PS3 Problem

[Emmett The Crab]

So I watched a Netflix Blu-Ray, and it had thumb prints on it, so it kept pausing and crap, and I went to eject it and clean it, when it wouldn't eject.  I finally got it out, cleaned it, and we finished the movie, and I had to hit eject like 20 times before it would come out.  It made noises, moved partway up, then gave up.  After I finally got it out, I put a PS3 game in there to see if it was the disc or the machine.  Same problem, it took a lot of tries and like 10 minutes to get it out.  My question is this...

Do I send it in for repairs?
How much will that cost?
Do they replace it with a refurbished one?  If so, do they transfer my stuff from the old hard drive?  If not, can I save it to an SD card or something?
Do they send you the same model?  I want PS2 backwards compatibility (don't care if it's hardware or software)  I have the MGS4 80GB model.  

Thanks for any help you guys can give me.  like most of you, I'm an expert on sending my 360 in for repairs, but haven't had to send in my PS3 before.

[SOUP]

If you've got that model, it's probably out of warranty.
You can back up all of your stuff to an external hard drive, and the few game saves that are copy protected can be backed up online with your free playstation plus account.
I can't remember what the repair cost is, but it's pretty much one standard fee for hardware repairs. Your best option would probably be to find some other online service center to send it into for cheaper. They'd just replace what needs to be replaced, and send your same system back to you. I know there's some guy in Halifax that does it, but I'm sure there'd be an American option too.
As far as the refurb question, I don't know that you'd get a straight answer from Sony.

[Emmett The Crab]

Thanks Soupy!  Is it easy to transfer your stuff to a hard drive?

[SOUP]

No problem. It's pretty easy.
When you plug in the external hard drive, it'll show up just like a PSP, or a flash drive in your list of places to save data. Then you just highlight whatever you want to back up, hit the triangle, and copy the data wherever you want.
Usually, things that can be downloaded (ie: game data, patches, dlc) can't be copied, so you just have to re-download them from the store.
If you've got two PS3s, you can copy directly from one system to another via ethernet, and the transfer utility on the system.

I just transferred all the saves and such manually when my old PS3 died. They didn't have PSPlus back then though, so I couldn't copy over a few of the copy protected saves (Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Rock Band 2).

[George]

I would go through and find all the save data that is copy protected. Examples: Resident Evil 5, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing and save it via the cloud (Everyone has Plus for this month).

Everything else can be copied to a HDD/Thumb drive.

[Emmett The Crab]

Thanks George, I did just that.  I only had one game with a copy-protected save file (Spiderman, Shattered Dimensions).  I copied the rest to my thumb drive. I even made a list of all my PSN games so I could go back and get them again.  

The weird thing is that when I called Sony I couldn't reproduce the problem, and it hasn't happened since.  I'm not going to complain though.

[Waffle]

My house has a PS3 problem too, those darn things!

I am not sure who keeps leaving the door open and letting it in.

[Shigs]

Could just be the disk. I bought a used copy of NFS Hot Pursuit that had the tiniest scratch on it and it was enough to not only keep it from running, but it wouldn't recognize that the disk was in the system.

My brother fried his PS3 the other day, watched 3 Harry Potter Blu-Rays back to back to get ready for the last one and the blinking red lights came on. Now, he's fucked.

[Emmett The Crab]

No, at the time it did that on the movie, a PS3 game and a PS2 game. Still working great now, though.