Come to think of it, it's that time of the month. 

Nope.  Never heard of a PS3 getting hard drive errors, so I don't bother with it.

I don't really have any reason to, there aren't many games on my PS3. And if it were to crash or die, it would be w/e.

I back up new saves to memory cards almost every time I made progress in a game, as long as the game lets me.  I only just got a external USB HDD when I bought a 320GB HDD for my PS3 and did the full backup process.  That process is largely unnecessary and takes too long anyways.
 
This isn't about HDDs dying, if your PS3 ever dies and you don't back up your saves you will lose ALL the saves, you can't use it on a new PS3.

@Diamond: SO even if I backup my HDD I won't be able to use saves on a new PS3? I thought the whole point of having that option is for that purpose.

" @Mordukai said:

@Diamond: SO even if I backup my HDD I won't be able to use saves on a new PS3? I thought the whole point of having that option is for that purpose.

No, if you DON'T back up you can't use the old HDD in a new PS3 without reformatting.  Lots of people don't seem to understand that.  I hear that using the backup function is no better than copying saves to a USB flash or anything, as you can't restore copy protected saves on a new PS3 either.  Not 100% certain but pretty sure. "

Since I back up all my saves regularly (onto flash memory), I don't really bother with hard drive backups since most of that is either game install data or downloaded content.

" Since I back up all my saves regularly (onto flash memory), I don't really bother with hard drive backups since most of that is either game install data or downloaded content. "

I just checked on my PS3 and the Killzone 2 save that I have can't be copied to a flash stick.  "

" Come to think of it, it's that time of the month.  "

If you PSN account share games, will the backup preserve the settings necessary to play shared games? 
  
i.e. my friend logs in on his account, downloads his PSN games, I backup my system 
If I replace my harddrive, or something else happens where I need to reformat, can I restore the backed up image and continue to use the shared games? 

" If you PSN account share games, will the backup preserve the settings necessary to play shared games?   i.e. my friend logs in on his account, downloads his PSN games, I backup my system If I replace my harddrive, or something else happens where I need to reformat, can I restore the backed up image and continue to use the shared games?  "

No read their policies, game sharing with up to 5 people is Supported by Sony.  
 
You should really do some research before you accuse people of things.

absolutely not, I can't be bothered with such nonsense.

I guess I should but I'm not entirely sure how. I just use an external harddrive do I? I can take it from there if that's the case. I know it varies but roughly how big is it, for say, just save games for 4 games and nothing else?

I have backed up my ps3 twice and both times where because i was putting in a bigger hard drive and too lazy to re-download everything

No. 
 
My trophies are the only thing on there I would be remotely pissed about losing. 
 
Everything else, like games, can just be redownloaded. As for saves, well I really don't care about them.

I back up once in a while, when ever i feel like it.

I backup my ps3 HDD with http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html  once a month . As is a free software i also store my hdd online on their servers so it can be secured and i don't worry of loosing it .
I didn't had any problems with my ps3 hd but who knows the bad luck will strike it , better to be prepared than taken by surprise
 

no, i don't back up my things.