Need help with partitions - NTFS and FAT32 on same drive

[Mark Kaine]

So I looked this up, I understand its possible,  and I have an idea how to do it, but im not sure about the downsides and if the process can be reverted later.

 

The situation is: i have a 1TB NTFS drive with 250GB free and i want to make a ~200GB FAT32 partition on that so i can use it to restore a PS3 system backup... and the PS3 can only read FAT32... and it also needs to be "MBR" from what I gathered. 

So how I do this and is there any danger to the data already on the drive and how easy is it to revert the process,  ie make the whole drive NTFS again (if needs to be)?

 

That's besides I don't know if PS3 will read such a "hybrid drive" but I think it should as long it sees a FAT32 partition. 

 

[Vishera]

22 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

So I looked this up, I understand its possible,  and I have an idea how to do it, but im not sure about the downsides and if the process can be reverted later.

 

The situation is: i have a 1TB NTFS drive with 250GB free and i want to make a ~200GB FAT32 partition on that so i can use it to restore a PS3 system backup... and the PS3 can only read FAT32... and it also needs to be "MBR" from what I gathered. 

So how I do this and is there any danger to the data already on the drive and how easy is it to revert the process,  ie make the whole drive NTFS again (if needs to be)?

 

That's besides I don't know if PS3 will read such a "hybrid drive" but I think it should as long it sees a FAT32 partition. 

 

That method has the risk of data loss.

 

I did some extreme software mods on my PS3,

And one of them was adding NTFS support to the PS3.

But the best way to backup the console is take the HDD,pop it into a PC,and do a sector by sector backup.

You will need the:

eid_root_key

That's the encryption key of the PS3 drive (The console automatically encrypts the boot drive)

You will need PS3TOOLS for Windows or the equivalent tool in linux in order to read the drive of the PS3.

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, Vishera said:

But the best way to backup the console is take the HDD,pop it into a PC,and do a sector by sector backup.

You will need the:

eid_root_key

That's the encryption key of the PS3 drive (The console automatically encrypts the boot drive)

You will need PS3TOOLS for Windows or the equivalent tool in linux in order to read the drive of the PS3.

I already have the backup, its on my laptop, but now I need a medium that the PS3 can read, but I see this would be a work around as I still have the original drive with the PS3 system so I *could* use that method to copy everything to the new drive - I suppose. 

However this console has OFW, its a super slim, would that still work or do I need CFW for this eid_root_key thing?

 

 

 

[Vishera]

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

However this console has OFW, its a super slim, would that still work or do I need CFW for this eid_root_key thing?

You need CFW in order to get the eid_root_key.

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I already have the backup, but now I need a medium that the PS3 can read, but I see this would be a work around as I still have the original drive with the data so I *could* use that to copy everything to the new drive - I suppose. 

If it's the backup you do from the console it self know that it doesn't backup everything.

Some developers blocked the option of backing up the save files of their games.

You can still pop the PS3 drive into a PC and do a sector by sector backup up but without the eid_root_key you won't be able to access the data since it's the encryption key.

You will still be able to use this backup as long as the PS3 is alive.

 

So if you do the backup from the console itself i recommend to take an empty drive and format it to FAT32 and use that for the backup.

[Mark Kaine]

30 minutes ago, Vishera said:

So if you do the backup from the console itself i recommend to take an empty drive and format it to FAT32 and use that for the backup.

Right, I mean that would be the easiest option,  but I don't have an empty drive, hence I thought i could make a fat32 partition on the 1tb drive, but I don't want to lose the data on it, obviously,  I still think it should work - but im not sure...  i mean the ps3 won't be able to read the ntfs partition so it should be safe?

 

ps: just to be clear, I have the backup,  i need to get it *onto* the PS3 now, it would be easy to just copy it, but that won't work because the PS3 won't read a simple copy, it needs to be done with the PS3 restore thing.... basically I need a new hard-drive,  just to do that... its silly.

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Right, I mean that would be the easiest option,  but I don't have an empty drive, hence I thought i could make a fat32 partition on the 1tb drive, but I don't want to lose the data on it, obviously,  I still think it should work - but im not sure...  i mean the ps3 won't be able to read the ntfs partition so it should be safe?

It's not safe,the risk of data loss exists.

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, Vishera said:

It's not safe,the risk of data loss exists.

Yeah, I figured as much...

I guess I'll have to see about getting a bigger drive for my pc then I can do the whole PS3 swapping and backing up thing.