Good luck!

Also, I would advise double checking about the HDD as I don't think you can just slot it in a new PS3...

My condolences.

I have the very same PS3 and I too am afraid it's time will come. This is why I do not dare to play on it for longer than two hours at a time. And that's pushing it. I think I saved it from death early this year though, it was making so much noise I couldn't even hear the game sounds anymore so I completely took it apart and cleaned it. Now it's better, but it still gets too hot plus nearly all the thermal paste on the CPU is gone.

That is the problem right there. 

Anyway, RIP...

Thats what happened with mine, seems the thermal paste completely withered away and the CPU got fried.

Attempted to replace the Paste, but no luck :(

This is very likely true!  But I would do it all over again.

The PS3 will reformat your HDD. 

EDIT: Happend to me. Lost a lot of save files.

My understanding of it is that as soon as you put the HDD in a new PS3, it will be reformatted.  I hope I'm wrong about that, though, and it works in your new console if you get one!

Must be some way to transfer all that data to a new HDD, I mean i had PSPlus for awhile so lots of stuff from 4 or 5 months ago is on the cloud but...

Sad to see her leaving you.. Still cheaper then a real girlfriend..

Anything you backed up onto cloud/memory stick will be transferrable onto the new hard drive, yeah, but anything on your hard drive which didn't get backed up will get lost in the reformat.  At least, that's what I've been told.  Obviously there's stuff you can't move across like game files etc.

If there's anything important on there, it might be worth trying to do some of the emergency 'extra life' stuff to get a few more minutes to move everything across!  I've heard there's stuff involving ovens and hairdriers, but I've never looked into it :P

Good luck anyway!

P.S. Sorry for making a sad day even worse :(