PS3 Owners - Contemplating HDD upgrade? Read Carefully RE: 3.56 Update

Beware of Update 3.56 - Issues with HDD swap/upgrade

There is an issue affecting owners of all the slim units and some later fat units when you upgrade the HD.

If your system has been updated to 3.56, do NOT swap your HDD out. When you put a new HDD in there, the PS3 will not read the update file from your USB or other storage device.

This only affects people who are already on 3.56 and want to swap the HDD.

This problem/bug was around before in 3.41, which they subsequently rereleased with a different md5 checksum.

I bought a new 120GB slim which was running 3.42 and didn't know about this issue. I updated to 3.56, did a backup of my data and then put the Samsung 500GB in there. It gives an error code and says the update file, which I loaded on three different USB flash drives, is corrupt. So right now, my slim does not work with the 500GB drive and will only work with the 120GB drive it came with. >

So if you are planning a HDD upgrade in the near future, here are your options:

- If you are not on 3.56: swap your HDD and then update to 3.56 (note that you won't be able to swap the HDD after 3.56, not until a new software updated is released)
- If you are on 3.56: do NOT swap your HDD
- Wait for the next software update


The 3.56 firmware prevents the newer Playstation 3 models (with 16 MB flash) from being upgradeable to a new hard disk drive. The following models have been affected:

Original Playstation 3 Model:



* CECHH
* CECHJ
* CECHK
* CECHL
* CECHM
* CECHP
* CECHQ

Slim Playstation 3 Model:



* CECH-20..A
* CECH-20..B
* CECH-21..A
* CECH-21..B
* CECH-250.A
* CECH-250.B
* CECH-250.A
* CECH-250.B
* CECH-251.A
* CECH-251.B