The internal hard drive appears to be encrypted. From a quick glance it looks like an unchained cipher over 4k blocks.
Interestingly the HD itself is a Seagate ST96812AS, aka the Momentus 5400.2. Seagate also makes the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 which is one of the first disks to support hardware based full disk encryption, but I don't think the PS3's HD includes that feature.
If the disk is partitioned, the otheros partition is not encrypted. On my 60gb disk with 10gb allocated to the gameos, the otheros partition begins at sector 25165832 (0x1800008).
EDIT: on closer inspection, it looks like each sector is encrypted individually, not 4k blocks.
Hard drive layout and encryption
downloading from playstation network
The playstation store and the downloadable (free) movies
come from different sites. The free movies are served by akamai.
During download, if the connection to the store has problems,
the movie can still download. You see an error about the store,
but the progress of the movie download is still going on. If you
don't exit the error message, the movie completes downloading,
but it is in the harddrive (stuck there), and doesn't show up on XMB.
So there is a download folder. And gets copied over to the xmb readable
area if you are still in the store when it finishes downloading. If you try to download the same movie again after an error in the store, it will say there already exists with that name there and gives
you the option of renaming (appending _1). But it never upticks to _2
if you get disconnected to the store again. It gives you the option of
rewriting or going with the new appended _1 name. If the _1 already
exists, then it overwrites it with the same _1 instead of _2.
This is a bug. You cant manually install already downloaded content
in the download folder. And some get left there if your connection to
the store gets lost, and end up taking up space on your hd. So even
if you were able to use a regular browser and download the content
from akamai (by knowing the url), there is no way to install it even
if you place it in the download folder (somehow).
come from different sites. The free movies are served by akamai.
During download, if the connection to the store has problems,
the movie can still download. You see an error about the store,
but the progress of the movie download is still going on. If you
don't exit the error message, the movie completes downloading,
but it is in the harddrive (stuck there), and doesn't show up on XMB.
So there is a download folder. And gets copied over to the xmb readable
area if you are still in the store when it finishes downloading. If you try to download the same movie again after an error in the store, it will say there already exists with that name there and gives
you the option of renaming (appending _1). But it never upticks to _2
if you get disconnected to the store again. It gives you the option of
rewriting or going with the new appended _1 name. If the _1 already
exists, then it overwrites it with the same _1 instead of _2.
This is a bug. You cant manually install already downloaded content
in the download folder. And some get left there if your connection to
the store gets lost, and end up taking up space on your hd. So even
if you were able to use a regular browser and download the content
from akamai (by knowing the url), there is no way to install it even
if you place it in the download folder (somehow).
Hi there,
So you are saying that manually placed *.pkg files won't get 'picked up' by the PS3 OS. This is because the PS3 OS runs a secondary security check to the PS Store after the download is complete?
Whatever TCP/IP communication is happening between your PS3 and the PS Store can be sniffed, then replicated locally.
If the PS3 sends checksums of files to be approved or PS Network credentials, the replies that the PS Store is sending back to you can be replicated.
Like the pkg format, the HDD, and everything else PS3, the communication is probably encrypted or authenticated.
So you are saying that manually placed *.pkg files won't get 'picked up' by the PS3 OS. This is because the PS3 OS runs a secondary security check to the PS Store after the download is complete?
Whatever TCP/IP communication is happening between your PS3 and the PS Store can be sniffed, then replicated locally.
If the PS3 sends checksums of files to be approved or PS Network credentials, the replies that the PS Store is sending back to you can be replicated.
Like the pkg format, the HDD, and everything else PS3, the communication is probably encrypted or authenticated.