How to wipe a PS3 Clean for a gift?

This past year I gave away my original generation PS3 to my cousin. We were talking The Last of Us, and he didn't have a system anymore. I told him I had an extra after buying a 500 Gig slim last Christmas mostly because I was running out of space on the old one, and it was getting a little wonky.

So he gets the thing, and it never occurred to me that I had a bunch of content on there. Old DLC I had gotten, Downloadalbe games I had gotten really into for a while, my PSN account even. And game save data too.

Now in his case I don't really mind. I gave him my account password and he was able to check out some of the downloadable games.

This year I'm picking up a PS4 sometime soon. Probably after Christmas, trying to get a deal. And I just finished GTAV, and don't really intend to play anything else. I had considered trading it in, as it plus my games would probably buy a good chunk of my PS4. But I've been in the holiday spirit and decided to find a kid to give it to.

My friends' kids are all 6-8, which to me is just a little too young, especially to appreciate the game collection I'm including. But it occurred to me that I have a friend at work with a kid who's 11. It's perfect for him.

My question is now knowing from my cousin, does anyone know how to wipe a PS3 clean to give it away? I found a system restore, which signed out everything, but the content is still there. Obviously there's someway to do it, because stores are selling used systems with no content.

Deactivate the machine from your PSN account. Then reformat the hard drive. That's it.

What Niko said should work.

Thanks.

Looks like it's just under the system restore command I was using last night. I'll try it tonight.

Yep.

You're a great friend Thorpe.

[QUOTE=Thorpesaurous]Thanks.

Looks like it's just under the system restore command I was using last night. I'll try it tonight.[/QUOTE]
Be aware that it takes forever. I did the same thing recently to sell my 120gb slim to a friend. It literally took about 12 hours.

[QUOTE=clipse026]Be aware that it takes forever. I did the same thing recently to sell my 120gb slim to a friend. It literally took about 12 hours.[/QUOTE]


You aint kidding. Clock said 28 hours when I started it last night. Which would put me around midnight tonight. We'll see where it's at when I get home from work.

It was done when I got home from work, so it was at least 7 hours faster than it said it would be, but still it took a long time.