To play back up discs you just need to flash your drive with ixtreme firmware. This process varies from drive to drive with the newer ones requiring replacement PCB's. You can copy the games to your HDD but will still need the disc in to play the game.
To play backups from the HDD without the disc in the drive you will need to mod the console using one of the RGH devices available. See
here for info.
edit Game_over got there first
