oh god you guys are scaring the shit out of me I am going to back it up as soon as I get home. But doesn't the system back up back up everything? I just want my save files backed up cause I don't have a 60 gig external hard drive to back everything up.

The thermal compound used on the 60GB versions is crap. Hopefully they fixed that on the newer consoles or we will have the same problem with those. I cleaned mine out and put Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU/GPU and smoothed out the heat sink as well. My 60GB/320GB now runs much quieter for a longer period of time and when the fans do kick in on things like folding, they go back down much quicker as well.

The problem is that 3 years of junk compound, there is probably not much left on the chips and they are getting too hot. Mine were almost bone dry.

Well I have had my 60 GB since day one and have had virtually zero issues with it outside of an occassional lockup.  ALL electronics are technically 'inherently' faulty.  They all will eventually break at some point in time.  You are going to see more 60 GBs break down over time that's just natural. Hey guess what?  My NES from 1989 doesn't work anymore....Damned Nintendo and their inherently faulty products.

What is the 60 GB failure rate? 2%? 3%? Even less?   What was the original 360s failure rate? Upwards to 33%?    Systems are going to break but believe it or not most people whose systems fail don't populate this website and because a handful of people have their consoles break on them certainly doesn't mean it's inherently faulty on a general sense.

Mainboard on my 60GB blew but i had used it a LOT.

Doing the full backup is a waste of time IMO. Just buy a cheap USB memory stick and copy your saves to that, although not all games permit this.

@rpruett : I definitely agree we don't know the exact failure rate. The PS3 is still far more reliable than the 360 according to the general opinion...

But if you ask ME, since my 60 Gb PS3 broke 3 times, I won't tell you it's perfect either. If the failure rate was 1%, it's unlikely my 60 Gb PS3 would have broken so many times. Unlikely, not impossible. I have 2 friends who have a PS3 too, one of them got a blueray failure.

The Wii seems to be more reliable than both though. 'Seems' is the word, we don't really know for sure. Plus, it could be because their owners are generally less hardcore and use it a bit less.

Certainly the 60 GB isn't 'perfect'  and anyone saying as such is only spouting fanboy rubbish.  Any electronic device can and will fail prematurely at some point in time.  You've obviously had a bad string of luck but for every person like yourself there is 20 that haven't had one issue.  The  friends of mine that have PS3s have had really no issues (similar to me).  On the flip side,  most people I know have atleast had one RROD.

Remember even with a 1% failure rate there is still over 220,000 faulty PS3s out there and there is no telling if you're physically getting an 'un-faulty' PS3 back when you send it in for repair or if you're just getting the same faulty one (albeit fixed) back.

The Wii probably is more reliable but having less hardware under the hood will reduce the heat output and thus increase lifespans and as for the hardcore comment...I won't touch that.   Wii fanboys will be all over you in about 5 minutes.

oh well it happens. You were one of the unlucky one's to get a faulty ps3.

Ironically for my friends son he purchased a PS3 after having sent two 360s for repair now his PS3 is faulty.

As I predicted he now wants to sell his PS3 and go back to a 360. This new generation of gamers are a fickle bunch, but I guess you know your 360 is gonna fail you kinda think you know the PS3 is not.

I agree even though ill stick with mt 360 after the rrod.

It's like the 60GB models are guaranteed to fail. Mine got the disc drive failure last year, just outside the year warranty, but Sony quickly replaced it for free so I can't complain too much.