Unkown error 0xffffffff while copying files to NTFS external hard drive with IRISMAN

[Steveneska]

While backing up my hard drive data to an external SSD formatted in NTFS, I've noticed that copying some games installed on my internal hard drive will randomly throw an unkown error 0xffffffff. After encountering this error, trying to copy anything else will also return this error. The only way to successfully copying something else on the same hard drive formatted in NTFS would be to close IRISMAN (PS Button -> Quit), reconnect the hard drive, restart IRISMAN and copy something else. Using a FAT32 formatted hard drive to copy the same game folder that previously returned the error will complete without any issue.

I've used a 1TB NTFS formatted NVMe with a 4KB cluster size (haven't tried any other cluster size but I doubt the result would be different) and a 512GB FAT32 formatted NVMe with a 32KB cluster size with IRISMAN 4.91.1 as external storage for backup

[aldostools]

Hello @Steveneska
FAT32 is a file system supported natively by PS3. Therefore it is more stable than NTFS or exFAT.

IRISMAN has 2 built-in file managers: exFAT Manager and IRISMAN Manager. Both file managers use a custom NTFS library that could fail randomly when used with external HDD (regular drives). SSD is a recent technology that PS3 cannot handle properly and they fail with a highest rate than regular HDD drives.

I recommend that test copying the with exFAT Manager if you used IRISMAN File Manager. You could get different results.

Other options is to convert the drive to exFAT, since it uses a different driver for file operations.

A third alternative is convert the drive to FAT32 and split your games or use a regular HDD instead of SSD.

[Steveneska]

Following your suggestion, I have switched to the exFAT Manager and so far I haven't gotten any issue copying my data. The main reasoning behind using an SSD to backup my data was because of speed. I have a couple of NVMe around that I don't use so I thought they would be faster than a regular HDD.

Now I haven't tried using an SSD with the exFAT Manager yet but so far with a regular HDD, I get 13 MBps write speed top (varies between 1 and 13 MBps depending on the file being copied). I will try to copy with an SSD and report back on the write speed I get.

I've only used an SSD (Samsung 870 EVO) as an external storage for my backups and I didn't notice anything except sometimes launching a backup with IRISMAN will either black screen (I guess that's the PS3 HV kicking in), freeze or shutdown the console but maybe that was an issue with the NTFS file system driver instead or the ISO mounting mechanism, not sure. But I've had the same thing happen randomly with an SD Card (SanDisk Extreme Pro 256GB) in FAT32 and a regular HDD (WD Elements) in NTFS to various degrees.