[R3QU13M]

Recently, multiples of people been asking how to free up capacity on their internal/external hdds and thought I would give ways to help conserve capacity. Here is the list:

1. Delete the PS3 UPDATE folder within your backups.
(YES YOUR GAMES WILL STILL RUN NORMALLY)

2. Delete any foreign language files within your backups that is not your preference.
(YES YOUR GAMES WILL STILL RUN NORMALLY)

3. Delete any game installments for games your not playing.

4. Delete any music, video, and pictures.

There are many other ways to help increase and conserve capacity for whatever hdd you utilize the most for your PS3 but these are the basics.

Feel free to add anymore methods on this thread.

Kudos,

R3QU13M

[DEFAULTDNB]

Good thread idea.

I found if you have videos copied to your internal HDD (that show up on your XMB video column), and your open mmCM and link vids to showtime, they get duplicated.

Remove the dupes from mmCM (XMB view is best) to regain all that space.

I gained +60gb after realizing this.

Also if you store PKG files and update pups on your internal (so you can quick swap FW), you can always back them up to your external drive to conserve space archiving apps and updates.

[R3QU13M]

@DEFAULTDNB your can also clear up any cached data within multiMAN via XXMB.

[Cheesethief]

Originally Posted by R3QU13M 3. Delete any game installments for games your not playing.

Be very careful here, some games, like MGS4, store data in the game installation file like in-game pictures and other things. Other things stored here are updates and add-on content.

[R3QU13M]

Originally Posted by Cheesethief Be very careful here, some games, like MGS4, store data in the game installation file like in-game pictures and other things. Other things stored here are updates and add-on content.

Thanks for the incite.

[adygt]

I would suggest deleting 3D content, too (usually video files) from 3D games if you don't have a 3D TV - for example in Uncharted 3 you can save by deleting unnecessary languages and 3D movies up to 18 GB. Also, if you like to store your (legal) backups on your PC or on a external HDD (NON-FAT32) in case of PS3's Blu-ray drive failure (which isn't rare), you might want to make ISO images from your games using either a PC or Multiman (it is more comfortable to have your game stored in 1 file instead of 1000's smaller files) and then compress it using 7-Zip's ULTRA compression and LZMA2 compression algorithm (these settings work best for me) - you can save a lot of space by using this method, but it ultimately depends on the game you are trying to compress.
Just for example, I was able to compress Uncharted 2 from it's 20,7 GB after ripping unnecessary language files up to 15,2 GB (about 75% compression ratio), but Jak and Daxter HD Collection is almost uncompressable (about 98% compression ratio). It is because some games are already compressed - they contain .psarc (PS ARCHIVE) files which are very hard to compress. It is possible to decompress them using a special software and then play some 4GB+ games from external HDD (Google is your friend). It should be also possible to "repack" them to a stronger archive fromat (such as 7z), but this is quite dirty way . An example of highly compressable game can be Burnout Paradise - it doesn't contain already compressed files at all and it comes with a very nice compression ratio of about 40 %.

[Alvoca]

I've used program called RAD Video Tools to re-encode movies to smaller file size.
It is quality loss but differences are very hard to spot. It is a good way to save some space if you need it And I do this with almost every game. And afterwards file size is smaller 10 to 25 %.

[DEFAULTDNB]

Hmm I have never compressed anything on my PS3, but this is a proper super scrimpers guide to getting every drop out of those gigabytes!

I'm impressed

[Alvoca]

If anyone is playing Skyrim on PS3, BLES , I found a way to save about 4gigs by deleting
SKYRIM - VOICES_FR.BSA and SKYRIM - VOICES_SP.BSA that are located in PS3_GAME, USRDIR,DATA.

[DEFAULTDNB]

Originally Posted by Alvoca If anyone is playing Skyrim on PS3, BLES , I found a way to save about 4gigs by deleting SKYRIM - VOICES_FR.BSA and SKYRIM - VOICES_SP.BSA that are located in PS3_GAME, USRDIR,DATA.

that comes under "2" on the OP's original post

2. Delete any foreign language files with your backups that is not your preference.