the hd has an id thats unique to that ps3. put it in any other ps3 and it will make you format. if your ps3 dies and sony can't fix it, you lose everything on your hd. ask me how i know...

So you speak from Experience i'm sorry to hear that. :(

this crap just happened to me and I'm in the same position. Has anyone happened to find a solution yet?  I've read that Sony usually sends a replacement PS3 and you lose your hard drive, anyway.  It also can take a month for them to send the disc back that's stuck in the PS3 (since it won't boot up at all), but since my warranty is up I'm going to open it up and get my disc out, at least.

It is ridiculous to lock the save games.  I wish they could encrypt game data by itself so you could still get your music, pictures, videos, and game saves.  I had several videos that I haven't watched sitting on my PS3 HD that I deleted on my PC, hours of game saves, and hundreds of MGS4 pictures (nice export feature in that game).  Oh well.

Anyone returned their system and actually gotten the hard drive back?  I'd rather not pay $150 just for the slight chance that I can get my data back when I could try to reformat the drive and see if that's the problem.  My fan still turns on, but it could be the power supply.

It's difficult to retrieve save game data files from the PS3 after someone dies. They have to come back as a zombie in order to do so, and then they still might not be up to it.

Apparently you can get the system back without them having to wipe your hard drive.  But only if they don't have to replace your motherboard, where the encryption key is kept.  If they have to replace that, then they need to format your hard drive to match the new encryption key.

My friend got his back, the same PS3 (checked serial #), but they had to replace his motherboard and something about an optical unit.  So his drive got formatted.  Pretty lame, but he had most of his stuff on an SD card, so he's not totally screwed. He sent his system off on Monday, and got it back on Thursday of the same week.

You could try re-seating (taking it out and putting it back in) your hard-drive. Sometimes that fixes the problem.  Careful taking the HD out though, the blue screw holding it in is on really tight, so don't strip it!

Unless sony fixes your ps3, you will lose all your saves. Happened to me. I now backup my hard drive every two weeks. Every ps3 owner should do the same...

Seriously, if you're reading this and own an older ps3, especially a 60gb, back up your save files! unless you envy the idea of losing all your game progess.

^how u do that to killzone 2 and re 5

will the back up utility work?

it will back up the install too? i don't want that, i dont have a harddrive big enough.

Comeone it's only video game system. Do you really lose all that much when you format your 100% completed Flower save game? :)

It's Sony which means they are paranoid about DRM and copyrights.

Well i was 15 hours into Valkyria Chronicles and now I get to start over. I was also almost 100% complete pixeljunk monsters and encore, 49/50 spectra in pixeljunk eden, and almost done folklore. So yeah, it sucks that I lost probably 50+ hours of progress on those games alone, not to mention that I used my ps3 to store some ps2 save files. Since I never want to start over again, I will now back up religiously.

Anyone who doesn't backup at least once in a while risks losing all their save files. To me that's a big deal.