Cache depot

If your PS3 still has Home on it

Original caches from before 31 March 2015 still hold scenes and items the public archive is missing — especially Japan.

What we need

Original cache data from before 31 March 2015. Data from Home Laboratory private servers is not useful.

Home reserved space on the internal HDD and stored whatever you walked through: public and private scenes, clothes, furniture, mini-games, posters, media, and video. Four regions existed (North America, Europe, Japan, Asia), each with unique and limited-time content. A large share is still missing.

Most cache data is safe to share. Some installs include DATALOG.TXT, which can contain an IP address and a PSN ID. The team can help you find and remove it before you upload.

Do you still have it?

  1. On the XMB, look under PlayStation Network for a house icon.
  2. Highlight it and press Triangle.
  3. Install date should be 2008–2015. Size should be about 3–12GB.
If Triangle does nothing, there is no data behind the icon. An install date after 1 April 2015, or a size under 100MB, means it was never used during the original run — or was installed after shutdown.

Icon eras

PlayStation Home XMB icon, later open beta

Open Beta v1.65–v1.87

PSN tab

PlayStation Home XMB icon, earlier open beta

Open Beta v1.03–v1.61 · Closed Beta v1.00–v1.02

PSN tab

PlayStation Home XMB icon, closed beta

Closed Beta v0.83–0.98

PSN / Game tab

Full icon list on Hugging Face

Extracting the cache

You need a jailbroken PS3 (HFW + HEN is enough) and a FAT32 USB stick. There is no OFW extraction path.

Prepare (about 10 minutes)

  1. Update to Hybrid Firmware (HFW).
  2. Install HEN — a semi-untethered jailbreak, generally considered low risk.
  3. Install multiMAN (mmCM).
  4. Format a USB stick as FAT32.

Copy (30–90 minutes)

  1. Enable HEN, launch multiMAN, switch to mmOS / File Manager.
  2. Open /dev_hdd0/game/.
  3. Copy one of these folder pairs:
    • NPIA00005 and NPIA00005DATA — Retail
    • NPIA00010 and NPIA00010DATA — Developer
    • NPEA00013 and NPEA00013DATA — Developer / Closed Beta
  4. Move both folders to a computer, zip them together, and upload the zip to a cloud drive.

Screenshot walkthrough: cache extraction notes.

Submit

Bring the upload to Discord. After intake, the team can tell you what was in the cache, whether anything rare appeared, and credit the donation.

Also public:

Join Discord to submit