I suddenly realize how lacking my X360 premium is once again

[Mr Buckshot]

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6176090/index.html

Yes, you can upgrade that 2.5" hard drive in the PS3 with any old laptop hard drive, either 5400 or 7200 rpm. Without voiding the warranty. My neighbor just bought a 160 GB 7200rpm 2.5" hard drive for only a hundred bucks and stuck it in his system.

Add to the fact that the PS3 allows data to be saved to universal media storage - that is, USB flash drives, SD cards, Memory Sticks, even MP3 players. Therefore, you can exchange saves without buying overpriced proprietary memory cards (remember how those 8 MB cards cost $50 back then?), and back up data when you upgrade the hard drive.

On the other hand, my X360 refuses to let me save data to USB flash drives and the like. I've been able to rip my favorite songs to the 20 GB hard drive from those devices, but I can't transfer data back to them. Unless I mod the console (which voids my precious 3 year warranty), I can't bypass that memory card or an XBL subscription if I want to make my game saves portable. And NO, I refuse to pay $30-$40 for a 64 MB memory card when I can buy a 2GB flash drive or SD card for that price.

Why am I ranting? The 20 GB hard drive in my 360 Premium just died, that's why. I can still play my games, but I can't save them any more, so when I game tomorrow I have to start from the beginning again. A replacement 20 GB HDD costs a fucking $100-$140 Canadian at Futureshop, and the 120 GB hard drive costs nearly $200 here. Meanwhile, all those PS3 owners can happily buy laptop hard drives that are larger than 120 GB for lower prices. And if their hard drives die like mine did, they can still re-use PS2 memory cards (with a $15 adapter), or just stick in flash drives or SD cards.

Seriously, if the god damned 360 allowed me to save my data to one of my 1 GB USB flash drive, I'd be much happier right now. For now, farewell to all my game saves and ripped music. There is no way I'm paying for the 64 MB or 512 MB memory card when I can get high-capacity flash drives for the same price. Fuck it, I can't even use those old xbox 1 cards which are very cheap right now.

Anyone have a spare X360 hard drive to donate to me? If not, this December I'll have to lay off buying a few games (except Halo 3 of course) and buy a new hard drive.

edit: I read up a bit, I know that the software emulation for backwards compatibility drives the cost up, but since it's free from MS as a download, there's no reason not to just get an empty hard drive and install the emulation separately.

[Zeph]

I thought you could take an hdd with zeros written to all of it and plug it into the 360. After that the 360 would format it properly and you could use it like normal. Does that not happen?

[Mr Buckshot]

Really? I thought that to install any old PC hard drive on a 360, you needed to perform modifications that would void the warranty. I know it's not as simple as the PS3 procedure of simply taking it out and slapping in a new one.

[Digikid]

I thought you could take an hdd with zeros written to all of it and plug it into the 360. After that the 360 would format it properly and you could use it like normal. Does that not happen?

oh DO TELL!!!!!!! That would be a kickass thing to do. :)

[Syuusuke]

What do you mean "with zeroes written tall of it"

[Atty]

No data.

[Saggy]

What I have is a 64MB Memory card and a Datel Transfer Kit so I just put my saves on my memory card and transfer them to my PC to free up room on my memory card. Then when I want the save I just transfer it back from my PC to my memory card. Try looking into that, even if you don't want to buy a memory card, this could be one of your best options...

[jngrow]

Take care of it better. And, well, those are the advantages of the PS3, it's pretty much a computer. Except with no games.

[Zeph]

What do you mean "with zeroes written tall of it"

No data and completely uniform and clean. When the 360 was being released, there were some sites saying the 360 would think its own drive was damaged and properly format it in an attempt to repair it.

[leorimolo]

Theres an app called hdd hacker that formats the Western Digital BEVS hdd to work with the xbox 360....

I would have done this long ago but the down side is that it uses the same info as that old hdd so detection is very simple and easily bannable.

Edit: also it has to be smaller than 120gigas

LEo

[Mr Buckshot]

And, well, those are the advantages of the PS3, it's pretty much a computer. Except with no games.

True, those X360-vs-PS3 comparisons focus too much on their technical horsepower - IMO, both systems are top-of-the-line and fairly even. The PS3 does win out in terms of storage options and backwards compatibility by a large margin. I'm planning to buy a PS3 (around $549 Canadian here) around early 2008 anyway unless the Blu-ray players become really cheap.

I'm desperately looking around to find a used 64MB memory card. I am so not paying over $10 for one of those when for their starting price of $30 here, I can buy a 2 GB flash drive. I mean, I'm still quite furious that my neighbor could happily back up his saves onto an 8 GB flash drive while he changed the internal 60 GB hard drive to a 160 GB.

I've also checked on google on how to install any old hard drive on an X360 without having to perform warranty-voiding mods. So far no luck. And I can make the X360 save data to my USB flash drives, but that also needs mods.

[dg]

You can try this. (http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox360-tools/HDDHackr.php)

[Mr Buckshot]

Thanks, dg. Best part is that it doesn't seem to void my precious warranty. I just need to buy the appropriate hard drive now.

Now if someone could get this working for flash drives...ownage.

This must be a rare case since the hard drive breaks down instead of the unit itself (then again, my play time is restricted to 1-2 hours on friday and saturday nights, and I keep a powerful fan blowing at the 360, plus I unplug it after I stop playing).

[Kybo_Ren]

What do you mean "with zeroes written tall of it"
I.e.


dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda0


Don't execute that command, by the way... it would erase the first SATA (or SCSI) disk with zeros, obviously.