Digital Foundry tests loading and install times of various PS3 games with different hard drives and evaluates upgrade options
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FANTASTIC GUIDE
Pretty informative article. I need to buy an SSD for my laptop, and replace the 320GB drive, which I'll then use in me PS3.
Some of this stuff I know, but it helps me find other hard drives for my PS3.
I already need 1tb.
This was a very well written guide, and actually I've recently upgraded my PS3's HDD to a WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm, 16MB cache drive. I chose this drive for a few reasons. The price difference between the Scorpio Green and Black tends to be close enough to warrant spending the extra $10-20 for the Black drive. The increased speed appeals to me, and overall I was interested in personally experiencing the difference (especially given that there has been few guides as well written as this one to detail each drive's benefits and flaws). Lastly, for the size and speed increase, this seems the best option for the amount it costs. The SSD and hybrid drives were significantly more expensive.
The one thing they don't quite touch on that's worth noting, is that due to the increased cache in some drives (over the normal 8MB cache in the stock drives), you'll notice during gameplay on certain games that some things will load in smoother and faster (this is aside from what the article is mentioning about load times and install times).
For example, I've noticed that on my old stock 5400 rpm, 8MB cache drive, certain games such as Borderlands would end up having some loading issues with textures when zoning into a new area. The textures would take sometimes 10-15 seconds to all properly load, and they would pop-in relatively harshly. Since upgrading my drive, these same textures load much smoother, and I've seen them coming in within 5 seconds now. This isn't the only benefit to this however.
Another added bonus, seems to be the loading time for accessing the XMB. I tend to get messages relatively often in-game, and so I've noticed that with the stock drive, loading the XMB could sometimes take a while, and the objects on whatever menu you are accessing would also take time to individually load in. This has also been drastically reduced, and almost consistently I've noticed all the object simultaneously loading in now, instead of individually. Anyway, I just thought I'd add this in for anyone who's interested.
Don't put a 7200RPM HDD in a PS3 slim unless you stand it vertically.
I took my fast HDD out of my old PS3 model and into the slim. The PS3 slim started to overheat.
I don't have a vertical stand yet. I placed two 1" thick boards underneath and spaced them as far apart as I could so the underside had more clearance. No issues since. I recommend finding rubber legs thicker than the ones on there now.