Hi,
I just created a new account here to share my recent success. I don’t have a Passport Ultra, but I do have a Passport Essential. At first I could not make PS3 detects the external drive. In fact I could not make it detects any of my USB mass storage devices. I had tested it with Passport Essential 500GB, My Book 1TB, Sony Microvault Click 8GB, and Sandisk Cruzer Micro 16GB. All were formatted as FAT32, of course, following the advice in numerous articles and forum posts. I was beginning to worry that my PS3’s USB controller had broken.
Well, it turns out that there is a missing information in those articles and forum posts. I finally realize that in order for the USB mass storage device to be detected by PS3, the device must be using the good old (legacy) “MS-DOS” partition table, also commonly known as “MBR” partition scheme. Newer operating systems such as Windows7, Mac OS X, and most modern Linux distros (I use Fedora to format) tends to create partitions using GUID partition table (GPT) instead, especially for those terabyte disks. PS3 does not read a USB device with GPT even though in the table all the partitions are FAT32.
With this insight, I then converted all my USB mass storage devices from GPT to MS-DOS partition table. I use a command line tool in Linux to do this conversion without have to reformat the existing partitions. Now, all my USB devices that I listed above are detected by PS3 directly, no USB hub required. Your mileage may vary. If you don’t know how to convert the partition table, just reformat the disk again using a partition tool that let you choose between GPT or MS-DOS partition table, and remember to choose the latter. I know “Disk Utility” on Mac has this option.
Oh, while I am at this. I also want to correct some missinformation out there. PS3 can detect primary FAT32 partition. It is not necessary to create it as logical partition as most of the articles/posts claim.
Hope this help.
