PS3 Re installing games

What a twat this is. They take absolutely ages to re - install. I had to format my PS3s drive yesterday as it would not restore the files on it and wouldn't boot up at all.
Luckilly my PS3 is OK, just had something corupt that stopped it loading.
Unfortunetly I hadn't backed up any files since before xmas, and the only game I can probably just about restore that I currently sometimes play is GT5.
Battlefield took the longest to get back on, you forget about having to re install all the updates and the Karkland pack etc. took about 4 hours in total.
I dont usually play single player games a second time but all of my progress in Dirt Showdown has been re set to zero , even when I go online I now start with the old banger and am back on level 1. Its going to be a real grind to get the decent cars unlocked again. Havent tried burnout yet, I only play online and expect that i'll only have the paid for DLC cars to use if I ever play the game again.
I was also part way through lego Batman, and dont know if I can be bothered to re play it from the start as I found it a bit boring. Tiger woods is also now a new golfer, Might get into that one again if anyone else out there has the masters edition? Otherwise it'll probably go on eBay
Its also a shame that my Mass effect 2 and 3 completions are no more. I was going to load up ME3 to try the new ending. Now I wont be bothering.
A lot of games I'm just gonna put on ebay, the likes of Assasins creed and IL sturmavich will be too hard to start from scratch again, and I never really play them anymore anyway.
Like I say most of the games I play are online games so game saves arent that important but I will from now on be backing up racing games every few weeks.

 

Yeah I should have considered playstation plus. Might be tempted the next time I see something worth downloading in the free games or beta exclusives. Mind you as I'm starting from scratch, not a lot of point in uploading saves to a cloud, as I've nothing worth saving at the moment.
A couple of good things to come out of is is that I finally set up a wired connection to router after chatting to the experts on our chatsite. And I opened up my PC media files so that I can put them onto my ps3. Also have a lot of space now on my hard drive for all the new games that are on the horizon.