X360 Arcade on sale; will any HDD work?

[dpodblood]

I've been looking to pick up a 360 for a while now, and tomorrow they will be on sale for $130 CAD ($70 off). But it's the arcade model, which means I would need a hard drive as well. The official MS hard drive costs $150 alone which pretty much negates sale savings. I can get a 320 GB 2.5" SATA drive from my local PC shop for $60. Has anyone tried using a generic hard drive in the Xbox 360 slim? If so are there any issues/compatibility problems?

 

[magomago]

nope

only a ps3 will take standard computer HDDs

 

[purbeast0]

you've been looking to pick up a 360 for a while and didn't know this basic info about a 360? quick google search would have answered your question quicker than it took you to type out your post heh.

and no, you don't "need" a hdd with the arcade 360.

 

[dpodblood]

you've been looking to pick up a 360 for a while and didn't know this basic info about a 360? quick google search would have answered your question quicker than it took you to type out your post heh.

and no, you don't "need" a hdd with the arcade 360.

Thanks for the snarky reply; someone must have had a crappy Christmas! Anyway, I did do some more research, and you can put a generic HDD in the 360 but it won't fit properly without the case. Turns out the case can be bought from here:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.48653

or the whole hard drive here:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.46748

A lot better than the $150 MS is asking!

 

[fatpat268]

Thanks for the snarky reply; someone must have had a crappy Christmas! Anyway, I did do some more research, and you can put a generic HDD in the 360 but it won't fit properly without the case. Turns out the case can be bought from here:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.48653

or the whole hard drive here:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.46748

A lot better than the $150 MS is asking!

It won't work.


You could conceivably flash a standard drive's firmware, and it would work, but it requires a lot more work than buying it and plugging it in.

Edit: The drive in your second link WILL work.

 

[dpodblood]

Cool I plan on buying the drive in my second link. Thanks Pat! $180 for an Xbox 360 250 gig sounds like a good deal to me. 🙂

 

[Ross Ridge]

Cool I plan on buying the drive in my second link. Thanks Pat! $180 for an Xbox 360 250 gig sounds like a good deal to me. 🙂

Just to make it clear, you're getting an Xbox 360 4G and a cloned non-Microsoft 250GB hard drive. Microsoft hasn't banned anyone for using third-party drives like this, and may never do so, but what you're getting isn't quite the same thing as an Xbox 360 250G.

 

[dpodblood]

Just to make it clear, you're getting an Xbox 360 4G and a cloned non-Microsoft 250GB hard drive. Microsoft hasn't banned anyone for using third-party drives like this, and may never do so, but what you're getting isn't quite the same thing as an Xbox 360 250G.

Yeah, I get that. But as long as they continue not to ban 3rd party HDDs it should be essentially the same thing. I really only need the HDD for XBLA games.

 

[Ross Ridge]

Yeah, I get that. But as long as they continue not to ban 3rd party HDDs it should be essentially the same thing. I really only need the HDD for XBLA games.

Another option is to get a 16GB (or less) USB stick and plug that into your Xbox 360. It should hold a lot Xbox Live Arcade games and cost less than the cloned 250 GB hard drive.

 

[Queasy]

Just pick up an old Xbox 360 HDD used, take it out of the housing, and place it in your new 360.

You can get 20GB, 60GB and 120GB sizes fairly cheap and you don't have to worry about messing around with firmware.

 

[Kaervak]

Another drawback to the third party drive setup is it doesn't have the emulation partition for original Xbox games. There is a way to get the emulation partition on the third party drive, but it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. It's a non issue if you don't ever plan on playing original xbox games on the 360, just something to be aware of.

 

[dpodblood]

Another drawback to the third party drive setup is it doesn't have the emulation partition for original Xbox games. There is a way to get the emulation partition on the third party drive, but it seems to be more trouble than it's worth. It's a non issue if you don't ever plan on playing original xbox games on the 360, just something to be aware of.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of this, but good to know. Shouldn't be a big deal for me since I own the original Xbox anyway.

 

[mmntech]

IIRC, you can use any USB drive for media storage. However, game data must be stored on an official Microsoft internal drive. Wouldn't be such a big deal if they weren't so damn expensive. But, you should be able to find a used one around. Try eBay.

 

[Ross Ridge]

IIRC, you can use any USB drive for media storage. However, game data must be stored on an official Microsoft internal drive. Wouldn't be such a big deal if they weren't so damn expensive. But, you should be able to find a used one around. Try eBay.

Actually according to Microsoft's support site USB drives can now be use to store just about everything but music files. Apparently any game function the requires a hard drive to work (like Halo Reach co-op) won't work a USB storage device, but Xbox Live Arcade games work fine.

 

[jcarson]

I tried to download a game demo to a flash drive. No go. It wouldnt even let me choose it.

4GB Xbox slim. 2GB Flash drive.

 

[dpodblood]

I ordered the drive from deal extreme. Here's hoping everything works out fine.

 

[Ross Ridge]

I tried to download a game demo to a flash drive. No go. It wouldnt even let me choose it.

You need to set up the USB storage device first before the Xbox 360 will let you use it for general storage. The support link above has the instructions.