Passport showing incorrect space

HisSevant77 · 07-03-2009, 12:46 PM

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm posting this in the right place.

I've had a Western Digital Passport (80gig) for a couple years now. I've never had any problems with it and have used it primarily to backup my computer and Playstation 3.

Well I've decided to install Yellow Dog Linux onto my PS3 so that I can use my PS3 in that manner as well. Well I am trying to backup my PS3 so that I don't lose anything (I need to backup the PS3, then do a reformat and partition the HDD for Linux). Well, now I am experiencing a problem with my PS3 showing the incorrect amount of free space on my Passport. It seems to be showing the minimum space the HDD has ever had.

In other words, I recently put a backup of my computer onto it and it left the HDD with 12gigs of free space left. I deleted the backup off the HDD and have 72.1 gigs of free space again. However, the PS3 reads I still only have the 12 gigs free. It's as if it's reading data that has been deleted or it somehow isn't updating the space on the HDD.

I tested to see if writing and reading from the HDD will "reset" it so to speak, so I took some music off the PS3 and put it onto the HDD . . . No luck. Now it shows I have 10 gigs left, even after I deleted the music once again.

Is there a way to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem? I've never had this problem before. Only once though, when I was using Acronic True Image PC backup, (used the bootable media cd, so I wasn't going through windows) Acronis said the HDD only had so much space (after I emptied the HDD beforehand and acted similarly.

I cannot just reformat the HDD though (Passport). It has to be in FAT32 for the PS3 OS to read it, and formatting through windows will not allow it. I've seen formatting utilities for the WD Passport, but a friend tried to fix his passport doing that and it still seemed to format in NTSF instead of FAT32.

So I'm really needing some help here, and I hope someone else has dealt with this issue before and has solved it.

Any and all help is truly appreciated, and I thank you in advance for all the help!

**raptor_pa** · 07-03-2009, 12:56 PM

This should allow you to format to Fat32, have used it on a couple of 2TB raid externals. ( Don't even ask WHT I would format 2TB as fat32 LOL... let's just say - we had to ) http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

07-03-2009, 12:46 PM	#1 (permalink)
HisSevant77 Registered User Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 1 OS: Windows Vista	Passport showing incorrect space Hi everyone, I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I've had a Western Digital Passport (80gig) for a couple years now. I've never had any problems with it and have used it primarily to backup my computer and Playstation 3. Well I've decided to install Yellow Dog Linux onto my PS3 so that I can use my PS3 in that manner as well. Well I am trying to backup my PS3 so that I don't lose anything (I need to backup the PS3, then do a reformat and partition the HDD for Linux). Well, now I am experiencing a problem with my PS3 showing the incorrect amount of free space on my Passport. It seems to be showing the minimum space the HDD has ever had. In other words, I recently put a backup of my computer onto it and it left the HDD with 12gigs of free space left. I deleted the backup off the HDD and have 72.1 gigs of free space again. However, the PS3 reads I still only have the 12 gigs free. It's as if it's reading data that has been deleted or it somehow isn't updating the space on the HDD. I tested to see if writing and reading from the HDD will "reset" it so to speak, so I took some music off the PS3 and put it onto the HDD . . . No luck. Now it shows I have 10 gigs left, even after I deleted the music once again. Is there a way to fix this? Has anyone else experienced this sort of problem? I've never had this problem before. Only once though, when I was using Acronic True Image PC backup, (used the bootable media cd, so I wasn't going through windows) Acronis said the HDD only had so much space (after I emptied the HDD beforehand and acted similarly. I cannot just reformat the HDD though (Passport). It has to be in FAT32 for the PS3 OS to read it, and formatting through windows will not allow it. I've seen formatting utilities for the WD Passport, but a friend tried to fix his passport doing that and it still seemed to format in NTSF instead of FAT32. So I'm really needing some help here, and I hope someone else has dealt with this issue before and has solved it. Any and all help is truly appreciated, and I thank you in advance for all the help!

07-03-2009, 12:56 PM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,500 OS: XP	Re: Passport showing incorrect space This should allow you to format to Fat32, have used it on a couple of 2TB raid externals. ( Don't even ask WHT I would format 2TB as fat32 LOL... let's just say - we had to ) http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/ __________________