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DaMummy

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apparently the ps3 uses a weird file system on its internal hard drive that windows does not support, now if i plug this thing through usb to a certain linux machine, will i get any positive results? and no i dont even know what file system ps3 uses....
 
I'm not sure at all... Maybe the guys at Digiex can help you?
 
Geeks don't tend to answer to "nerd", but I'll make an exception just this once. :p


The best thing to do is just try it - to my knowledge, it probably wouldn't do any harm just to plug it in and see what happens. Of course, I disclaim anything that might happen if anything goes wrong, though. :p
 
Well If I'm understanding this correctly you want to plug your ps3's hard drive into your Linux PC/Device in order to read the data of it? If so then no it is not possible a ps3's drive is encrypted and can only be read on the ps3 it originally came from. If you plug it in one of two things will happen, it will either not work or not work and also require re-formatting when you plug it back into your ps3.


Right now the only way to view the file system is to jailbreak the ps3 first then copy the files off via ftp or usb.
 
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If you plug it in one of two things will happen, it will either not work or not work and also require re-formatting when you plug it back into your ps3.
Simply plugging a USB hard drive into a linux box does not do anything to the hard drive. There is no fear of having to reformat as a result of this. Windows, on the other hand, has been known to make assumptions about hard drives and then write things to them regardless of whether it recognizes the file system or not, but I'm not certain if that's still the case or not. It probably isn't, and won't cause a problem, but just to be safe don't attempt it. Stick with Linux for now until you can confirm and possibly backup the hard drive.


If you plug the hard drive in via USB one of two things will happen: it will detect the file system and you'll be able to mount it, or it will have no idea what the file system is, and will give you errors if you try to mount.


From what little I've been able to find, however, it simply uses FAT32 as it's file system, so you should have no problem from that respect. The "proprietary" part is that it cuts and renames files and obfuscates directories, things like that, and there may be some file level encryption: ie, you may be able to copy files off the hard drive, but they may not be useful on anything but the original PS3 they were downloaded on.
 
apparently it uses a filesystem known as SPUFS, which if never heard of, on the internal hard drive, only the external one uses fat32, if anyone any useful info on this SPUFS thing, please eleborate
 
hmmm... spufs appears to be a virtual file system for access to the Cell's Synergistic Processing Unit. It doesn't appear to be a literal file system that is stored on the hard drive, it just resides in memory and allows you to manipulate the SPU by simply opening, reading, and writing "files".


Where did you read that spufs was being used on the internal hard drive?
 
thats what some minor google search has led me to, no official word to my knowledge, tho the ps3 does have a cell hypervisor of some sorts? but i do know for sure that the internal isnt formatted to fat32, unless its some modified version of it that windows wont recognize, ive also read in some places that its a modified encoded ext3 thats on the internal ps3 hdd
 
well, the only way you'll ever find out is to drop it into an external enclosure and plug it in.
 
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