PS3 with ylod - reball options

Normally if a console was reballed before I wouldn't advise getting it reballed again unless it failed within a very short time or it was a special console like a backwards compatible PS3. Your console worked for almost 10 months after the previous reball so it probably wasn't a shoddy repair and is just symptomatic of a console on its last legs.

The last I heard it was still quite expensive (in the region of €150) to get a refurbished console direct from Sony. If this is still the case this isn't an option worth exploring considering the refurbs have 3 months warranty and a new console is about €200 with 24 months warranty. I've no experiences with people who provide YLOD reball repairs but there are a few such as GCS on Capel St and some place called the Console Repair Centre out in Tallaght. There was also a user a while ago in the Playstation forum called jay_k who had knowledge of this stuff and possibly works for one of those establishments so he might be worth a shot for a private message.

The DVD can be retrieved by opening the console and dismantling the DVD drive, a few screws would do it. The saves thing is a bigger issue because the hard drive is paired to that individual console so the console has to be working. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but if I had a YLOD console repaired previously and it had some valuable saves on it I'd have either implemented a backup plan to copy the saves to a memory stick or invested in some PSN Plus with cloud storage. A tough lesson to learn.

If you've some valuable save data there (like a 40 hour Skyrim game or something) then it might be worth seeing if you could get the console repaired? Look at it this way, PSN Plus costs €50/year for cloud storage. The memory stick about €20. The repair is probably going to cost you around €75 - is it worth the extra for what you've got saved?