Recovering PS3 data from formatted hard disk

[nixius]

Hello everyone,

Nice to meet you all, this is my first forum post here; I hope this is the correct place to post this query (it seemed the most appropriate).

Sorry if this looks like a wall of text!

I bought a PS3 last year, and I noticed sometimes the system would act up and I have always been suspicious it was the hard disk - but never got round to replacing it. This evening the system started acting very funny so I tried some options from the recovery menu to fix it (I assume it runs some sort of chkdsk style functionality). This did not help at all so I foolishly hooked the disk up to a windows 7 PC.

Looking in disk management in administratrix tools it recognised the disk, but as 'unformatted'. After this the PS3 would not start without trying to format the disk first. So I figure, I have done loads of quick formats and used recovery tools to get most of the data back so I let it format the disk but have been unable to retrieve any data at all. Various undelete/recovery software reports between 0 and 3 files - could this be due to some kind of encryption on the saved data?

My question therefore is, is there any way at all I can get the data back on the hard drive, including paying a professional? Surely the data is still on there, it just needs to be found and flagged as not deleted again. I have been very careful not to copy anything on to the disk, and the format was done in a few seconds so I really doubt it has done a full format.

Any ideas for me to try or what have you are also very much welcome.

Thanks for reading

[dmarques]

Hi,

I'm not sure which kind of file system the PS3 uses, probably it's not a very common one, and that's the reason why you make a scan and get about nothing.
If you take your drive into a pro, he might recognize what kind of FS has your and might be able to help you.
I don't think you'll have much chances with any common recovery tools.

[fzabkar]

I'm not sure which kind of file system the PS3 uses, probably it's not a very common one ...

The PS3 supports FAT32, but not NTFS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_hardware

[networks]

I'm not sure which kind of file system the PS3 uses, probably it's not a very common one ...

The PS3 supports FAT32, but not NTFS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_hardware

fzabkar I think they refer mostly to external data devices connected to the PS3 device which only reads fat32 formatted file systems. The PS3 game partition is encrypted so you can't read the data. The OP can try to google for some hacks to decrypt it but don't hold your breath getting it done.

[619beave]

It's not going to happen. The encryption uses XOR or something like it. If the OP formatted his Internal HD, it does not look good at all for him. If it was the external HD then he can use any DR software out there that does FAT32 HD's.

Also, don't recover the data back on the original HD

[nixius]

Thanks for the posts peeps.

Yes it was the internal hard drive that I foolishly formatted in a moment of madness. From what I have been reading over the past few days it seems there is no reasonable way to recover the data. It is certainly possible if you have the right tools, but it has got to the stage now where I have come to terms with the effort required could be better spent replaying old games etc!

Shame about my pics and videos though.

Thanks again,
nixius

[hddguy]

The PS3 uses a propriety variant of JFS1 (to my knowledge) and also uses 256 AES encryption. The key is unique and located within the physical console. Outside of the native console there is no possibility (at present) to access the information.

If this is Sonys attempt to stop piracy and to prevent sharing of downloaded and purchased content then it works

[networks]

Well we all now know how that worked out for Sony don't we ! Sony messed with the hive and got stung pretty badly.