Hi All,
** Fix for bricked Bluray drive below **
My 60GB PS3 worked fine after the 3.0 update but the very next day when I did the 3.01 update the BD drive packed up. It would not play any PS3 games, BD movies or PS2 games from the BD drive and the system would lockup if I attempted to. Audio CD's and PS1 game disks worked fine. PS3 Games on the HDD worked fine.I called Sony and they gave me the pay AU$250 bull. They also suggested formatting the HDD to see if it fixed the problem. I was sceptical, but I got a new HDD, formatted it and everything worked as before. I was however unable to backup the old HDD as the PS3 would throw an error saying unable to backup the drive. I therefore suspect that firmware 3.01 botched up something and corrupted the HDD.
If you have this problem do the following:
1) As HDD backup does not work, copy everything of value (Save games, music, PS1 saves, etc) to an external media. Do not copy game data and downloaded games. This is a tedious process if you have lot of stuff.
2) Format the PS3 HDD
3) Copy all your data back into the PS3 HDD
4) Download any purchased content again from the Playstation Store in 'My Downloads'
Thats it! Have fun. I don't support Sony for screwing up and then asking us to pay, but it seems like the update just corrupts your HDD and does no actual hardware damage. So if you want your PS3 up and running and cant be bothered to go through the hassle of suing Sony - try the fix above.
Cheers,
Rajiv