unfortunately you are wrong

the hdd upgrade instruction is clearly described in the ps3 manual, and easy hdd upgrading ps3 is marketed by sony officials as a bullet point against other consoles.

if they really want to restrict ppl from going diy, they would have released 'official' ps3 hdd pack, with custom proprietary restriction to keep ppl from using any 3rd party unendorsed hdd.

afaik ps3 only support 9.x mm form factor.

give it a few months to shrink

last year 2.5" sata 400gb and above hdd only comes in 12.5mm form factor.

sync your trophies before and after the upgrading

you dont have to deactivate & reactivate at all since it is the same ps3.
in past firmware, playing a trophy-enabled game will re-populate the trophy list, and you can re-sync with trophy server after that. save files (restored from the backup) all work fine.

i dont know, but deactivation step for all accounts arent necessary. if i were you, i'll just login to each of the sharing accounts and redownload a shared content from psn store for each account to reactivate them back.

ofcorseyesssssssss

done it twice

60gb -> 250gb in 2007

250gb -> 500gb a few monts ago

dun belip me if u dunwan

diff ps3 = no luck

sony uses proprietary filesystem and ppl have been trying to crack it since 2006 but no notable successful breakthrough till now

enough free space? high fregmentation ?

people have successfully used 1tb 3.5" sata (desktop) hdd connected to ps3 internal hdd port (like this) so there is no known limit of ps3 filesystem yet. ps3 uses 2.5" sata (notebook) hdd.

500gb is a norm nowadays judging from posts in this very thread

i managed to use normal pata-usb bridge last time

the problem might be caused by the bridge. it doesnt matter if it is sata or ide or whatever, because from ps3's perspective, the connected drive is in usb.

the firmware file is needed during the hdd upgrading and at that time, PS3 is not fully-functioning yet so you cant go to the XMB to download the firmware. it must be pre-downloaded beforehands via a pc. any 256MB usb flashdrive will do or you can just use digicam/phones if they support usb mass storage and you dont have any usb flash drive around.

backup data will be stored in PS3/BACKUP/ folder iirc. if you do not touch this folder, nothing will be lost