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Upgrade your PS3 HDD all by yourself

It seems as though there are more gigabyte hard drive versions of the PS3 than there are stars in the sky.

Ok, I exaggerate just a little bit, but for those of you out there wishing for more HDD space, but don't want to buy a whole new 80GB PS3 to expand your storage capacity, there is another way to do it. Try swapping out your HDD yourself.

The information to do this has been around for quite a while, but it's one of the best kept secrets of the PS3...swapping out the old hard drive with an off the shelf replacement unit.

While this sounds like a warranty breaking scheme, it isn't. Sony has published the actual directions on how to do this in their manual and phone calls by various PS3 users to Sony confirms that your warranty will be ok even if you upgrade.

So how do you do it? Here are the easy peasy instructions. Will it save you money? Yes and no. If you have access to an external drive to load all your PS3 files for safe keeping until you can reload them onto your new hard drive, you'll be ok. But if not, you'll have to pick one up, (which doesn't make sense cost wise) or just borrow one off of your friend.

Here are the steps from Seagate, courtesy of Kotaku and Seagate:

What you need:
An external hard drive for the backup (Seagate suggests their Maxtor OneTouch Mini)
A new hard drive (Seagate suggests their Momentus 5400.3 160GB (~$120) or a Momentus 7200.2 160GB (~$160).)
Mini screwdriver

How to do it:
Plug in your external drive and reformat it so the PS3 will recognize it.
Copy current PS3 hard drive content to your external drive.
Remove the standard issue console drive, following the installation instructions in the PS3 manual.
Replace the console drive with a the new drive.
Format new drive.
Plug in external drive and transfer content to the new drive.

At the moment, a 60GB or 80GB PS3 seems to be more than enough storage space, but as the PS3 gains more steam and more content is available, the upgrade will make more sense. Some PS3 users say that upgrading to a 120GB drive can cost only $100 if you search around.

It sure beats the heck out of the hefty price of $180 for an equivalent 120GB hard drive upgrade for the Xbox 360.

Sony, you got this one right.

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