Starting Thursday, those who pony up for Sony's premium "PlayStation Plus" service will be able to back up their PS3 saved-game data online—a feature that could come in handy if your console's hard drive goes belly-up.

The online storage feature will arrive March 10—tomorrow—with PS3 firmware update 3.60 (which will also include other "minor features" to be named later).

Nice, but you won't be able to access the new online storage locker without a subscription to PlayStation Plus, Sony's premium, $50-a-year PSN service that offers games, early access to game demos and betas, and other miscellaneous goodies.

PlayStation Plus users can expect 150MB of online storage, or up to 1,000 game files, which you'll be able to access from the PlayStation 3's XrossMediaBar—and yes, you'll be able to tap into your online files from another PS3 console besides your own, provided you log in with your PSN ID and password first.

The online backup service will work with copy-protected game saves, PSN Senior Director Susan Panico promises, and you'll be able to restore all your saved data once every 24 hours.

The new online storage feature will come as a relief to any PS3 owner whose hard drive conks out, erasing all their game saves in the process—no small thing, particularly for anyone who's been grinding away at a given title for weeks or months. (I recently lost a year's worth of progress in "Dragon Age: Origins" after a botched hard drive swap, and yes, I'm still pretty bummed about it.)