The stock drive in my PS3 slim kept failing to backup to a FAT32 formatted USB HDD. It would get to 60-75% then give me an error. I tried rebuilding the database and file system twice with two failed backup attempts.
Started noticing framerates of probably 18-20 on the regular, then my game failed to load after a heist mission so I lost ~2 hours of gameplay since I guess the game doesn't autosave if you're just free roaming and not doing anything.
I said fuck it, took the 7200RPM 320GB 16MB cache drive I bought intending to restore a backup to, ripped the old one out after copying save files to a USB stick, and set out for a day of formatting and downloading.
May I just say that the PS3 is a god awful system when it comes to usability and flexibility? I finally got the system to pick up my USB stick with the firmware on it after several formats and identical filesystem makeup, always using the right USB slot as you're supposed to do. I get the system running and start the 18GB GTAV download. Since it was estimating 2 hours (would be more like 3) I figured I'd take a nap.
Woke up an hour and a half later, moved my controller's analog stick to wake up the monitor, and saw that the download was at 43% and the little tiny "active" animation had frozen. Yup, system was frozen hard. Still not sure if this happened because I chose "download in background" or what.. but after a hard reboot, I finished the download thinking that it would probably be corrupted, but I thought I'd test my luck.
Yup, corrupted. Deleted the failed install, the installer, and restored the file system. Downloaded the game again (no background this time). It installed..
And now the game seriously runs much better. I'm shocked at how noticeable the 5400-7200 difference is, and I bet the 16MB cache is crucial as well. The game definitely averages a noticeably higher frame rate, and textures seem better even. Load times are quicker including swapping characters.
It was an ordeal, but it was worth it.