so my 360 HDD is going bad.....

[Zargon]

if I dont replace it before it goes belly up, I assume I lose all my saved games unless I back them up?

anyone have the cable I can borrow to do it before I get another HDD?

I read alot of places that you cant back up every saved game so I could miss some without doing the cable do-dad

 

[RedRooster]

There's only a handful of games that won't transfer over to a new hd, don't sweat it.

But yes, you'll lose everything not attached to your profile when it crashes. Which is basically just game saves.

 

[Zargon]

thanks for the quick response

do they manually load well to a usb key or anything like that? or do I need to plug one in, and load the games and save to the flash instead of the HDD?

 

[Kabob]

If you call M$ and explain that your HDD is dying and you need an Xfer cable they may send you one, I dunno. I borrowed mine from a guy on [H]ardforum.

 

[Zargon]

If you call M$ and explain that your HDD is dying and you need an Xfer cable they may send you one, I dunno. I borrowed mine from a guy on [H]ardforum.

yeah I heard sometimes it takes weeks for it to show up

 

[Kabob]

Ahh, I didn't know. If you could find a brand new 120GB HDD from when they first came out I think they came with said transfer cable included.

 

[mindcycle]

How do you know it's dying? You may just need to clear the cache.

 

[Zargon]

How do you know it's dying? You may just need to clear the cache.

its loud as all hell, especially when its seeking or saving a game.

 

[mindcycle]

its loud as all hell, especially when its seeking or saving a game.

Got ya. That may be a hardware problem then.

If you don't mind voiding the warranty you can take the HDD out and hook it up to your PC via SATA. Then grab Explorer 360 to view the contents and back them up to your computer.

This article will walk you through removing the HDD and installing a WD drive (which you could use to replace the faulty one). They cost around $50 bucks.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150970/upgrade_your_xbox_360s_hard_drive_on_the_cheap.html

 

[Zargon]

Got ya. That may be a hardware problem then.

If you don't mind voiding the warranty you can take the HDD out and hook it up to your PC via SATA. Then grab Explorer 360 to view the contents and back them up to your computer.

This article will walk you through removing the HDD and installing a WD drive (which you could use to replace the faulty one). They cost around $50 bucks.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/150970/upgrade_your_xbox_360s_hard_drive_on_the_cheap.html

Yeah I support about 500 end users on about 250 machines, I hear lots of HDD's on the brink of total meltdown.......I heard it and was like OH SHIT!

I did see that, thanks for a better link than the article I read. I would love to not worry about randomly getting banned from live. But I am also tempted to buy an Elite, and get a transfer cable. And do the scorpio mod to my 3 year old 20 gig, they do make good MCE's anyways

but my wife will want me to do whatever is cheapest :\

 

[mindcycle]

I did see that, thanks for a better link than the article I read. I would love to not worry about randomly getting banned from live. But I am also tempted to buy an Elite, and get a transfer cable. And do the scorpio mod to my 3 year old 20 gig, they do make good MCE's anyways

but my wife will want me to do whatever is cheapest :\

I have a WD 160 gig drive formatted to 120 with the MS firmware. I connect to live almost everyday. As far as I know no one has even been banned for using a WD drive. Make sure you get the correct model though as there are only a few models (all western digitals) that work. A 20gb scorpio may work but i've never heard of anyone installing anything other than a 120 or greater drive.

You can find them preinstalled in a case on ebay for around $60-$80 depending on who you get it from. Search for: WD1200BEVS

 

[Zargon]

thats good to know.

found a few, including a guy schleping 7200 RPM drives with 16mb of cache that he claims work and he has great feedback.

 

[CJ8501]

Zargon, any chance you could link me to the guy selling them? I'm in need of a new hard drive for my 360 also. Thanks man

 

[mindcycle]

thats good to know.

found a few, including a guy schleping 7200 RPM drives with 16mb of cache that he claims work and he has great feedback.

From what i've read 7200 RPM drives don't make a huge difference in terms of performance over the standard 5400 RPM drives. If anything it may reduce load times slightly, but that's about the only benefit.

If you can get it for a decent price i'd say go for it, but IMO I wouldn't let it influence your decision over the standard 5400 drives.