Hello fellow duders!!! I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this and I could use your help! I recently purchased a 160gig slim ps3 to replace my old 40gig phat one that sounds like a jet engine.

I swapped out the 40 gig hdd and put in a new 500 gig hdd to hold all my ps+ games as the 40(26ish)gigs was not enough. I would like to put the 500gig hdd in the slim i purchased, but read that i cant just pop in my 500gig into the slim, as it will reformat the drive when i do? Now im trying to figure out if there is a way to transfer my saves and game data AND my game installs to the new ps3 WITH the 500gig hdd as i REALLY would like to avoid having to redownload everything.

Would i have to use the ethernet link data transfer and transfer all my data to the 160gig hdd and THEN backup that data to an external usb hdd using the backup tool and THEN install the 500gig hdd and restore? Or could i just backup from the 500gig, pop it in the 160 and then restore? Would that transfer my licenses and installs? Am i screwed and should i just activate the new slim, sign in and re download? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!