When powers up I hear hard drive to start, and then it shuts down. The red light flashes.

try disconnecting the lower optical drive and rebooting...may just be a bad drive.

Examine in order the lamp, the ballast, the fans.

Sorry to hear that your drive is having trouble. When you start the drive, do you hear it turning?
Is this a external that you can remove the hard drive? You may try to power down the external, power it back up and shut down your computer. The conect the external and turn the computer on.

Let me know if you can hear the driver turning and it you can connect after going thru the process above.

Brian

Oh man thanks SONY, right?

Well you should try a video reset first and if that doesn't work then pull the hard drive out and try booting the console with no drive.

For the video reset: While the PS3 is off (solid red led) hold down the power button until you hear the SECOND beep, quickly release.

Let me know what happens.

i have had this problem with mine as well. I had to remover the hard drive start the xbox 360 up and then shut it down and then reinsert the hard drive and start the machine again. hope this help you as well

Mate if you turn your PS3 off when the hard drive is still operating or the power shuts of while playing a game and the PS3 is collecting or writing data to your hard drive, it will most definitely corrupt or even destroy your hard drive it is very common in PC's to.
Hint:
1. Do not shut down your PS3 while it is saving a game or collecting info from the hard drive. Rather quit the game then press your off key with one quick touch and let go of it, it will shut down when it is ready or hold down on the remote's PS button and select switch off system on screen.
2. If you live in a area where the power shuts off for no reason please please get your self a computer UPS(UN-INTERRUPTED POWER SUPPLY).
3. If you replace the hard drive make sure you buy a good quality hard drive like a Western Digital or Seagate.

The yellow light is also know as the yellow light of death casued by a hardware failure. It can be casued ny over heating a bluray drive failure, a hard drive failure or even a powersupply failure. You know you have it when you power up the yellow light flashes then you hear some beeps then the red llight flashes. I would suggest returning it if you have that option or getting it fixed somewhere else as a last option.

hi , i hate to say this but you need to do this asap. Call the playstation support line and send it in. your ps3 is experience a corrupted hard drive. This will only get worse and will eventually shut down for good.

There isn't much you can do to easily fix this problem.

Try booting the PS3 with hard drive removed.

For more tips, suggestions, etc.

Check out my guide here:

http://rescuetechla.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to email me any other questions and please don't forget to rate!

:)

Thanks!

RescueTechLA

Hi Vieve, The manual says nothing about flashing red and blue nor could I find anything of any real substance. Basically this thing is a box containing an IDE hard drive and some electronics that interfaces the drive with firewire, power distribution and a few other odds and ends. I suspect the board that contains the electronics may be damaged, however, its entirely possible that this may be some undocumented error that can be reset. I would try calling the vendors tech support, it?s at least worth a shot. If getting your data off is the concern it might be worth your time to buy another enclosure, install your drive and plug it into your Mac. There is a good chance your data is recoverable. Sorry I couldn?t get you a more definitive answer.