Kantor on 28 December 2010
First and most important thing to do: buy an external hard drive and back up. This will back up everything: game saves (protected or otherwise), install data (delete these to reduce backup size and time), photos, music, movies, account profiles, everything.
You probably don't have warranty on that thing, so you could send it to Sony for "repairs", in which case you can keep your lovely backwards compatibility, or you could get it repaired by a third party and sell it, buying a Slim partially with the money earned, effectively eliminating all hardware issues. It depends on whether you value build quality, or backwards compatibility.
(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective 
