How to Image a PS2 Hard Drive on Linux

How to Image a PS2 Hard Drive on Linux

February 10, 2026
PS2, HDD, Image, Digital Conservation, Linux

What you need #

  • The PS2 hard drive (3.5" IDE/PATA drive from the PS2 Network Adapter)
  • A USB-to-IDE adapter (also called USB-to-PATA). These are cheap ($10–15) and widely available — search “USB to IDE adapter” on Amazon. Many come as “USB to IDE/SATA” combo cables. You want one that supports 3.5" drives (with the Molex power connector or external power brick).
  • A Linux PC with a USB port (any distro works — Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, whatever you’ve got)
  • No extra software needed — everything is built in (dd, lsblk, gzip/7z)

Step-by-step #

1. Connect the PS2 drive #

  • Plug the IDE ribbon cable from the USB adapter into the PS2 hard drive’s IDE connector (the wide 40-pin connector)
  • Connect the power cable (Molex 4-pin) to the drive — most USB-to-IDE adapters include a power brick for this
  • Plug the USB end into your PC
  • Linux won’t try to auto-format the drive, but if your desktop environment pops up a “mount” prompt, just dismiss it. Do NOT attempt to mount or format the drive. Linux can’t read the PS2 filesystem (APA partition format) and that’s fine — you’re imaging the raw bytes.

2. Identify the PS2 drive #

Open a terminal and run:

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TRAN

You’ll see output like:

NAME   SIZE MODEL            TRAN
sda    500G Samsung SSD 870  sata
├─sda1 512M
├─sda2 499.5G
sdb     40G ST340015A        usb    <-- this is your PS2 drive

The PS2 drive will typically be:

  • Connected via usb (shown in the TRAN column)
  • Around 40 GB in size
  • A Maxtor or Seagate model (common PS2 HDD brands)
  • Have no partitions listed under it (or unrecognized ones)

You can also run sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb to confirm — it will likely say the disk doesn’t contain a recognized partition table. That’s expected.

Be absolutely sure you have the right device. Double-check the size and model. If you’re unsure, run lsblk before plugging in the PS2 drive, then again after — the new entry is your PS2 drive.

3. Image the drive with dd #

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=~/PS2_HDD.img bs=4M status=progress

Breaking that down:

  • if=/dev/sdb — input file (source: the PS2 drive). Change sdb to whatever yours actually is.
  • of=~/PS2_HDD.img — output file (destination: the image file in your home directory)
  • bs=4M — read/write 4 MB at a time (much faster than the default 512 bytes)
  • status=progress — shows a live progress readout so you’re not staring at a blank screen for 2 hours

Make sure you have enough free space — the image will be the full size of the PS2 drive (typically 40 GB).

This will take a while depending on USB speed — expect 1–3 hours for a 40 GB drive over USB 2.0. Let it finish completely. Don’t unplug anything.

When it’s done you’ll see something like:

40020664320 bytes (40 GB, 37 GiB) copied, 3845.12 s, 10.4 MB/s

4. Verify the image #

Generate a checksum so others can verify the image isn’t corrupted:

sha256sum ~/PS2_HDD.img > ~/PS2_HDD.img.sha256

5. Compress before uploading #

A raw 40 GB image is mostly empty space and compresses extremely well. Use 7z for best compression:

7z a -mx=9 ~/PS2_HDD.7z ~/PS2_HDD.img

If you don’t have 7z installed:

  • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install p7zip-full
  • Fedora: sudo dnf install p7zip p7zip-plugins
  • Arch: sudo pacman -S p7zip

A 40 GB image typically compresses down to 1–3 GB. This will take a while and use a good amount of RAM at max compression. If that’s a problem, drop -mx=9 to -mx=7, or just use gzip instead:

gzip -k ~/PS2_HDD.img

gzip is faster but produces larger files — expect ~3–6 GB instead of 1–3 GB.

6. Upload to Internet Archive #

Head to archive.org and create a free account if you don’t have one. Then:

  • Click Upload in the top right
  • Drag in your .7z file (and the .sha256 file)
  • For metadata:
    • Title: something like “PS2 Hard Drive Image — FFXI (Dec 2006)”
    • Description: describe what’s on the drive — game title, region, approximate era/patch level, any notes about completeness
    • Subject tags: PS2, FFXI, Final Fantasy XI, HDD image, preservation
    • Collection: “Community Software” or “Community Data”
  • Hit Upload and let it finish

Internet Archive is free, permanent, and designed for exactly this kind of preservation.

Troubleshooting #

  • Drive not detected (lsblk doesn’t show it): Make sure the power cable is connected — 3.5" IDE drives need external power, USB alone won’t do it. Check dmesg | tail -20 right after plugging in to see if the kernel recognized the device.
  • “Permission denied” on dd: Use sudo. Raw disk access requires root.
  • dd is painfully slow: Make sure you’re using bs=4M (not the default 512 bytes). USB 2.0 tops out around 30 MB/s regardless. If your adapter and PC both support USB 3.0, use a USB 3.0 port.
  • Not sure which drive is which: Run lsblk before plugging in the PS2 drive, then again after. The new entry is your PS2 drive. Or check dmesg | tail to see what device name the kernel assigned.
  • Not enough disk space for the full image: You can pipe dd directly into compression to skip the uncompressed intermediate file: sudo dd if=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress | 7z a -si ~/PS2_HDD.7z — but this is slower and you can’t easily verify the raw image afterward.

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