I looked around for a simple way of increasing the size of my PS2 HDD and struggled to find one guide that covered the whole process, so thought I’d put together what worked for me.
This is for a normal APA/PFS internal HDD setup. I went from a 1TB HDD to a 2TB HDD while keeping all my existing games.
What I used
HDD Raw Copy Tool – cloning the old HDD to the new one
HDL Batch Installer – checking the PS2 HDD and installing more games
PFS BatchKit Manager – backing up/rebuilding +OPL and injecting ART, CFG, VMC etc
OPL Manager – downloading artwork
Tom-Bruise PS2 OPL CFG Database – full CFG database
PixeliGer OPL themes – I use Pixel Prime/OPLAdvance
- Back up anything important first
Before doing anything with +OPL, use PFS BatchKit Manager to back up anything you actually want to keep.
For me the important stuff was VMCs/saves. Artwork, CFGs and themes can easily be downloaded again, but obviously you don’t want to lose saves.
I’d definitely do this before touching the OPL partition.
- Clone the old HDD to the larger HDD
Connect both drives to the PC and use HDD Raw Copy Tool.
Old PS2 HDD = SOURCE
New larger HDD = TARGET
Double/triple check that before starting because the target gets overwritten.
I cloned my 1TB PS2 HDD directly onto a 2TB HDD.
Once the clone finished, HDL Batch Installer immediately saw the full size of the new drive. Mine showed roughly:
1863GB total
819GB used
1044GB free
So all the games from the 1TB were still there and the extra space on the 2TB was immediately available for installing more games.
There’s no big game partition that needs extended. Each PS2 HDD game uses the APA layout, so HDL Batch Installer just sees what’s already used and what’s still free.
- Rebuild +OPL bigger
This is one bit I’d definitely recommend doing while upgrading.
OPL can create a relatively small 128MB +OPL partition by default. That’s fine for a basic setup, but once you start adding lots of artwork, CFGs, themes, VMCs and cheats it can become far too small.
Don’t just expand the existing +OPL partition.
Expanding an existing APA partition can cause problems with its LBA layout. Basically the PS2 APA partition table keeps track of exactly where each partition starts and finishes on the drive. Trying to enlarge an existing partition can mess with those locations and potentially cause corruption/problems.
The safer method is:
Back it up → delete +OPL → recreate it at the size you want.
I recreated mine at 10GB using PFS BatchKit Manager.
10GB sounds huge compared with 128MB, but I currently have around:
13,000 CFG files
3,500 artwork files
plus themes, VMCs and anything else I decide to add.
That leaves loads of room for the collection to grow.
The first time I did my HDD I basically got the whole thing finished, then discovered I’d filled the OPL partition and didn’t have enough room for the VMCs I wanted. I wasn’t making that mistake again 😂
- Install any extra games
Now use HDL Batch Installer to add whatever extra games you want.
Your existing games are already there from the clone, so you’re just filling the extra space on the bigger drive.
In my case I went from roughly 819GB used on the old setup to having another 1TB or so available.
- Download the artwork with OPL Manager
Once your game list is how you want it, open OPL Manager and let it scan the games.
I download the artwork I want, including things like:
Front covers
Back covers
Disc images
Logos
Backgrounds/screenshots
I currently have around 3.5k artwork files.
- Put everything into the PFS BatchKit folders
Once OPL Manager has downloaded the artwork, move the files into the appropriate PFS BatchKit folders.
For example:
ART – artwork
CFG – game configs/information
VMC – virtual memory cards
THM – themes
CHT – cheats
Then BatchKit can inject them into the +OPL partition on the HDD.
- CFG database
For CFGs I use the Tom-Bruise PS2 OPL CFG Database on GitHub.
It has around 13k CFG files, covering basically the whole PS2 library. The CFGs provide things like game names, descriptions and other information used by compatible OPL themes.
You absolutely don’t need to install all of them. I just prefer having the entire database sitting on the HDD because when I add another game later there’s a good chance its CFG is already there.
- Why I inject CFGs in batches of around 3,000
Last time I did this I tried throwing the whole CFG collection at BatchKit at once.
It took an absolute age and because there wasn’t much feedback I was sitting wondering whether it was actually still working or had frozen.
This time I did approximately 3,000 CFG files at a time.
On my setup, each batch of roughly 3,000 took around 5 minutes.
So I just did:
3,000 → inject
next 3,000 → inject
next 3,000 → inject
etc
Much easier because you can actually see that things are progressing.
- Themes
For themes I use the PixeliGer OPL themes.
I particularly like:
Pixel Prime – Prime Video style layout
OPLAdvance – another really nice OPL layout
Download/extract the themes, put them into the BatchKit THM folder and inject them along with everything else.
There are loads of other OPL themes around as well if those aren’t your thing.
- Inject everything back into the HDD
Once you’ve got everything ready in BatchKit:
ART
CFG
VMC
THM
CHT if wanted
anything else you use
Inject them into the new larger +OPL partition.
Because I made mine 10GB, I’ve now got plenty of room for artwork, CFGs and VMCs without having to worry about filling it again.
- Put the HDD back in the PS2
That’s basically it.
You end up with:
All your original games still there
Loads more free space for games
A much larger +OPL partition
Fresh artwork
Full CFG database
Themes
VMCs/saves
Cheats if wanted
Much easier than rebuilding a 2TB PS2 HDD from scratch.
Important Windows warning
When you connect an APA/PFS PS2 HDD to Windows, Windows may ask you to format or initialise it because Windows doesn’t understand the PS2 filesystem.
CANCEL IT.
Do not format it, initialise it or let Windows “fix” it.
I nearly did this myself when Windows popped up asking to format my original 1TB drive 😅
Also be absolutely certain which HDD is SOURCE and which is TARGET in HDD Raw Copy Tool.
Hopefully this helps someone because I struggled to find one simple guide that covered cloning to a bigger drive, keeping the existing games, rebuilding +OPL safely and then putting all the artwork/CFG/VMC stuff back.
Once you’ve done it once it’s actually pretty straightforward.