My PS3 died a few hours ago :-(

[DeadlyMessiah]

Around 5 today, I went to start .hack//GU Volume 2, and as I started to play the game, my PS3 shut off, and now, every time I turn it on, the light goes from red to green to yellow to a blinking red light, and that is it. It will not do anything else, not even eject my disc. I tried several solutions, and nothing worked. Not just that, but I lost all of my data, including my Resident Evil 5 data, which I had almost everything to.

[Fencedude]

Around 5 today, I went to start .hack//GU Volume 2, and as I started to play the game, my PS3 shut off, and now, every time I turn it on, the light goes from red to green to yellow to a blinking red light, and that is it. It will not do anything else, not even eject my disc. I tried several solutions, and nothing worked. Not just that, but I lost all of my data, including my Resident Evil 5 data, which I had almost everything to.

Well, your data is probably fine, as long as the Hard Drive isn't corrupted.

[Skywise]

If it's just blinking, how do you know you lost your data?

[broodwars]

Hmm...have you tried messing with the actual power switch in the back, maybe leaving the console completely disconnected from the power socket for a while and plugging it back in after a few hours? I doubt your data is actually lost unless there was some sort of corruption or something on the Hard Drive to cause your PS3 to lock up like that. You'll just have to get the PS3 fixed, which is irritating and costly but that's just how it is.

Addendum: Wait, you said your PS3 locked up while you were trying to play a PS2 .hack game, right? Sounds like unless there's a compatibility problem with that game on backwards-compatible PS3s, there might be a corruption or problem with the special PS2 System Data files you have to download to run the backwards compatibility. I don't know if that would affect the rest of the System Data, but it's a start.

[DeadlyMessiah]

If it's just blinking, how do you know you lost your data?

Because I have to send it in to Sony and get a refurbished 60GB PS3, that is how I know my data is lost.

broodwars, I tried everything. I never have my PS3 plugged in unless I am playing it.

[chronoclast]

Because I have to send it in to Sony and get a refurbished 60GB PS3, that is how I know my data is lost.

If you have a spare hard drive (it has to be a 2.5" SATA drive), you could switch out the one with your saves with the spare, send the system in, and then just switch the drives once you get the system back. EDIT: I just realized this won't work since I believe they need the original drive when you send the system in.

One other thing I think you could do, I'm not 100 percent sure on this so somebody correct me if I'm wrong if this isn't possible, is take the hard drive out of the PS3, put it into an enclosure and connect it to your pc, and then backup the save data onto a USB flash drive. That way you could up the data onto the hard drive when you get the system back after you send it in.

[Citizen Klaus]

Because I have to send it in to Sony and get a refurbished 60GB PS3, that is how I know my data is lost.

If you have a spare hard drive (it has to be a 2.5" SATA drive), you could switch out the one with your saves with the spare, send the system in, and then just switch the drives once you get the system back.

One other thing I think you could do, I'm not 100 percent sure on this so somebody correct me if I'm wrong if this isn't possible, is take the hard drive out of the PS3, put it into an enclosure and connect it to your pc, and then backup the save data onto a USB flash drive. That way you could up the data onto the hard drive when you get the system back after you send it in.

If your motherboard supports SATA, you don't even need an enclosure. Just open up your PC case and plug it in.

I'm not sure what file system is used by the PS3, but Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_hardware) suggests that it's FAT32, which means that Windows, OS X, and most flavors of Linux should read the drive just fine.

[DeadlyMessiah]

One other thing I think you could do, I'm not 100 percent sure on this so somebody correct me if I'm wrong if this isn't possible, is take the hard drive out of the PS3, put it into an enclosure and connect it to your pc, and then backup the save data onto a USB flash drive. That way you could up the data onto the hard drive when you get the system back after you send it in.

I tried that a little while ago, but my computer would not locate the device no matter what I did. I installed the software, then hooked up the Enclosure, nothing happened, I tried hookoing it up into the back USB like the manual says, the computer still had no recollection that there was a device in the USB port.

Anyway, as of this moment, BuyBackGames has my system and is going to try to repair it.