I am upgrading the HDD on my PS3. How do I back up the 1000+ hours of gameplay to the new HDD. It won't let me copy the saves to a USB drive to transfer them.

Go to Settings->System Settings->Backup

If you have room on a external device it will back up everything on the hard drive, even saves that normally aren't allowed to be copied. If you don't have room for everything delete things like videos and downloaded games since you can re download them from the store.

Then with the new hard drive in there is a restore option next to the back up that will copy from the device.

T