For the record.. if you end up getting a refurbished system back, and not the exact same unit, the data on your HDD will be useless, they can't be interchanged the same way 360 HDDs can be.
And likewise, Sony has disclaimers that you may not get the disc in the system back either. Just letting you know, it's something you might have to deal with.
But I wish you the best of luck. I, personally, had a 60GB BC model for a while, but after around 2 years, I decided to upgrade before the system died(which it would've, since I used, and still use my PS3 alot), and sold it to upgrade to a slim model. Honestly, I still own a PS2, so backwards compatibility isn't that big of a deal to me.