So my friends PS3 recently died on him.  He lived with a bunch of pets, his PS3 was practically laying on the shag carpet he has, and he played it relentlessly.  It is a 60GB launch model.  I warned him quite often to vacuum it out, as his place is a dust-pit, but he obviously didn't listen.  I'm also fairly certain one of the dogs pissed on it at one of the parties we had at his place.

So now its dead, YLOD on him, and he's freakin out cuz he's worried about his save files (he has a ridiculous amount of hours into Burnout).  Is there any ways of retrieving these files short of buying the PS3 Dev Kit ? At first we thought we could just plug it into another PS3, but any hard drive put into a PS3 it wants to format.  Apparently plugging it into a PC doesn't work either, as Windows can't see it, but it is recognized in the BIOS. 

Anyone heard of a way to get those files?  This seems like a massive oversight by Sony, as all electronics fail at some point.

I will now be backing my PS3 up every once in a while with an external hard-drive.

EDIT: So I've been looking through some threads over at the Playstation forums, and the general consensus is, he's screwed. 

"Nope. The hard drive is encrypted, even if you plugged it into a PC it wouldn't be able to read the old drive. Each hard drive is married to each PS3, because each PS3 has it's own encryption key that it uses to encrypt the entire drive. That's why your old drive wouldn't work in your new PS3.

So...yeah, I know it's a bummer, but you'll never see your old data again. "

Thats a bitch.  I'll still try the HD swap and backup, but outlook not so good.

remove harddisk... backup harddisk

OK, but how?  Is there a program to use?  My PC wouldn't (or couldn't) allow me to read the PS3 hard-drive.

place the hard disk in a working ps3 and use the backup feature of the ps3 os.

You don't need to use a PC at all--simply put the Hard Drive in another PS3 and use its data backup function.

Oh? We tried putting his hard drive in a friends 40GB PS3 and it immediately wanted to format the drive.  Maybe I'll try it in my 60GB (same model as his).  But methinks it will still want to format the drive.  Has anyone actually done this?

If it will work, its a simple fix as I'll just back his save files to a USB drive.

Nothing will work, until the encryption is cracked the HDD is a paperweight. its happened to me already. There were a few hackers that think they are close but nothing yet. its more difficult than normal since ithe PS3 file system seems to be Linux based

Ya, thats what I was afraid of.  Apparently you can get the PS3 Development kit and that works.  But thats about the only thing I've heard of.  Even using a SATA connection to PC doesn't work.  Damn encryption. 

Thats pretty brutal as there is alot of time sunk into these things.  I will definitely be backing my system up now.  I also plan on vacuuming my PS3 out more often as my buddies PS3 was actually crammed with dust.  It was almost a quarter inch thick in some places.  Crazyness.

Thanks for confirming my fears.  My friend is gonna be pissed

i don't think that works.

THis should work..