Why are original fat PS3's so Expensive?

I guess I have been under a rock. Bought 80gb original PS3 about 4 years ago for around $400. The hard drive has gotten corrupted somehow, can't save any new photos from the wallpaper type scenic sites any more. Always says "file is corrupted.

I'm not a computer savvy person, though I imagine changing out the hard drive with another one and doing whatever is not hard. How much approximately to send to Sony to have them do? Where do you send. Should I just do that and keep this one?

I thought I would check with Amazon and see what new ones were going for and got this range of prices below. Why are the old ones so expensive now?? Do you give something up with the new slim versions? Not an avid gamer though I have thrown a few on over the years. I like the Bluray drive and the photo section of the PS3 for projection display and demo lists.

http://www.amazon.com/Consoles-Hardw...&node=14210711

OK yeah....thanks I guess I could handle that. Is there any reformatting or anything else needing to be done with PS3 menu and remote once the drive is installed? How's the hard drive situation these days? I heard Frys had none a few weeks back still due to the flood. What size do you recommend and brand?

Thanks a bunch!!!

OM freaking G.....I have to vent. My fault but just have to vent.

So thanks to the advice given here above, I went to Frys and picked up a 500gb drive for $90 and put it in. Then I sat with my fast Mac Pro and cycled 20 times faster through the one web site that took me hours and hours and hours with the slow wireless cycling and pop ups etc with the PS3 over a couple years to save some great 16x9 scenics to the photo section. I found most of them again and saved to my hard drive on the Mac and then copied to a flash drive.

So I fire up the PS3, format the new drive and everything seems to be working OK. Did a firmware upgrade. Then copied one by one in pretty quick fashion the photos and then had to again go through them on the PS3 to save them to a play list so I could go through all of the group continuously in my theater with the projector, uninterrupted with the way the PS3 first organizes the saves by photo date metadata. Still all good because I don't have the delays of the pop ups etc.

Then I go to edit mode in the playlist where you click on one photo and drag it up or down to drop between two other photos and set up the order of the list that way. I was almost done with that when I got sloppy and dropped a photo not really between 2 others but I guess on top of or partially on top of one of the others.....and it locked up on me. Could not do anything or get out to power down by the remote.

So I go hold down the power button on the unit to force a quit and I get the message that I shut down incorrectly and may have corrupted my drive....it will have to check all the files and repair if it can. "Could take up to 3 hours". That was almost 2 hours ago and the progress meter is at 2%. Where is a banging my head into a wall icon when I need it like on my Lakers forum????

At that pace it will take 80-100 hours if it is consistent and probably no guarantee it will fix it.

OK thanks for listening.....I feel a little better

Fortunately it fixed itself overnight. It wound up actually being a good thing it happened.

When I first bought the fat 80gb PS3 if you dropped say a 1920x1200 pixel image into the photo section it allowed you to put up and move around a 16x9 overlay to crop to 1080P. Around the time 2 1/2 years in when the original drive stopped saving pictures and reporting the file was corrupted, that cropping stopped functioning too. It was like it was just inactive. Even last night after formatting the new drive and then doing the current firmware update the cropping was still not working.

But it is now which is great. You can even put a 2560x1600 rez photo in and move a smaller 16x9 rectangle around with the left joystick.

Whew!

Apologies to all the gamers who think this is boring as bleep......