- Image by Nick Slide via Flickr
Ever since I got my hands on the PS3 at Christmas, I’ve been spending most of my spare time trying to set it up as my main media centre at home. Being able to use my PS3 as a blu-ray player, a DVD player and of course being access to all my digital media without having to connect my PC to it, was the ideal situation. The idea would be that I’d just connect up my external USB hard drive and go for it. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be as straight forward as I had hoped.
One of the most inconvenient issues with the PS3 is the lack of support for other disc formats. When connecting an external hard drive, it can only be formatted as FAT32. So what you might say? Well it’s absolutely pointless – that’s what.
FAT32 doesn’t support files over 4 GB, so you can’t put files larger than that on the drive and access it through the PlayStation. So let’s say you have ripped your favourite Blu-ray disc to your external hard drive (for backup of course), you won’t be able to store it on an external device as the file size is likely to be a good bit greater than 4 GB. That means each time you want to watch a Blue-ray movie, you will have to get up out of your chair and insert the disc…. how inconvenient.
There is of course the option of streaming the files with TVersity as mentioned in a previous post, but since I haven’t got a spare computer, I have to turn on my laptop each time, what I’d really like is just to be able to switch on the PS3 that has the USB drive attached and do nothing else.
And before anyone else tries to tell me that the PS3 supports ext2 and ext3, yes it does, but only on the internal hard drive. It doesn’t work with the External one as I’ve tried many things for this.
So anyway, let’s say you do want to connect your external USB hard drive to your PS3, here’s what you do….
- Ensure your hard drive is formatted to FAT32. If you have a large hard drive, you won’t be able to use Windows to format it, so use this program : http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
- Create folders similar to the PS3 system on the USB hard drive e.g.;
“Picture” (not Photo), “Music”, “Video” and “Game” - Connect your USB drive to the PlayStation and voila!
I hope this saves someone the time I wasted trying many different options!
To Sony – it’s time you started supporting ext3 or NTFS formatted external hard drives on the PlayStation 3.
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#1 by Luc at January 16th, 2009
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Tom, firstly dont get me wrong: I am not a gamer (except for golf on my Wii). I wanted to do precisely what you wanted to do (minus the blu-ray, I’ll get a dedicated player). I have several hundred vhs movies that have been transfered to mp4, and have also several DVD movies. I bought an AppleTV, used with ATV Flash for a while, with so-so results. Until one day I pulled out of the closet a 5-year old xbox (the first generation that came with a zapper). Decided to hook-it up, connected one my LaCie 1TB chocked full drive and started it up. When trying to have access to my media files, I got a message that I should upgrade the system. Which I did. All to say is the xbox is a great machine to play your video files. I have full control of the screen (widescreen, 16:9, panoramic, 4:3 and native, info display, etc, etc.), can connect multiple USB external HDs, etc. As you’ve said, I can lay down on the couch and navigate to the movie I want to watch without getting up. (OK am spending more time now on the treadmill!). Only set back, the xbox is an old one so I can only hook to the TV using components, not like the new ones who have HDMI.
#2 by Tom Doyle at January 18th, 2009
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Hi Luc,
I’m not a gamer myself, but the whole reason for getting the PS3 was to get use out of my HDTV.
The Xbox obviously does it’s job for you, but it wouldn’t do what I needed in that it didn’t have blu-ray.
Blu-ray was the most important thing to me when buying the PS3. I was originally just going to opt for a blu-ray player, but as stated, a bluray player would have cost me €300, whereas the PS3 with games, movie and bluray remote, cost €360. It was a no brainer for me.
Tom
#3 by Ryan at January 22nd, 2009
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Thanks for writing this! I’ve been thinking about creating this type of setup for a while.
#4 by Tom Doyle at January 23rd, 2009
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No Problem Ryan!
#5 by Justin at January 28th, 2009
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Ok… I’m confused… you stated plainly that a FAT32 drive cannot handle a file over 4G which all blue-ray files will be larger than. The you proceeded to say to format the drive to FAT32… create similar folders on the drive to the PS3… plug it in and you’re good to go! So in the end one still can’t use this drive to store and stream movies because of the 4G file size limit.. correct?
#6 by Tom Doyle at January 28th, 2009
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Hi Justin
You didn’t read the full article so. I make it quite clear that it’s pointless to connect the external hdd for high-def movies. The only thing for this is to use something like TVersity to stream it over your network (you can set up a file server too and copy it to your playstation hdd if you want).
The rest of the article is about how you can connect your ext drive to the PS3 if you still need to.
Tom
#7 by Tom Doyle at January 28th, 2009
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Oh and you are correct, you can’t use files larger than 4gb on the drive.
#8 by Justin at January 28th, 2009
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Thank you for the reply… I have found a solution with a program called multiAVCHD which splits an mt2s file into 4G sections for FAT32 compatibility and seamless playback. I’ll test tonight to see if it works as planned.
#9 by Tom Doyle at January 28th, 2009
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You could try mkv2vob too – http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131782
#10 by sunny at August 12th, 2009
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i dont see what the big deal is with blu ray and hi definition, if im honest i cant even tell the difference!!! yeh i said it, hi def is a waste of money, just do it this way, buy a hard drive usb external one, and format it to fat32, then load it up with all your blu ray movies converted to mp4, and then copy paste,, converting it to mp4 reduces size, and probably quality but if it bothers you that much, you can split your movies into 2, and place them in a seperate folder, and turn the play through option on, so you can be sitting there watch half of your movie, then have the other half start automatically, theres no lag time, seems like its playing it all in 1 go
#11 by Tom Doyle at August 12th, 2009
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@sunny firstly, if you can’t tell the difference, you either don’t have a HighDef TV or you haven’t got it set up correctly!!!
But yes you’re right, you can do it exactly as you say – this way just wasn’t a solution for me.
#12 by spankrocket at August 21st, 2009
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hey hows the going ? very interersting article . seems better than internal hdds. my question is if i got a ext hd say 500gb. and connected it my 40gb ps3,can i store downloaded games on the ext hd?and play them off the hd ? i saw a deal for a 500gb external hd for like 79 euro , so il probery get it once im sure what to do . any help would be appreciated:)
#13 by Tom Doyle at August 21st, 2009
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As far as I know it’s possible – however, I’m not sure you’ll find many decent games less than 4GB – but not 100% sure.
#14 by Todd at October 9th, 2009
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Thanks Tom!! Been screwing around with my 2 terrabyte external drive for hours… Got it! thnx again
#15 by Carlos at December 29th, 2009
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Hey, so i just bought a Sony Blu Ray player, and it has a USB port, so i plugged in my 500 gb external hard drive to it, but the problem is. i wasnt able to watch ANY of my movies on it. im not sure if you know anything about this, but i thought i’d give it a try. If you have any ideas just let me know, thanks!
#16 by Dale at January 26th, 2010
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when you say set up folders like ps3,,do you mean just create new folders and label them as you specified , where do these folders stay ,,
not very savy with this stuff
#17 by Tom Doyle at January 26th, 2010
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Hi Dale,
Yes create the folders as per above in the root directory of your hard drive.
Tom
#18 by Dale at January 27th, 2010
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I connected my harddrive to ps3 , at first it recognized it,,,but when I reconnected later it didnt work,,,,,what chaned I wonder
#19 by Michael at March 7th, 2010
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Would it be possible to have a file larger than 4GB on an external hard drive and copy it over to the internal hard drive and play it that way?
#20 by Anon at September 14th, 2010
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Thank you for sharing the info. And thanks also to the people who have commented and suggested other ways on how to play blue ray on ps3.
#21 by Jared at December 21st, 2010
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@ Michael
I believe not, because you will not even get a file bigger than 4GB on a drive formatted fat32 which I think is the only file system the ps3 allows on external.
#22 by Nigel at November 22nd, 2011
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I’ve downloaded a program to convert mt external hard drive to FAT32 so that I can plug it into my TV to view my files . However , when I go to click convert it comes up with a warning that all the data on the hard drive will be lost !!! – If a move all the files , format the drive to FAT32 and then put them back on —
would it work ?
#23 by Nigel at November 22nd, 2011
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Sorry – I didn’t mention plugging the external hard drive into the PS 3