Expert: Helen Joan Casper - 7/11/2004

Question
how do you format a used 40 gig hardrive into an internet ps2 vers.9 to use as your memory. 8mb chips fil up to fast. and can you partition the hd for player 1 and player2 say 20gb each.
         thanks for any info you can supply.

Answer
First, I need to tell you some legal stuff:
1. Since the used HDD is not an official Sony product, if you mess-up your PlayStation while doing anything with it, your warranty will be invalid.
2. The utility disk used to format a HDD to work with the PS2 will only work for the Sony HDD (but you probably already knew that since you're asking the question)
3. For legal reasons, regardless if I know how to do it or not, I can't tell you step-by-step how to do it. Sony has proprietary rights on their system and what makes their system work. This is a public forum with my name on here.  I'm a single mom with no desire to get on Sony's bad side. =)  Sony spent a lot of time making this hard drive work, lots of people spent hours of work to bring it to the public, and lots of people spend every day supporting it. I'll skip the lecture, though, and just say that I can't condone anyone using anything but official Sony products with their system.

With that said- some thoughts:
1. Linux was used as OS in many PS2 hard drives. Sony, in fact, released a special version to be used with the HDD.
2. www.google.com will be your best friend in finding any specific things you might need to help you (like say, oh maybe drivers or something ;) )
3. As for partitioning, it depends on how you get the PS2 to recognize the drive. Some people have been successful, others have not. If your PS2 is already modded you might have some difficulties getting the drive to be recognized at all (even if you use the Sony HDD). However, I don't really think it would be necessary to partition the drive at all.  I don't know for sure, but the PS2 would probably not recognize the partition because it's not designed to handle 2 hard drives and a partition, essentially, has your computer look at one hard drive as two hard drives.

Thanks for the question!  I wish I could help you more, but in this day and age of RIAA lawsuits (and because people close to me are software developers), I really can't condone or advice doing anything that strays from official Sony hardware.  Honestly and truthfully, you'll save yourself time, money, and (especially) hassle by just buying the official Sony drive and using that. Plus, the newest ones already have FFXI installed so essentially you're getting a free game with your hard drive. =)