Glad your brother's okay. I can't imagine the kind of pain he was in. I hear kidney stone's are extremely painful.

Good news my brother is home and much better. Bad news, no dice on the swap. Thanks Wonktonodi and thekitchensink for the suggestion. I tried it, but still didn't work. I'd be pissed but I'm just happy my brother's better. Thankfully when a new hard drive is loaded in the same console, the back up utility loads everything. So I was able to give my brother one of 500GB HDD's at least. He's gonna give me his old PS2. Now I just have to buy a component splitter because my HD TV is out of ports. My Dreamcast is on the S-Video port, my Wii and 360 are on the two component ports, and the PS3 and my HD cable box on the two HDMI's.

Dude, that really sucks ass.

I dunno, something seems screwy there. There must be a way of transferring backed up data onto a new PS3, otherwise everyone who dutifully backes up their data in case their PS3 gets fried for whatever reason is basically wasting their time, if the unthinkable happens. The only point of backing up therefore is if your PS3 throws a wobbly but you can get it fixed and have the same PS3 returned to you.

If this is true then PS3 seriously needs a firmware update to sort it out. It can't be a hardware issue can it?

I know RE5 and Burnout Paradise saves are locked.

UFC: Undisputed and Street Fighter 4 saves are locked as well. My bro put a lot of hours into UFC, I mean I would gotten all of his SF4 stuck back if he wanted. Hell, I unlocked most of the colors and characters for him on it anyway.

Yeah, I have no idea why some game saves are locked. Like Killzone 2.

Argh!

there is a back-up tool...

Can't back up to a flash drive...(I think).

wouldnt expect you to unless you have a 16GB+ flash drive.