Playstation 3 Blue Screw

Saturday was a nice day I was planning on seeing my cousin in the afternoon and I also bumped into him down town. While out and and about I thought I could do with buying a new hard drive for my PS3. I've got one of the original 60Gb models and I've only 5Gb left and as the instructions include a "How to change your had drive" I'd thought I'd give it a whirl.

I picked up a nice 320Gb 2.5" SATA drive from Maplin for £90 (with 160Gb for £70 no thought required) and took the two hours to back up my existing data.

Using a flat-head screwdriver I easily popped the cover and was confronted, as I'd expected, with the drive bay held in place by a blue cross-head screw. I picked up my smallest cross-head screwdriver fitted it and turned anti-clockwise (lefty loosey, righty tighter; yes I do have to think about it) at which point I thought "Damn this is in tight" and applied a bit more pressure and the screwdriver turned... sadly the screw didn't.

Yep I've managed to strip the head of the Blue Screw.

A quick search reveals I'm not the only one who managed to do this and some unsympathetic souls have a laugh and "You used the wrong screwdriver, you should have used a computer screwdriver". So what does the instructions say? "Using the correct screwdriver" oh well that helps.

Looks like Sony in their infinite wisdom used a soft screw and given that the majority of people out there are likely to possess normal screwdrivers what a daft decision that was. Oh and just for fun it's a round convex screw head rather than a hex so you can't even unscrew it using an hex bit.

I'm going to try and call Sony to bawl them out and see if I can get them or the Sony Centre to fix it. If not I'll try Maplin and see if they can do anything.

Oh and before anyone pipes in with suggestions a) A pair of pliers gains no grip on this screw as it's fastened so tightly, and b) I really don't fancy drilling it out myself.

The good news is that the Playstation still works so I retreated into Fallout 3 and shot a lot of people in the head; delightfully cathartic.

[Update 25/8 - Sony are picking up my Playstation and replacing the screw FOR FREE, whether that means I'll get it back exactly as before with exactly the same problem I don't know. But I will hunt around for some 'soft' screwdrivers. Knowing my luck I'll get the Blue Screw out then strip the hard drive caddy ones]