Which he used, and didn't work. Reading the whole thread before posting a one line response is usually helpful.

Wow the time it took for your 60GB Harddrive to backup is outrageous, I've used the backup and restore function twice (do regular backup but that only takes around 3 hrs) and each time it took around 6 hrs to completely restore all data.... The first swap was a 40gb to a 250gb, the second from 250gb to 500gb.

12 Hrs is fucked for 16gb of data... my second time the backup data was 80gb!

Good luck to your bro! Hope he gets better soon!

Tell me about it. The most annoying thing about the YLOD is loosing all of your save data.

Thanks Gnizmo. Quick recap for SSJ12. Used the back up utility to save his data onto a 16GB Flash drive. Deleted his game installs to get his back up data size under 16GB. Locked save files wouldn't transfer to the new PS3. Tried logging into his PSN ID on the new system as suggested. Didn't work.

Yup it sucks.
Some games are just locked to the PSN ID and not the user though. (edit: I should have typed system not user)
Also, it seems some devs are patching to remove the savegame lock "feature" http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?thread_id=141077

Personally, I'd like the option of being able to store the saves online on the PSN; i.e. upload/backup the save files to the PSN servers as an option.
That would rock.
imo

Spankey my guess is the locked saved files are locked to hardware itself. When I installed the 500GB HDD on his 60GB unit, the backup tool transferred all of his games saves over. The 360 had a similar issue except that as long as you logged into XBL, all of your content was available to you even if your system had been replaced or if you simply attached your HDD to a friend's console. Unfortunately if Live went down you were screwed if you weren't using your original hardware.

MS finally released a method of transferring the license of your content to a new console last year. You can only do it once every year though. I'm sure Sony will do something similar at some point. Won't do me any good, but I hope it helps out other PS3 owners. I remember reading a thread about a PS3 owner losing some of their save files when they got YLOD. I didn't comprehend how until now.