swap drives back over. The encryption process is only to stop the hard drive's data from being accessed from a different PS3. So for the OP you can achieve what you want, however you will need to change to another CFW to get online via frowned upon avenues.

I just recently put my original drive back in so I could ftp a few things back on to my PC.

When I had both hdd on the same firmware 3.41 or 3.55 I could swap the drives in and out of the PS3.

But now i have one on 3.60 and it does ask to update the other drive with 3.60 or higher firmware