PS3 Data Dilemma hard drive / ssd

[boiler]

Long story short, my PS3 died in a house fire. While the console was dead, I did manage to pull the hard drive (which looked unscathed) in the hopes of saving my game data (especially Dark/Demon Souls). The PS3 uses a regular old 2.5" SATA hard drive, why wouldn't I be able to just copy/paste from the old to the new?

 

Research has shown though that apparently the old hard drive is encrypted with a key specific to the PS3 it came with. I can't plug it into my computer to perform a backup. I can't put it in an external enclosure, plug it in to the new PS3, then transfer files. I can't put it in the new PS3 to run data backup utility without the console trying to immediately reformat the drive.

 

It is INFURIATING that I have all my data sitting here, and I can't get it to my new system. The ONLY way to get data from one PS3 to another seems to be running a backup/transfer utility on the original console.

 

120 hours of Demon's Souls, gone.

80 hours of Dark Souls (game wasn't even beaten yet), gone. Having to fight through Blighttown again? Ugh........

Dead Space 2 saves, gone.

 

If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can salvage this stuff, I'm open to suggestions. And no, I can't do the "oven trick" or any such other thing to the old console. It has been thrown away, and was not in a condition that would have allowed for a temp recovery.

 

NICE ONE SONY, good job making it impossible for someone to get their game saves back after unrecoverable hardware failure.

[onyxdragoon]

You could try testdisk or minitool power data recovery. Not sure if it can read the file format that the PS3 uses but I myself was able to recover one of my drives when it was in a RAW state.

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The PS3 uses FAT32 I believe, it's just an encryption tied to the original console that could not ever function again. Even if I could get my computer to "see" the files, I doubt the new PS3 would be able to reconcile them properly.

 

This sucks.

[onyxdragoon]

Here is what I assume what you would do. Using those programs you can pull out your files. Then with your new PS3 drive you would be able to transfer save files over with a flash drive or something.

Edited August 28, 2012 by onyxdragoon

[amertrash]

Recovery tools aren't going to do you any good. The drive itself it's encrypted with a pair of AES-128 keys the file system looks to be a modified UFS2. From what I've gathered the PS3's firmware contains the two private keys needed to decrypt the HDD - that means the key to decode the drive was in the firmware of the now gone PS3. This leaves the only option being to bruteforce the encryption using something like Amazon's EC2 so you're not dead by the time it's done, which is way beyond my geek skills. I'm going with your game saves are way gone, next time use the builtin backup utility and backup to an external source.

 

http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/Harddrive#Encryption

 

Only reliable source I found without too much googling.

Edited August 28, 2012 by amertrash

[onyxdragoon]

I'm never posting again

I wish sony made their cloud saving for everyone and not just plus members.

[amertrash]

Hah, didn't mean for you to not post again

 

Sony should have just left the game saves on an unencrypted partition, using a standard PC MBR, and something like FAT32 for the file system. Then you could just plug in the drive to any other PS3 or Windows machine. The joys of anti-piracy crap.

[boiler]

Thanks for the more detailed info. It sucks so bad that all that data is sitting in arms reach and I have zero reasonable ways to get it off of there.

 

This same scenario happened to my 360. All I had to do was use a data transfer adapter thingy that the hard drive plugged in to, with the other end plugged into the new console. Easy. It's not like I've got state secrets on there or anything. For the full games, link their ability to play to the account they were used with. Done and done.