I purchased a PS3 Slim Move/Eye combo (CECH-2501B I think) a few years ago, and hadn't had any issues until the last few months.

First problem I encountered was with watching Netflix. The video playback started skipping, but the audio was fine, seemed to happen more with HD content. While trying to fix this, I disassembled my PS3 and dusted/cleaned every inch (except inside the Blu-Ray drive). I didn't believe it at first, but it turned out to be the hard drive that caused this, so I replaced the drive with a Hybrid 500 GB.

I started re-installing all my old games, and noticed that I could not get The Last of Us to work. There's not really a game install, it just runs off the disc. Sometimes I would just get a disc read error, sometimes the game would appear in the XMB. If I ran the game, it would freeze before the intro would even appear. I tried a solution some people recommended, where you have your PS3 propped up in the front, and I was able to get the game to load, and play, but within 10 minutes the game glitched out to the point of unplayable.

Turns out that this game is a dual layer Blu-Ray disc, and that a lot of people have issues playing this disc, while all there other games work fine. Figured my lens might just be dirty (used to smoke in the apartment, only vape now), so I planned on cleaning it.

A few weeks ago I was playing Rocksmith, and the music started skipping! I decided to order a Blu-Ray lens cleaner, the disc with micro-holes in it, seemed like some people had success with this. After running the cleaning operation a few times, I haven't gotten the disc read error message with TLoU, but it still will not work. Now it boots up fine every time, to the main menu, but will freeze during the game loading screen.

So the cleaning disc did improve the performance, but has not fixed the problem. I will try testing out Rocksmith again to see if it still skips after cleaning.

The only other weirdness I have noticed (just the last few days), is that while the PS3 is sitting at the Netflix pause menu (where it shows the episode details), about every 15 seconds I can hear what sounds like a faint beep out of the PS3 (not the speakers). I think it's actually the hard drive, but the pitch/tone/length of the noise is the same as the XMB menu beep. Not sure if this is normal noise for this hard drive, or if there is something else going on. It's faint enough that my girlfriend cannot hear it.

So now to my options, please advise on what you think is the best course. Do I:

1. Disassemble the Blu-Ray drive and clean the lens manually
2. Order new Blu-Ray internal parts and replace
3. Order a new Blu-Ray drive that is assembled and replace
4. Buy a used PS3 that doesn't have any issues
5. Buy a new PS3

I don't mind spending some time working on this to save money, but I am getting aggravated that within a few months, my hard drive and then my Blu-Ray drive are failing. Makes me wonder if this PS3 is a bit of a lemon, or if there is a flaw in the system that is causing these early failures.

Please share any advice, or your experiences in attempting these repairs yourself. Thanks in advance!