Well basically I was about to turn my playstation on when I noticed the standby light wasn't on and it wouldn't turn on at all. I unplugged it, fiddled around with and nothing happened. So I thought the fuse must have gone during the night or something so I replaced the fuse with the one from my old playstation (they're the same amp) and as soon as I plugged it back in again there was a huge electric spark at the back! I immediately switched it off at the wall and unplugged all wires connecting to it. I put it on my bed and the back of it smelt like fire. Is there any way that this can be salvaged or fixed so I can get the data? I spoke to my friend who's good with computers the other day and he said he can fix it for me but didn't say whether or not the system would format itself. I really need the data that's on my PS3 so any useful advice would be brilliant, thanks.

You replaced a fuse inside the PlayStation? I see no reason why you couldn't just take out the hard-drive and make a copy of it on your PC.

I'm not certain, but if it's just the power supply that went, I think your data should be ok if you can get it working again.

I replaced the fuse in the plug ahaa, i'll have a word with my mate who's good with technology and see what he thinks he can do. Cheers

This thread is pretty spooky.

Once the magic smoke comes out, things don't work no more. Hard to get that smoke back in there.

If the damage is electrical or on the board this won't corrupt your HD unless the HD was fried from whatever you did.

So you can save the data if the HD wasn't fried. No way to know if that is the case just from you describing what happened, though. Sorry, all I can tell you is it's possible and any fixes he would do wouldn't affect the HD unless one of those fixes was replacing the HD entirely.