Assistance and knowledge in retrieving PS3 HDD data

[Astrial]

Greetings everyone. Last month, my PS3 froze while playing a game (this game is prone to freezing). So I powered it down by pressing the power button, but it always goes into recovery mode. No problem, until that day- it got stuck at 43%. 2 days later, I gave up and powered it off again. This time, it said the HDD had become corrupted and a format was required.

I tried all but the reformat option in safe mode; nothing worked. I then accidently did chose option five, and now all my data is seemingly gone, but I know it's there still because that's how a format works. At least in PC HDDs.

I've done extensive research on if it is possible, and if so, feasible, to retrieve my game save files. If I can get pictures back, great, but all I really care about is my game save files.

I found the thread that has all the links for recovering files from PS3 HDD and the PS3 HDD reader by 3141card.

I'm not sure how to proceed, and would like anyone's assistance and knowledge in the matter. Thank you for your time.

 

[PSXHAX]

From what I recall Option 5 in the PS3 Safe Mode Recovery Menu restores the PlayStation 3 from scratch by deleting everything... which it sounds like you found out the hard way doing it on accident.

5. RESTORE PS3 SYSTEM
This will restore your system to original including, formatting and erasing all of the data on the HD and returning all system settings to default. This will not take your system back to a previous Firmware release. Use this option as a last resort, unless you have nothing on the console that you want or you want to erase everything on the console, do not use this option.

If I was in that situation I'd figure out if there's a way to undelete or recover from an Option 5 format done by the PS3 Service Menu first.

I can't say I've heard of anyone doing it, but as you mentioned like PC HDD's unless you write over the sectors with new data it may still be present albeit in Sony's encrypted and 'allocated for reuse' state.

There is a post with some links HERE on recovering files from the PS3 HDD, the main issue being most of the tools aren't very user-friendly so the majority of people (excluding devs) have little to no experience working with them.

Hopefully someone else can share further knowledge or insight into this, and if you need help tracking down files let me know as I may be able to dig up and mirror some of them.

Update: There is now a PS3 HDD Reader for Windows and a PS3 HDD Reader for Linux via Picard (aka 3141card)

Download: PS3_HDD_Reader_final_windows.7z (908 KB) / PS3_HDD_Reader_final_linux.7z (63 KB) / PS3_HDD_Reader_final_source_code.7z (39.09 KB) / PS3_Unlock_HDD_Space.7z (79 KB - includes PS3_Unlock_HDD_Space.pkg) / lv0_446.idc.7z (113 KB) / lv1_446.idc.7z (949 KB) / LV1 embedded Files IDCs.7z (413 KB - includes lv1_446__pme_init.idc, lv1_446__ss_init.idc, lv1_446__ss_server1.idc, lv1_446__ss_server2.idc, lv1_446__ss_server3.idc, lv1_446__sysmgr_ss.idc and lv1_446__updater_frontend.idc) / lv2_446.idc.7z (1.3 MB)

Spoiler: Related Tweets

 

[Astrial]

Thanks for helping me. It seems the best option would be to just find game saves comparable to mine. The time, effort, and possibility that what I recover still may not work doesn't seem worth it.

Lesson learned, that's for sure... lol

I'm having issues with the game saves page- every time I click a link, it sends me to the homepage.

 

[PSXHAX]

Here's a copy of the PS3 Save Files Repository archive from the old site, granted most of these links are many years old and probably dead these days unfortunately:

Spoiler

 

[Astrial]

Thanks.