[venton]

Here's some info for people with a 60gb YLOD. This is to give you accurate info from someone who has experienced it and what you can and can’t do about it.

I was on my second PS3, which was a refurb replaced free about 11 months ago, the original going YLOD.
I was reading about consoles failing when playing MW2 so decided to back up the machine that evening. My son came home from school and played MW2 online, and 15mins later the console switches off with YLOD. Talk about a sixth sense, I wished I had gone with my instinct and backed it up before he played it, but backup is a fairly long process and I thought back it up that night would be fine.

So here I was with a broken console and MW2 stuck in the machine. I rang Sony (08705 99 88 77) and said I had a second failure and wanted a free replacement as there was obviously an inherent fault with the 60GB and it should last for years not months.
Well they would have none of it and wanted £128 to replace it, with 3 months warranty. After two failed 60gbs I was not prepared to pay that money for it to fail again. I asked to speak to a supervisor but none were available and one would call back within 24 hours.

That night luckily I got the game out by turning on with eject pressed. I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to fix the console myself - if I could get it running at least I could back it up.

Here is an important point - if you take your hard drive out of a broken ps3 and put into a different ps3 it will NOT give you back the saves, downloads etc. All you can do is let the ps3 reformat it. Hard drive data is encrypted to one machine only. Note also that no pc can read the files on the hard disk, Sony have their own file system.

I followed the instructions on YouTube for fixing a YLOD YouTube - PS3 YLOD Fix Part 1 of 2. This entails totally dismantling the console, until you end up with just the motherboard. You then heat the board and chips with a 600 degree heat gun (not hair dryer) eg HOT AIR GUNS. You will need some Artic Silver 5 thermal paste when reassembling eg artic silver. I put the machine back together and it worked. I now needed to backup the machine in case it broke again.

You will need an external drive for backing up, you plug it into USB port. You will need to format this with FAT32. Windows couldn't do this, as the disk was too big, so I used a free program called Swissknife. I first deleted any crap on my ps3 eg playtv saves and unwanted demos. This was to keep the size of the backup reasonable. I also synchronised trophies.
I then backed up from system menu to my usb hard drive.

I thought all was good but when I put a game in the disc was not being taken in. I figured I had put it back together again wrong but after hours of messing I couldn't get the blu ray drive to take a disc in. I could have bought a new bluray drive off ebay, but I guessed I may have damaged something and anyway, the machine may fail again soon. It’s a shame, because you really can get a ps3 running with the hot air gun trick.

I went and bought a new ps3 Slim, even though it didn't play ps2 games, I was not going to touch another 60gb at £128 for three months warranty. Actually I really like the slim, it is smaller, quieter and uses 50 percent less power.

I did a restore to the slim from my backup on the usb drive.

Here is the bummer...even though the game saves are there none of the downloaded games are restored. Also, none of the game updates are there. So you need to go to playstation store, choose my downloads and download all the stuff again. Also, you need to put your game disks in and get them to download all the updates...it took me three days to download all the network games and install all the updates- it is a big job. For example PAIN has 8 big updates to download, Little Big Planet has 12.

Note that if you did a restore to a repaired machine, not a replacement you wouldn't need to do this. It must be Sony’s way of stopping you giving away all your games away via a backup. But having the game saves is at least a bonus, so that is something.
Note that for me to restore the backup to the slim took only a few minutes, as all it took were the game saves and users.

As an aside, I decided to put in my 300gb drive from my broken ps3 and restore the backup to that. Interestingly, the slim was not happy when I turned it on and said it needed the latest software update. Apparently the slims can't hold the software all in bios, they also use the hard drive. This is a cost saving for Sony as the bios chips are cheaper. So, I needed to give it the update. I downloaded the update from Sony web site (uk.playstation.com) and saved it to my external drive in a folder called PS3/UPDATE. When the usb drive is plugged in it found the update and the machine comes up.
Note that you CAN use your old online id's when you get a new Playstation. Just go to lsign up for playstation networkl and say existing user. Put it your email and password and you will be back in business. For Call of Duty 4 5 6 your rank is saved on their servers so you will not lose this. Also trophies are stored on Sony servers so you get these back too.

As an aside, I got a call from the Sony rep after I had bought the Slim. I again moaned and said it would be stupid of me to pay £128 for a machine which is likely to break again, when a Slim can be got for £240. Especially as it takes so much damn time to get all the games reloaded etc. Well he said if I did pay the £128 it was highly unlikely they would ever dare to charge me again, and he also promised a 6 month warranty, instead of the usual 3 month. So, I went for it as a second PS3 for upstairs, could be useful for playtv or if I ever wanted to play PS2 games. As it is likely to be little used it should last for years.

I think at the end of the day I did the right thing getting the Slim. My instinct is that it will not YLOD and the sheer amount of time it takes to rebuild a new PS3 would put me off having a 60GB as the main machine again. Ultimately the 60GB they send you will be a refurb, not new – I don’t have a lot of confidence in them. If the backup and restore really restored everything it would be a different story. Well, there you have it, hope you find this info useful to make your own choice.