is my PS3 messing up? also can i swap hardrives?

Question

Lately I've been noticing that my ps3 has been acting weird. At times, when I turn it on from an off position, I hear the beep that it normally gives you when turning it on....but then after a brief pause I hear a "beep beep beep", then it shuts off and the red light keeps blinking.

I have to then manually, turn it off, restart it and the it goes through like normal.

My First question is, What's happening?

Second, I'm almost positive I'm gonna get rid of this and probably get another one. The Second question is, well, I have a 320GB hard drive in there with a lot of stuff on it, when i get a new ps3, can I just swap it out and put it in the new ps3 and it be working or

Answer 1

Unfortunately there are high chances that this is a sign of an YLOD coming. If it beeps when you quit certain games and not too often it might be the software but considering it beeps when you turn it on, I think it's a sign of YLOD.

For your second question, well you can't just swap it. You have to transfer your content on the new console since when you put in a new hard drive you are prompted to format it.

Answer 2

I would HIGHLY recommend that you try swapping out the hard drive before you go out and buy a brand new PS3. It may mean that there's something going on with the system, but replacing the hard drive is so cheap and easy to do and may fix the issue entirely. Replacing the system is hundreds of dollars.. while getting a new hard drive can be as cheap as $50.

Also, you will need to format the drive if you swap the drive, but I'd look at what you actually want to transfer. For example, all your user data files.. yes.. you'd want to keep that, but if you're a PS+ member, those are stored online already. Games or game data files can be redownloaded and would definitely be better to just recreate that stuff so that you're getting clean data anyway. Anything else can easily be backed up to a jump drive for example and then transferred to the new hard drive.