My PS3 just got the YLOD...

[Spankey]

Mirson said:

docholliday said:
@Mirson, yea Sony erases them. Before I chose another method to get my repair I called sony and talked to a CS rep for a good amount of time about it. She pretty much guaranteed me my HDD would be erased, regardless of whether or not the HDD had anything to do with the problem. I even told her at one point "it sounds like the techs erase them out of spite". She couldnt give me a real explanation as to why they do this, but for some retarded reason its a common practice for them.

They do it to protect your information. When my PS3 broke down the second time, Sony sent the box to the wrong house!!  Luckily, it was only the box. Imagine if it had my PS3 in there with the game saves, PSN login, etc. I would've been pissed.

The reason AFAIK is that the PS3 drive encryption is linked to the motherboard.

If they have to change that, the encrytion key also changes and the drive will need to be formatted again to work.

It would be like trying to put your HDD into another PS3, the same thing will happen and it will need to be formatted for the new PS3 to be able to use the disk, yet it will work in the original PS3 it was formatted in provided the disk has not been reformatted or the motherboard changed.

Blame anti-piracy measures or pirates themselves for this. It is not really done out of spite and it's happening depends on whether or not Sony have to replace the motherboard