How to Upgrade the PS3 Hard Drive

If you’re a heavy gamer you’ll find that all the hard-disk space goes pretty quick, especially if your downloading a lot of online content. But that’s not a problem, because Sony designed the PS3 console with a removable hard drive unit. So you can basically perform your own hard drive upgrades.


To upgrade your hard drive you’ll need the following equipment:

1 – Phillips Head Screwdriver
2 – 2.5-inch SATA notebook hard drive (120-160-250GB HDD would be ideal)
3 – External USB hard drive


The first things you need to do before you upgrade your hard drive is backing up all your content to an external USB hard drive, since I’ve already covered this you can visit my post on “How to Back Up PS3 Content” for the step-by-step instructions.


Once you backed up all your content you need to switch off and unplug you console, then follow these simple steps:

1 – Using the Philips head screwdriver you need to remove the plastic HD side-panel and remove the blue screw

2 – Open the metal latch, move the drive tray to the right side and then slide it out.

3 – Remove the silver screws on both sides of the hard drive tray.

4 – Take out the old hard drive, swap it with the new one and replace the silver screws back on.

4 – Insert the drive tray back into the console, replace the blue screw and snap the side panel back on.


Once you’re done putting in the new hard drive, turn your console on and let the system format the new hard drive, it shouldn’t take too long. Then you can restore all your content back to the system from the external USB hard drive.

1 – Connect your external USB hard drive to the console.

1 – Go to “Settings”>”System Settings”>”Backup Utility” then click “Restore”

2 – Select your external USB hard drive to restore all your data back on to the system.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION: