u/BurnerFreek

UPDATE: whoisalireza in the comments is correct, and my precious data is safe 🙏 as long as you don't initialize any new drive by reinstalling the firmware, you can reinsert the previous drive, do the firmware and still retain access to the data on it without the PS3 formatting it.

I was having trouble getting GTA5 to run without crashing every 10 mins and the next step of diagnosis was thinking it might be an issue with the 500gb SSD I installed a few years ago. Well, of course I should just pop the old hard-drive in and see if it works better on there! Skipped the back-up step thinking I could just plug my SSD back in after the test, only to find out a moment too late the PS3 formats every 'new 'drive that goes into it 😭

I just lost my last 17 years of installs and saved apps and now have to reinstall everything which will take FOREVER. The only saving grace is that I on a whim backed my save date up to the cloud a few weeks ago, praising myself for at least being able to get those back.

DON'T BE LIKE ME, ALWAYS BACK YOUR SHIT UP!