SOLUTION: PS3 not recognizing external hard drive

[masrigangsta]

Hey everybody, just the other day I was trying to play my backup copy of Arkham Asylum off my external hard drive (WD Elements 1TB).
I tryed every backup manager but my hard drive wouldn't show up. I searched around and found a solution, so I thought I'd share with anyone else that might have the same problem.

The reason the PS3 wouldn't recognize my hard drive is because the hard drive was in NTFS format. I found out that the only way the PS3 can recognize a hard drive is if it's in FAT32 format. (You can check what file system your hard drive is formatted with by going to My Computer, right clicking the hard drive and going into it's properties.)

So, after trying out a few programs I found one that worked flawlessly. It's called Fat32Formatter, and you can download it here. It's pretty straightforward, you just choose your drive then click Start. Once it's done you're drive is now FAT32 and ready to use with your PS3. Make a new folder on the root of the drive and name it "GAMEZ" and make sure it's in caps, now you copy your game folder into the GAMEZ folder on the hard drive, it should now appear in your backup manager.

(**If you need to put large files (larger than 4GB) such as HD movies on your hard drive, FAT32 does not work with files larger than 4GB. Do this: Using Fat32Formatter, change the size to about how much you think you'll need for backups. Once that's complete, click Start>Run>diskmgmt.msc. In the Disk Management screen, find your hard drive in the lower half of the program and right click on the part of the drive that wasn't formatted earlier. Click New Volume/New Partition. Now keep clicking Next until there is an option for File System, make sure that is set to NTFS and you're good. When it's done formatting you will have 2 partitions: 1 for game backups (FAT32), and 1 that supports files larger than 4GB (NTFS).