Addendum to my prior post: If I pull the HDD out I get the background screen for about 30 seconds with nothing loading before it tells me the storage can't be found, as opposed to my slim PS3 which I believe just loaded to a black screen immediately with a similar message. It doesn't shut down or rev the fan, though, so there's more than just a missing HDD at play here. If you have a spare HDD it probably won't help; the PS3 would probably have to do a full boot and write the settings (as Devin said, unfamiliar drives will be formatted even if they have PS3 data on them), which it sounds like your PS3 won't be able to do.