Rescuing PS3 Data?

My fat 60g died today :( (yup, the original) I'm getting the flashing red light. I know it's the PS3 and not the drive because I moved the drive to my other PS3 and it came on just fine.

Question: I was thinking of just buying the SLIM and putting my hard drive in that box. When you boot up, however, it will try to "Format" the drive. Not sure if this is a format in the traditional sense of the word. Will my home videos and downloaded games still be accessible after the "format" or will I lose everything?

Thanks ahead of time!

You will lose everything. The best thing to do is buy an external enclosure and put the old hard drive in it. You can hook it up to your new ps3 and access all of the videos and what not on it.

Brilliant! Thanks so much for the quick reply!

No problem. Oh and for the downloaded games you should just go into the store and download them again on your new PS3. Once you've bought a game you can download it up to 5 times.