External Hard Drive on PS3?

Question

I have a 500gb external hard drive, currently formatted with an NTFS partition. Now, I'm considering splitting the drive into two paritions, specifically taking 100gb and turning that into a FAT32 parition so I can use it on the PS3.

I have 8 games installed, 3 demos and the MGS4 database. No music, videos or photos. With my 40gb PS3, I get 37gb and I've only got about 7gb left.

I'd like to install any future demos or games onto the external if possible. I know about the benefits of using the external drive for copying saves, media files, or just backing up the entire hard drive but is it possible to install games on the external drive, then connect it and run them when needed?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you cannot install games or demos to an external hard drive.

You can, however, replace the 40GB internal drive with any SATA laptop drive.  Details are in the manual.  

Answer 2

If you input the external hard drive as you would conventionally do, with a USB direct connection, the ps3 would recognize it as a usb mass storage device, rather than the primary HDD.  So, you will only be able to save images, video and audio on the device, not game information and system software.  To make the external hard drive your primary HDD you must remove the original ps3 HDD, get a serial ATA extension cable, connect the external HDD to the ps3 HDD port via the extension cable.  Now, your ps3 will recognize the external HDD as the primary HDD, and after formatting, you will be able to save game information and demos.  For more info. on how to do this check out youtube... type in external ps3 hard drive.