a relatively small Philips head screwdriver and a SATA laptop drive.

To back up the stuff and restore it you can use the PS3 backup utility built into the OS to back it all up onto an external USB harddrive then restore it after the new drive has been installed and formatted

Who cares! It has the chrome trim!

Thanks for the help, Spankey (funny name :D)

Now, is there a specific size or any small screwdriver?

Second, is there only one kind of SATA laptop drive? I don´t want to screw up the size or something.

And I liked the whole PS3 backup utility built into the OS. If it is easy to use. And I won´t lose anything, right?

here's a pretty good guide from GameSpot:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6176090/index.html
but guides are all over the net, including the PS3 manual would you believe!

as far as i know it's only copy protected media stuff that's not copied over

Well, it's a couple of small cross-head screws, I don't know what the actual size is, just make sure the screwdriver fits correctly instead of being lazy like me and using the closest one.

You can back up the PS3 HDD to an external storage device before you change the HDD, but this won't work for demos or games, you'll have to redownload them from the PS Store. You can download your games as many times as you like, so don't worry about losing them. Seeing as the new 80Gb doesn't have any memory card ports a USB memory stick would be the easiest thing to use for this. I strongly advise having a USB memory stick anyway for backing up your save files. If the HDD ever gets corrupted you'll want a copy of those. I usually back up the save files everytime I finish playing.

I've got 160Gb HDD, but only 34Gb left now. I have practically every single demo from every region on it though, along with some games and lots of trailers. Plenty of stuff I could easily delete if I needed more space. 80Gb is probably enough for most people.

Some links:

How to upgrade your PS3 HDD

PS3 Backup Utility

If that's the case, they will have perfected software compatibility of the GS by then (the EE is already emulated on the 80GB PS3s), and all PS3s would be backwards compatible with all PS2 disc software (or darn near) as well.

Buying a "non-BC" PS3 may turn out better than you might think in the end.  I don't believe Sony has given up on pure software BC, for exactly that reason -- due to the potential sales of PS2 games on PSN.

I'll just quote the link:

Thanks again, BKK2. You´ve been a great help.

If you buy the new harddrive before you turn the machine on presumably you wouldn't need to copy anything over etc?

Or does the PS3 have to be started with the original drive? (ie are there files on it that Sony put there that are needed)

I don´t know, TWRoO. That´s a good question. But since I think 80GB is probably more than enough, I probably won´t need to change the HDD.