I am looking to buy a drive that  I will use for primarily for playing media files (mainly mp4 videos) on a near-new PS3 which plays to the TV via an AV receiver. I was thinking about getting a small Synology NAS drive but that’s probably too sophisticated and overkill for what I want to do (and hard to justify the expense) so I am looking at one of these:

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=408093

I have an ex-PS3 32GB HD that I have used as a test-bed for what I am trying to do and it works fine but it’s too small. That drive works with the USB 2 on my laptop with just a normal USB cable but when I plug it into the PS3, it needs a USB Y-cable to get enough power to run.

This is OK but I see that the new Seagate drive is advertised as not needing a power supply i.e. it will run with just a USB cable. However I am not sure whether that comment will also be true for when it runs on the PS3. Maybe there it will also need the Y-cable.

I will probably have about 100 – 200 GB of stuff and a 500 or 750 GB drive will give me plenty of room for growth.

I need to bear in mind that the drive will need to be formatted as FAT32 to work with the PS3. I read somewhere that FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB but I’m not sure whether that is a general FAT32 limitation or a specific PS3 FAT32 limitation. Regardless, the limitation is not really an issue here.

I would welcome any advice or comments on all this before I commit to buying a drive. Thanks.