Jarrod Trainque

28Nov

How to manually remove files from your PSP memory stick

Posted 3 years ago - 4 comments

Mounting your PSP to your computer via USB allows you to easily copy files onto the PSP’s memory stick. However, deleting files from the mounted PSP doesn’t always free up space on your memory stick.

I’ve discovered that deleting a file from a mounted PSP doesn’t actually remove it completely from the memory stick. Instead, it places the file in a hidden “Trashes” folder on the memory stick itself, and will continual to take up space on the memory stick.

Here’s how you can remove files from a mounted PSP without completely reformatting your memory stick (tested on mac OSX 10.4 & PSP firmware version 1.5):

  1. Mount your PSP to your computer.
  2. Launch the Terminal application (included with OSX)
  3. at the command line, type cd .. and hit return to bring you to the /Users directory. Type cd .. again to being you to the root of your machine.
  4. type cd Volumes to bring you to /Volumes directory.
  5. type ls -l to view the contents of this directory. If your PSP is mounted correctly, you should see a folder called Untitled.
  6. type cd Untitled to navigate to the root of the memory stick. You can type ls -l to view the contents of this directory, but you won’t be able to see hidden files.
  7. type cd .trashes to navigate into the .trashes hidden folder. Note that the period is required.
  8. type rm -R 501 to completely remove the folder called 501 and all of its contents. Folder 501 is the default location for “deleted” memory stick files, and will automatically be created as needed.

That’s all there is to it. Re-mounting your PSP should now display the correct storage space, and won’t require re-formatting your memory stick.

I’ve found this helpful when you have large files that you are swapping and and out of your PSP, and need to quickly free up some storage space.

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4 Comments

  1. Comment by Michael B. Justman — May 23, 2006 @ 6:03 pm

    I don’t have a PSP, but for you Windows folks out there, if you have the above problem the folder is a hidden folder on the root of the drive named “Recycled” and you should be able to browse to it by enabling the viewing of hidden files and folders by going to Tools>Folder Options>View and checking the box that says “Show Hidden Files and Folders”.

  2. Comment by Mat Hall — September 12, 2007 @ 9:25 am

    Just typing rm -R /Volumes/Untitled/.trashes/501 will do the trick.

  3. Comment by Jarrod — September 13, 2007 @ 3:15 pm

    @Matt Hall

    You are absolutely right, that indeed does the trick. But for the benefit of others who may not know Terminal very well, I’ve spelled it out a bit.

  4. Comment by Smitty D — November 14, 2008 @ 12:43 am

    Many thanks. Suddenly, I have all of this space that I thought was being used…obviously, it was just hidden.

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