(Bleep)ing Stripped PS3 Screws!

Armed with a new 320GB Hitachi drive, a small Phillips screwdriver, and a great step-by-step guide, I went about upgrading the 60GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 hard drive in my Playstation 3. What should have been a 4-minute hardware swap ended up being more like 20 minutes thanks to a stripped screw on the drive carrier.

Yes, the guide warned that the screws are easy to strip, but I think these screws were easier to strip than 20-year old paint (or use your imagination). As careful as I was, one of them stripped with only slight pressure. I ended up using a pair of pliers to grip the sides of the screwhead to loosen it. If that didn't work, I would have had to break out the rotary tool to cut the damn thing off.

Aside from the screw, the upgrade was fast and easy, including the backup, restore, and formatting. My PS3 now has a ton of space and an empty partition for Yellow Dog Linux (grumble about the 10GB fixed partition size limitation--gotta either pick 10GB for one OS and the other gets the rest of the drive).

Anyway, given the tons of money in components that the PS3 has, you'd think Sony would have spent, oh, a few more cents on some hardier screws on the only user replaceable part in the unit.