[quote name='mykevermin']Looks like I must have synced recently, as the last ones I got (FFXIII) were all viewable online.
The money is moot at this point. the absurdity of locking HDDs to systems is infuriating, as that means I lose all of my gamesaves and downloaded data.

in' ridiculous.
I backup my laptop every Friday because I'm afraid of hard drive failure, not because I'm afraid the laptop will die. If the laptop dies the data is still recoverable. I've never seen anything like this; it makes zero

ing sense.[/QUOTE]
Why not invest in an external HDD? They're not so expensive nowadays, and you only need one that's big enough to hold all of your PS3 data (so you can probably find an 80 GB external HDD or something for pretty cheap).
Also, I'm an idiot. I didn't lose my trophies because like you said, they're synced to the server.
[quote name='seanr1221']So Myke's situation has gotten me looking around.
Some people are saying a full backup and restore on a new system will result in the transfer of your copy protected saves. Some are saying your copy protected saves won't be transferred. Clear this up, GGT![/QUOTE]
If you do a full system restore onto an external HDD, the copy protected saves will transfer over as well. Don't worry, I've done it before.