May be we could use a spare HDD to update?

I mean if we don't wanna take the risk of losing all you games and saves. So take out the exiting HDD, insert the spare one and update. If everything goes well, return you HDD back.

If it's brick, format your spare HDD via PC and put it back in your PS3.

Anyway, this is just my idea. I don't have a spare HDD in-hand to try this but hopefully someone will and tell us the result.