A few years ago I got a Yellow Light on my 60gb launch console. I phoned Sony and they said if i send them the console they will give me a refurbished one for free, because it was a common problem for the launch consoles.

I had always wanted to upgrade my PS3 HDD, so when i got the new refurb console I thought it would be the best time to do it. So i put in a 320gb hard drive, and held on to the 60gb one.

Last night the refurb console got a YLOD. I am curious as to what my options are. Can i take the 320gb HDD out of it, put the 60gb back in and send it to sony? Also, if i get another refurb, can i just put the 320gb HDD in it and all my data will be fine? Or will i have to bite the bullet and buy a new console?

Any advice guys?

I would guess by now they would make you pay to fix it. I recently had to go through all this for my console (though I'm not complaining because my console lasted 4 years of daily heavy use). It's $150 if you go through Sony. You could also look into a 3rd party service, which tend to be around $75 from what I saw. The other option is you can open it up and fix it yourself (if it is indeed fixable). I actually have a blog that I edited as I tried to fix mine. In the end I could not fix my unit, however, my friend had one that YLOD on him that he had replaced. So I fixed his and he sold it to me for $50.

As far as your data, it's not as simple as just putting the drive in a new unit. You would need to have had it backed up first. Also keep in mind for some dumb reason, some saves are protected. The only way you're going to save those is by getting PS Plus and doing the online storage thing. If you need to swap to a new console you will most likely need to redownload any games you had from PSN (at least I had to).

If you want to try and fix it yourself (it's actually not too hard) ifixit.com has a good guide for getting it open and taken apart (it's the one I followed). My main tip on that would be to only do the GPU not the CPU as some videos and guides say (the ifixit one has 4 areas they tell you do heat up but I found on my unit that what I ended up with was a working console with a fucked up image, which I'm guessing has to do with me heating up something that didn't need it). What it really came down to is you take apart the PS3 pretty much completely (I ended up doing it so many times I could have it tore down in like 20 min lol) and then use a heat gun to heat up the solder on the gpu, which then lets it melt back together.

Hopefully with all the RRoD and YLoD issues the next consoles will be made better, though they were designed when lead based solder was still ok, so at least now with the next ones they can go in knowing they can't use it.

1) YLOD
2) Get refurb
3) Sell refurb
4) Buy Slim for the money
5) Forever become sceptical towards buying a launch unit ever again
 
:/

I have PS Plus and had some saves backed up, but not all of it (and nothing really recently). I also had like 70 psn games which i really don't want to download again as it will take forever. Just wish there was some way to save the hard drive.

I will have a look at how easy it would be to fix myself. Cheers for the help.

@roomac said:

I have PS Plus and had some saves backed up, but not all of it (and nothing really recently). I also had like 70 psn games which i really don't want to download again as it will take forever. Just wish there was some way to save the hard drive.

I will have a look at how easy it would be to fix myself. Cheers for the help.

They have the hdd's formatted so they won't work on another machine, the best you can do is ask the sony guys if it is possible to fix your YLOD machine then do the data sync to move your stuff over, it won't work if you just do a data link from one HDD to another without them being in a PS3,

Re-Formatting on the ps3's suck ass.I've been through 3

Also, check this out if you decide to buy a Slim try and fix your refurb console and do the data link yourself

I got a 40gb ps3 when the price dropped to $399 and it just died to ylod. It lasted 3 years and 9 months so I am happy and bought a slim. I never turned off my old console for more than 5 minutes in the entire time I owned it because it was always running folding@home. Now I need to get the data off my old console and onto a slim. Is there any quick and easy way (like the towel trick for xbox) that will get it to run for at least an hour or two? That is all I need to make a backup of the data. All I need is a Fat32 fornmatted external hard drive to make a backup, then restore that to my new ps3 right?

Gophermods