PSP Internal Hard drive mod

[Robin] over at acidmods sent in this interesting PSP mod. [PvP] added an internal hard drive (with the exception of a mini-usb cable sticking out the top) to his PSP. The advantage? Laptop hard drives are dirt cheap while sony memory sticks are still pretty pricy. More details should be along soon, but [Robin] assures me that this means up to 200GB of storage is possible for the PSP.

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Comments [41]

Reader Comments

I read where the plug was necessary, but I would still try to find a right angle if possible to lower the profile a wee bit and reduce damage potential.

regardless it’s an awesome mod.
Storage like that and I’d get a PSP again!

Posted at 11:56 pm on Jan 3rd, 2008 by strider_mt2k

Next, someone needs to break open the PSP, and solder up some sort of mini-usb pass-thru, so that you can use this mod, and still have that slot on the top free for other devices.

Also, how much battery drain does this mod create?

Posted at 12:14 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by Kratos

if there was only a hack to add more memory as web browsing anything with content causes not enough memory error :(

Posted at 12:58 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by clayton

I wonder if it would be possible to use the memory stick or UMD bus to connect the hard drive instead of USB. This way, the USB port can stay free for other uses.

Posted at 2:26 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by earljr

are there no pictures of the actual drive inside the psp or am I missing something?

Posted at 4:53 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by chris

Seems fishy to me. The PSP doesn’t have the hardware to act as a USB host. He’d have to have both a hard drive AND some sort of microcontroller to act as a USB host to both the HDD and the PSP and somehow pass data between the two.

You’d think someone with enough skill to miniaturise that circuit to that level would be able to solder a decent connection to the internal USB header.

Also, the fact that he “Can’t be bothered right now” about posting any details apart from the photos makes me very suspicious.

Posted at 5:17 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by Babau

Yeah, I agree with babau. It seems very fishy…

Posted at 7:12 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by daniel

I believe we posted how it was done we are using the hardware from an Ipod to drive it.

Posted at 8:04 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by cyberpyrot

No instructions on how to do it makes me suspicious as well.

Posted at 9:57 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by TimNC

i dont buy it…
Babau, you can USB host using the correct firmwares and add ons…that is very possible.
There are a fe things i dont get. If he is using an older USB hard drive its not like that new one that can power themselves through USB…he said it was only 30GB.
Also he would have had to total gut the UMD drive and most of the battery bay…slim or fat…there is very little room in the PSP for the drive AND the USB IDE controller…
And why not just hack out the USB port and run the thinner cables along the top of the drive.

There are alot of things i do not understand aout this ‘hack/mod’.

Personally. I feel this is a fake.

Posted at 10:56 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by Alexander

The psp has the ability to host other devices, but like you guys said it still looks fishy. I think back in 05 or 06 sony released a 1.3mp(I think)camera which could do 15sec video bursts and snap still photos too and a gps adapter with software map packs. I think they flopped and i haven’t seen them since, probably still circulating in japan.

Note:That’s why there a 2 screw mounts to the left and right of the usb interface as to hold devices in place.

Posted at 11:02 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by PhilR

1: space issue,
2: power issue,
3: cost.

its not practical, and the question is
DINT ANYBODY AT SONY THINK ABOUT IT?

Posted at 11:10 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by atg

all the technology to do it is available, he just got it to fit in the space the UMD drive used to occupy. i don’t doubt its real.

a tear down / how-to is called for, certainly. i would do this mod if i had the parts laying around.

a usb plug with a nice compact 90 in it would be a better choice. i’m sure its out there to be had.

this is a decent mod!

Posted at 11:48 am on Jan 4th, 2008 by geekazoid

I don’t see how this would work. A 2.5″ wouldn’t fit. A 1.8″ drive might just, but it would require some fairly extreme modding to the drive bay.

As far as I know, IRShell/usbhoststfs doesn’t work in the way this guy is suggesting – it is designed for remote browsing of a PC running the server software (connected by USB or Wifi), not a directly-connected USB HDD. That’s supposedly not possible without USB OTG.

Either he’s using Wifi to browse a PC running usbhoststfs and pretending it’s actually an ‘internal HDD’, or I’m misunderstanding the claim being made.

That said, the Datel 4Gb drive supposedly uses a special CF>MSDUO adaptor board and a CF microdrive. Since IDE and CF are pin-compatible, why can’t we just hook up a similar adaptor (IDE > CF > MSDUO) and supply an external power pack for the drive?

Would there be file system limitations?

Hmm, you can pick those things up for about Â£40 now. Might be worth a play :)

Posted at 1:44 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by George Wilkins

invalid hostname did you use one of those so called “free hosts” and it got shut down?

Posted at 1:45 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by ejonesss

This is total BS and the people who called it fishy my hats are off to you.

http://www.acidmods.com/forum/index.php?topic=13380.0

Posted at 1:46 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by PSP_WIZARD

Posts from the original poster on that thread:
“cost me nothing to make because my friend gave me parts. should be around 50-80usd total. bear in mind that a 8gb pro duo cost 90-100usd”
“eh theres a lot of steps. ill do it when i feel like it. right now im working on making the psp a usb host”
“it has a solid state hdd”

This looking like a prank to me… $80 total with a 30GB SSD. Working on getting it to use USB host, but that seems to be the only way this could work.

Alexander: can you link the details on how to use USB host on the PSP? all I can find is USBHostFS, which runs on a PC to connect to the PSP, not using mass storage directly

Posted at 4:33 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by tom61

tom61…
i was wrong about the usb host…well more confused then wrong mostly because i haven’t used USB host for such a long time or very often.
Its called USB host in the PSP firmwares and add-on but they DO NOT make your PSP a host device.
using IRShell or M33 you can access a Hard Drive on another computer as a guest device (as you and a few other people pointed out) but you CANNOT directly connect to a USB drive. I have tried connecting my 160GB WD Passport drive (it is powered through USB) and guess what…nothing happens. The PSP can use the USB as an expansion port for peripherals, but it can’t (to the best of my knowledge) put out the power the run my pocket sized wd passport.
Unless this guy is powering his drive, and i don’t think it would matter if it was SSD or HDD, then it should drain the power on the PSP in about 20 minutes(or something).

Why it won’t work…
the picture…come on’
The power…it would eat the 2600mh battery alive
the software…its simply not capable
the psp itself…even if you gutted the UMD drive and a few other components, it would still be like the to stuff Oprah into Anne Heche.

i keep coming back to this page to see if it has been demystified…but until someone puts out i am sticking to my first response that this is garbage.

Posted at 5:16 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by Alexander

Wow. He might have actually gotten this to work, and for the price stated too…

In a thread where he was humorously trying get a MemoryStick reader to work backwards (despite knowing about the differences between host and client USB), he posted this little tidbit:

“i should look at the Vinculum VNCL1 USB host chip, and the accompanying prototyping modules like the VDIP1.

The VDIP1 will interface to any microcontroller via a serial port and allow you to plug in and read a USB memory/storage device”

I keep forgetting about these fun little chips. The same chip used by car stereos to read USB pen drives could be used with the PSP by modifying the software that lets you use data from a PC (USBHostFS? IRShell?) to communicate with this chip instead. Official peripherals that plug into the USB port on top are not USB, they communicate via serial, so using that port makes sense now.

Posted at 6:53 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by tom61

earljr: The memory stick bus is very doable, see: http://www.ic2005.com/shop/product.php?productid=24

I was briefly looking into using an adapter like the one above (more than likely I’d use the SD card adapter that can be had for $20), and, pending there was a card reading chip and another chip emulating the memory stick, replacing the reading chip with a USB host chip like the VNCL1.

Posted at 8:05 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by tom61

Maybe Im stupid, but I read somewhere that the PSP firmware/OS can’t read from a storage system larger then 4gb (hence why the commercially produced PSP hard-drive is only 4gb).

Sounds iffy to me, need at least a few more photos before I can believe it.

Posted at 11:49 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by Jack

http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?p=40432

fishy…

Posted at 11:54 pm on Jan 4th, 2008 by ReKli

Apparently (according to his other comments in that thread), he used a solid state HDD and an intermediate pcb to host the drive. I don’t know how much a 30 Gb solid state drives are, but I’m sure they’re prohibitively expensive. This is a comment that a mod in that forum left:
“The harddrive used for this costs 300$, even though he said I was talking about the wrong hard drive, he was unable to just answer the question what the correct harddrive would be needed. So kids, aparently it’s not a SSD, but at the same time a SSD. Don’t ask me why he can’t.”

There’s no way a laptop HDD would fit in the back of a PSP. A micro HDD (like in a mp3 player) might fit, and might work if an intermediate pcb was used, like he claims. Seems really fishy

Posted at 1:43 am on Jan 5th, 2008 by Cameron

Jack it seems that a normal PSP with the latest firmware can address at least an 8GB Memory Stick, so that is likely old information. Much larger PC based storage can be done with USBHostFS.

ReKli, this guy is really random, and I have no idea why he was barking up that tree at all… What I posted seems the most probable way he did it, and it seems that he has the software skills to pull it off, based off some of his other posts on acidmods.

Posted at 1:44 am on Jan 5th, 2008 by tom61

I do not believe this mod works the way he says it. and I don’t think its real…… 1.) The USB on the PSP will not supply power to any peripheral. 2.) Why would a real hacker use the usb when you can rig up the IDE cable for the lazer. (yes I know its read only, but I would also rig a passover for the USB. Why gut it then not put a crossover for the usb it’s way too simple, even with time constraints.

P.S. he probably didn’t use a laptop HD (if he did this for real) but a Ipod HD or flash…. No I’ve never done this, but with flash it would be swappable with a umd half the time…..

Posted at 8:28 pm on Jan 6th, 2008 by N/A

Am I the only one who noticed crappy pics?
seriously, it’s a psp with a usb cord sticking out of what appears to be a hole in the umd bay . I mean what the heck, he couldn’t have at least opened at umb bay to see how he got this “hard drive” inside? Such lack of info too. And good god, all the ass-kissing on those forums. YUck.

Posted at 3:06 pm on Jan 8th, 2008 by Hateliars

I’am calling this one two its not real. If yo had enough skill to strip the umd on the psp then you’d have enough skill to sort out the adaptor. Coupled with the power arrangments. and final some places he’s claimed hes useing an SSD and others an ipod.

Posted at 5:46 pm on Jan 10th, 2008 by Rowley

u can just steel a mem stick from super stor

Posted at 1:32 pm on Jan 13th, 2008 by tyler

memory allocation would be a challenge, but the fitment of a 1.8″ drive would not. The UMD door is dimensionally larger than the hard drive (Toshiba units found on iPod Videos, Cowan iAudios, and Dell D430 laptops) and the cavity is deep enough.

Posted at 1:07 pm on Jan 19th, 2008 by al

first, the hard drive would fit if u gutted the umd drive.second all u would need is the IR Shell. The only problem is the fact that the hard drive would use up the battery within 15 to 25 min. so thats a bitch…

Posted at 11:49 pm on Feb 11th, 2008 by Dan

so… i agree totally fishy. however, it got me thinking. can this actually be done?

i’m new to the psp mod arena and don’t understand as much as many others. my hope is that my ignorance and newbie-ism can be beneficial. enough introduction.

fact: new laptops can now boot an operating system off of a usb.
question: could the psp do something similar?

fact: the psp can hook directly to a running comp. via usb. to play its games on the screen, transfer data etc.
question: could a portable, battery operated, “computer” be created to work with the psp in the same way a desktop/laptop could?

said “computer” seems reasonable. i’m thinking it should have no additional screen, or interface besides the psp.

essentially, could we figure out how to make a solid-state hard drive that would boot to an operating system without using a motherboard, processor, keyboard, monitor blah blah blah.

anyone negative comments, or “you’re dumb” comments can go outside and play hide and go ____ yourself.

love, chris

Posted at 2:21 pm on Feb 24th, 2008 by popproject

Just get one of the portable battery operated HD’s with all of the memory cards on them so you can swap files as needed. For $150 you can get an 80G unit.

Need some movies? Clear space on your 2G Memory stick, plop it in the device, copy the movie you want, poke it back in the psp, enjoy!

No need for a computer and 80G will hold a lot of movies, music, and iso’s

Posted at 5:49 pm on Feb 26th, 2008 by Chris

http://forums.avault.com/archive/index.php/t-7749.html

here’s the link. it might not be how this project was accomplished. but, for us novice types this REALLY does work. enjoy!!!

Posted at 1:38 am on Feb 28th, 2008 by popproject

here’s a cuh-buh-gillion right angled usb cords. buy and splice!

word to your mother,

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=right+angle+usb&btnG=Search+Images

Posted at 1:43 am on Feb 28th, 2008 by popproject

looks gay as hell…

Posted at 6:13 am on Sep 13th, 2008 by chuck

8Gig Duo cards are around £10 each now. Buy 10 to give you 80Gig storage for £100. Wire them all together, stick one end in the MagicGate slot and neatly cram the others into the gutted UMD slot with a button switch (neatly located on the PSP housing) wired to a simple circuit to select the cards sequentially (like the old compressed PSX memory cards). A tad expensive but simple and 100% achievable using basic electrics. A relay could be added so that the cards cannot accidentally be switched until a certain period of inactivity (a few seconds or so?) – to prevent data loss. A new 8Gig card can be added as and when funds allow – and that UMD slot can hold a lot of pro duo cards ;) Muahahahaahaaaaaa!!

Posted at 5:21 pm on Nov 27th, 2008 by redmistpete

I was most impressed by one single line of information.
That was “word to your mother”

Thankyou

Posted at 2:32 am on Jan 5th, 2009 by Snapper Cleavage

y r yall so worried about weter or not it works. at least he took the time to do somethin with his life besides doubt other people

Posted at 7:19 pm on Jan 11th, 2009 by Dvndrew

Mkay, many of the newer iopds are using CF size HDD so size is no longer an issue. As for power, the IPOD and the PSP run on virtually the same amount of juice so granted with the addition of a HDD IF being accessed continuously would deplete the battery in a shorter period of time an extra capcity battery could be purchased. As for the UMD, if you don’t plan on using it for the typical gaming then removal is fine and I’m sure there is an adapter to go between the CF drive and the UMD plugin. Noone ever said all this fun stuff was easy or quick just realistic.

Posted at 11:29 am on Jan 18th, 2009 by Knightwolf

you should check this guys psp