Ok I have a 40 gig black PS3 (U.S) was a 40GB but I switch and upgradged it to a 250, and it is almost full with games and video and ect. "I have Yellow Dog installed" on it partition. And I have a white 40 GB (JAP), and I am about to switch the 250 with from the black to the white one, Now when I first installed the 250 in the the black one I had to format and update it to the current version (understandable cause it was a new drive) SO what I am trying to see is will I have to reformat to HD when I put it in the white one? If so is there a way I can back up the games so I won't lose them (some of them I can not get again)
I believe that PS3 hdds are formatted to be specific to the PS3, which means that no you cannot just take one hdd out of one PS3 and plug it into another PS3.
The backup utility s also useless here as it only copies user accounts and game saves, not installed games. I can confirm this cos I tried but found when I wanted to paly a game they all had to be reinstalled.
So I'm guessing the only way to play the PSN games you downloaded is to switch the hdd back into the original PS3 and keep the new hdd somewhere and swap back when needed.
The backup utillity does not copy user accounts,they are installed in the PS3's internal storage.
From what ive read the backup utillity does indeed back up all,videoes,games,game saves etc.
If it dosnt you can redownload them again of PSN at no extra cost,if they are game shares,then just ask the person you got them of to share again.
Also a note,when you do a backup,it has to be restored on the same console,so to be safe,do the full backup,install the new HDD,then restore,if your not happy you can still put the old harddrive back in.
