How to Connect My Passport to My PS3

By Marina Martin

Updated September 22, 2017

Items you will need

  • Mac OS X, Windows 2000 or Windows XP

  • USB cable

The PlayStation 3 is known as a PS3 for short.
i Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images News/Getty Images

An external hard drive such as a Western Digital Passport drive enables you to save even more games from your PlayStation 3 without running out of space. You can also play your music, movie and other files from your Passport via your PlayStation, turning your video game console into an entertainment hub. While physically connecting your Passport to your PlayStation is all you have to do to connect the two, you must first format the Passport drive in the FAT32 file format.

Format the Passport as FAT32 (Mac)

Connect your Passport drive to your Mac computer using the provided cable.

Search for "Disk Utility" in the upper-right corner of the Finder window.

Click on "Disk Utility.app" to load the Disk Utility program.

Click on your external hard drive in the list on the left-hand side. If the drive appears as multiple indented entries, click on the top-most entry.

Click the "Options" button near the bottom.

Select the radio button next to "Master Boot Record." Click "OK."

Choose "1 partition" from the "Volume Scheme" drop-down menu.

Choose "MS-DOS File System" from the "Format" drop-down menu.

Click the "Apply" button.

Click "Partition" in the box that appears. Wait until the process completes.

Format the Passport as FAT32 (Windows 2000/XP)

Download "ExtFat32_vs2.00.zip" from the Western Digital website (see Reference 2).

Double-click on the downloaded file to expose its contents.

Double-click the "DeleteBinFilesFromSystem32" file. This will delete any existing Western Digital formatting files from your computer, which could interfere with the new formatting process.

Double-click the "ExtFAT32v2.0.msi" file. Follow the on-screen instructions. This will install the WD FAT32 Formatter program.

Attach your Passport external drive to your computer using the provided cable.

Double-click on the "WD FAT32 Formatter" icon on your desktop to launch the formatting program. Follow the on-screen instructions to format the attached Passport drive as FAT32.

Connect the Passport and PlayStation 3

Plug one end of a USB cable into the Passport.

Plug the other end into one of the available USB slots at the bottom-left of the front of the PlayStation 3.

Navigate to the PlayStation home menu corresponding to the type of file you wish to access from the Passport, such as "Music."

Select the "USB device" icon and press the triangle key on the controller.

Select "Display All." Press the "X" button.

Warnings

According to Western Digital, you need third-party software to format a Passport drive as FAT32 using Windows Vista or newer. Options include Partition Magic, EaseUs Partition Tool and SwissKnife.

Formatting the drive as FAT32 will delete all existing data on the drive. Back up any existing contents first.

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