So tonight my beloved fat old PS3 decided it had had enough and beeped its way into the afterlife.

The situation would have been acceptable [I can buy a new one, it had had a good 4 year run and it went out doing what it enjoyed best] if only I had not just found out that there is now no way to get back the data on the hard drive.

Apparently putting the drive into a new PS3 will format it immediately and the only way to create a backup of the game saves on the disk would be to have the original PS3 still fully functional...negating the original need for a new PS3.

Oh well, at least I managed to get it to finally regurgitate my Mass Effect 3 disc (along with an almighty cloud of dust as the fans kicked into high gear) by turning on the power whilst holding down the eject button.

Still, sometimes life sucks hard! This is going to be a costly week.

So tonight my beloved fat old PS3 decided it had had enough and beeped its way into the afterlife.

The situation would have been acceptable [I can buy a new one, it had had a good 4 year run and it went out doing what it enjoyed best] if only I had not just found out that there is now no way to get back the data on the hard drive.

Apparently putting the drive into a new PS3 will format it immediately and the only way to create a backup of the game saves on the disk would be to have the original PS3 still fully functional...negating the original need for a new PS3.

Oh well, at least I managed to get it to finally regurgitate my Mass Effect 3 disc (along with an almighty cloud of dust as the fans kicked into high gear) by turning on the power whilst holding down the eject button.

Still, sometimes life sucks hard! This is going to be a costly week.

There are days that I'm really glad I plunked down the $50 for PSN Plus just for the cloud saves.

http://www.tested.com/videos/how-to/videos/5479-how-to-take-apart-and-recover-faulty-external-hard-drive/

This video from tested might help save you're game saves

I feel you man. I had 2 fat PS3's which died on me because of YLOD.

Yeah, mine just kicked it again.

IFixit has a solution, and I've done it 3 times now: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Yellow-Light-of-Death-Repair/3654/1

trying to decide if i'm going to get a new one or just keep fixing it, it's going down every month now.