Yellow light simply means general error, it can mean several things: Broken HDD, broken PSU, bad solder joints (caused by overheating), probably the most common issue. To avoid cracks in the solder and if your (phat) PS3 is out of warranty, it might not be a bad idea to open it up and replace the thermal paste (between heat sinks and CPUs). There are several guides how to do it on youtube. It's also possible to refloat the chips after cracks have appeared in the solder; for that you need a heatgun (again, search youtube for a guide). So if you have enough time and some patience, you can fix it yourself (at least temporarily so you can transfer your stuff to a new PS3).
"Well certainly with the Xbox 360, we had some challenges at the launch. Once we identified that we took control of it. We wanted to do it right by our customers. Our customers are very important to us." -Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb (10/2013). Note: RRoD was fixed with the Jasper-revision 3 years after the launch of 360
"People don't pay attention to a lot of the details."-Yusuf Mehdi explaining why Xbone DRM scheme would succeed
"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity; it's called Xbox 360,”-Don Mattrick
"The region locking of the 3DS wasn't done for profits on games"-MDMAlliance
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