I recently purchased a 3TB Seagate Expansion hdd and formatted it to FAT32 using Easeus Partition Master. I moved over a few .m2ts tv shows I had on an older Western Digital hdd that worked fine on the ps3. The ps3 recognized the Seagate and the files just fine, I hit the triangle button and selected Display All, then hit X to play the file; the screen went black for a split second as if it was going to play and then kicked me back to the ps3 dash. It just refuses to play. I'm scratching my head wondering what's up...I changed the partition back and forth from primary to logical thinking that might have something to do with it but no luck. Did a little research but couldn't find anyone else with the same problem, most people just have a problem getting the ps3 to recognize the drive because its not formatted properly. Any suggestions, besides going all Office Space on it? Edit: Finally got it to work. Figured I would post this so maybe it helps someone else out later. Nothing else was working so I downloaded the Seagate DiscWizard and tried to format to FAT32, it wouldn't let me choose the partition type at all, the partition type was shown as "Acronis Hidden Partition 0xbb". My uneducated guess is that that this hidden partition is messing with the ps3 so I decided to completely wipe the entire drive using Easeus Partition Master, which took pretty much a full day. I then attempted to use fat32format.exe but the drive wouldn't show up because of no partition so I used Easeus to create a fat32 partition. I then used fat32format.exe just for good measure to re-format the entire drive as fat32. Moved the files to the hdd, plugged it in to the ps3, and the files played fine. So if you buy a Seagate and have issues with playback on the PS3, just know that it's more than likely the hidden partition. Hope this helps someone else.
Still no luck. It seems to format ok no matter how I do it and the files read and play ok on my laptop. The ps3 can even see the drive and files but just won't play them. There's something going on between the ps3 and the drive that I can't figure out.