Playstation 3 Slim Hard Drive Replacement Repair Guide

Difficulty

Easy

Steps

5

Time Required

                          5 - 10 minutes            

Sections

2

• Hard Drive
• 3 steps
• Hard Drive
• 2 steps

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Introduction

What you need

Step 1

              Hard Drive               

• Turn the PS3 over and lay it on its backside.
• Use the flat edge of a metal spudger to pop up the small access door on the bottom cover near the front of the PS3.
• Remove the blue Phillips screw hidden under the access door.

Turn the PS3 over and lay it on its backside.

Use the flat edge of a metal spudger to pop up the small access door on the bottom cover near the front of the PS3.

Remove the blue Phillips screw hidden under the access door.

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Step 2

• Slide the hard drive bay cover toward the right side of the lower case, then pull it away from the front edge to remove it from the PS3.

Slide the hard drive bay cover toward the right side of the lower case, then pull it away from the front edge to remove it from the PS3.

Step 3

• Using its attached metal handle, pull the hard drive out of its bay.
• This is a SATA 2.5" Hard Drive. It can be swapped to another HDD or to a SSD, just make sure it meets these two specs.

Using its attached metal handle, pull the hard drive out of its bay.

This is a SATA 2.5" Hard Drive. It can be swapped to another HDD or to a SSD, just make sure it meets these two specs.

Step 4

              Hard Drive               

• Remove the four 4.3 mm Phillips screws securing the hard drive to its tray.

Remove the four 4.3 mm Phillips screws securing the hard drive to its tray.

Step 5

• Remove the hard drive from its tray.

Remove the hard drive from its tray.

To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.

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Author

                                      with 10 other contributors 

                    Andrew Bookholt                     

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Cian - May 18, 2016

Reply

would it be possible to replace it with an ssd?

joachimmoeller - Apr 8, 2017

Yes. Done it already.

João Pedro Almeida - Feb 23, 2021

Yes, but do not expect huge performance improvements, especially if you run games from a physical format (i.e. Blu-ray disc).

Théo Crmz - Sep 20, 2022

You definitely can. That will give you less heat to deal with, less noise and vibrations… But the speed gain will probably not be that significant as the PS3 is limited to SATA 1 if I recall correctly…

Replacing it with a 7200 RPM HDD would be more worth it on the price/quality ratio, as 2.5" 500 GB HDD are pretty cheap nowadays.

Tom kan - Oct 29, 2017

Reply

Can you please tell me playstation 3 super slim model cech-4304a wich type of single lens got? I want to change it and it does not write something like kem or kes..