Im looking to upgrade my useless 12 gb hd to a 250. has anyone else done this that can give me some tips on where you purchased the new hd and cradle?

I did it on my "slim"
Not an actual "superslim"
But Its super easy. Just make sure you did your research beforehand and you know what kind of hardware you need and you know what size dimensions you're looking for.
You can buy what you need online or go down to your local Staples or Office Max store and get everything you need

Did it on my fatty. Super easy. Make sure you buy a 2.5" 4500 rpm.

any recommendations on what brand? I wanna make sure I get decent quality so I wont be needing to replace it again anytime soon

Seagate or WD (Western Digital)

Both my internal and externals are Seagate but I don't think name brands make the difference. Depending on what store you go to you're likely to only find, at best.. 3 different makers and all of which should be sufficient. The only thing you need to worry about are the proper dimensions and a capacity size that fits your liking

Well it kinda does but more for the PS3 not quality. Don't get a green drive for instance. They run slower to conserve energy but the PS3 needs to run at 4500 rpm. Going higher and lower can cause problems.

Idk what a green drive is..is that a hard drive from recycled materials?
But I agree. Make sure its 4500rpm and make sure you have the right size(laptop hard drive). The only thing you might have to do is convert the drive to be FAT32 format but converting it is easy. My upgraded hdd was setup to read in a different format, Its been so long, i forget which exactly (im not a computer guru by any means) but it was a more commonly used format than fat32.

A green drive throttles the RPM in hopes to save energy.
A black drive is more balls to the wall, everything about speed. They are as loud and as fast as they can be.
A blue drive is just a basic drive. This is what to aim for.

Higher causes more heat