My PS3 is no more. It has ceased to be.

[MrMarbles]

So, after excitedly subscribing to PS Plus in a bid to get Journey, Sly Cooper and Trine 2 on Wednesday, my 60GB PS3 (with backwards compatibility and 4 USB ports) appears to have kicked the bucket.

It boots up for anything between 30 seconds and a minute, then beeps and shuts down with a persistently blinking red light.

It seems pretty dead really.

So... what are my options?

Has anyone else ever had this issue and overcome it somehow?

If it's beyond saving, would Sony offer a like-for-like replacement? It's long out of warranty - I bought it a good five years ago now - so I'm doubting this would be a possibility, but I can dream.

If not, I'll just have to buy a new one I guess. Whatever happens, I'll obviously want to remove the HDD that's currently in there (I replaced the original 60GB one with a larger model). When it comes to shoving the HDD into a replacement PS3, will I have everything I need or does anything else need copying over?

Anything else I need to be considering?

Help!

[Brad]

Fisrtly try to back up your game saves asap, either to a USB stick or to the cloud.
You cannot simply shove your old hard drive into a new PS3 and carry on where you left off I'm afraid.

[MrMarbles]

Seriously? Well that sucks... I thought they'd be stored on the HDD. What is this future we live in where things are saved in different places?

I don't think it stays turned on long enough to manage this backing-up of data.

I'm scared.

If I'm unable to do this due to an utterly broken PS3 that now won't even stay turned on beyond the epilepsy warning, what else will I lose out on other than game saves which - thankfully - won't be the end of the world? (I'm not currently mid-playthrough on anything so would only lose progress on completed games that I likely would want to play again from the beginning anyway).

Although it took me ruddy ages to get my band to Hall of Fame glory on Rock Band 3, dammit.

[Brad]

The game saves ARE stored on the HDD. But, the HDD is locked to that particular PS3. And it's all encrypted.

Given the PS3 does actually switch on I'd take the thing apart, clean it all out, push all the chips in and see if I could get it working for a few hours to back everything up.

Only other issue you may have is if you've bought songs on Singstar?

[koopatroopa90]

Try taking it apart, changing the thermal paste I followed a youtube guide) and cleaning the old stuff off (and give the fan or whatever a dust too although mine wasn't really dusty when it died), putting it back together again and it should work ok, at least as long as it takes to transfer the data to your new PS3 using a standard cat 5 cable.

Actually, you might need a heat gun too, but I used an oven

[MrMarbles]

I've not bought any songs for Singstar, but I've bought hundreds of Rock Band songs...

Does this mean that if I'm unable to salvage some kind of life from my PS3, I'll be forced to redownload everything?

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!

I suppose I have nothing to lose taking it apart and prodding about (unless anyone happens to know a decent repair shop in the Leamington area). I have no soldering tools or anything like that, though, so unless I can get anywhere with a vacuum and hairdryer there's going to be a long few nights of queueing up downloads.

Cheers chaps.

[ETC]

There is a hair dryer trick but it very rarely works and I certainly wouldn't bother attempting it just a word of advice you will want the transfer to be as minimal as possible in case it breaks again if it does mid transfer its gone for good (dlc can be redownloaded but your priority should be your saves especially getting the locked down ones up to the cloud) both will need to be running the same firmware and hope that it will work for 1-4 hrs depending on how many gb is going over (when my slim br drive broke it took 58 mins for 23gb) I wouldn't even attempt the fix until you are nearly ready to transfer across ie when you already have your new slim

[MrMarbles]

Getting a new PS3 tonight will be my main priority. The biggest loss for me will be the inability to play PS2 games any more, although I'd not actually put a PS2 game in the system for a good two years so...

I doubt I'll manage to keep my old one on life support for long enough to transfer everything but I'll have nothing to lose. It'll be a fun evening.