[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Upgrade Your Xbox 360's Hard Drive on the Cheap here

[coastie65]

This is so much simpler with the PS3. It is a good tutorial though and worth the effort to keep from more $ from going to Micro$oft. :) coastie65

[timothytripp]

This whole problem would go away if MS would just let you use external hard drives. There's no need to "boot" from the hard drive it's essentially just treated as a huge memory card. Then people could put a 1TB drive on it if they wanted. It would sure make the 360 Arcade easier to suggest to my family and friends who want a 360 but don't want to drop $300 on it. What do they do with their $200 video game fund? They go buy a Wii. It's a shame really.
MS can make up any money they'd potentially lose on selling a hard drive by selling movies and TV. They need to start SELLING movies like Sony ALREADY does with the PS3 and then users would immediately start feeling the need for larger hard drives.
The key to it all though is just standard USB2 external hard drives.
As coastie65 said though, this is a good tutorial and helps people avoid price gauging of a STANDARD hard drive like MS does with these hard drives.

[rtfire1]

why i am getting a ps3 much easyer to work on and upgrade

[coastie65]

This old gamer got one earlier this month (80 Gb).

[rtfire1]

coastie, my friend mike drop the cash to get the new xbox 360 hd then when he saw how easy the hack was he was pissed. now if there was a hack to get the blur fixed on 360 he would be happy (gta4 blur).

[coastie65]

Yep, it is easy and Sony has the step by step in the PS3 guide. All you need is a lap top HDD that is 5400 RPM and you are good to go.

[billytech]

Then get a ps3 if you want one...this is aimed, (rather obviously), at people with XBox360's that would like to try this as opposed to getting the hard drive offered by MS.

[tanner67]

Great article...unfortunately would it be possible as to which "download and mount a DOS image file" do we actually download?
There are 7 AUTOMATIC BOOT DISK and 7 DISKETTE IMAGES to choose from.
Which one do I download. Everything else is straight forward as per the instructions.
Please Do Not Post Twice, I have deleted your second post. coastie65

[ccnewcomb]

"MS can make up any money they'd potentially lose on selling a hard drive by selling movies and TV. They need to start SELLING movies like Sony ALREADY does with the PS3 and then users would immediately start feeling the need for larger hard drives."

Microsoft has been selling movie rentals, TV shows, games, and other downloads like new songs for Rock band since at least last year.....before Sony had any online store on the PS3. The shame is that we have to hack the system to get a cost effective upgrade.

[bcamara]

I'm assuming that just about everyone out there already has an established Xbox Live account, saved games, etc. already stored on their current 360's hard drive.
So is there a way to transfer all of that data onto this snazzy new hard hard, or would you be just starting over from scratch?

[timothytripp]

"Microsoft has been selling movie rentals..."



I agree they've been doing a better job with almost everything than Sony, but the fact remains that on a PS3 users can BUY movies permanently where that option does not exist on the 360. MS would have a much stronger argument that BluRay is not necessary for content if they would allow me to buy movies in digital format the same way Apple and Sony do today. A BluRay disk is typically $25-$30 and I'd be willing to pay $20 for a 720p version of a movie as long as I owned it (the exact same way as you own a TV episode on 360 when you buy it today). I'd like to be able to download it when I need it, and get rid of disks altogether, but there's not a good way to do that today. Even Sony is only selling SD versions of their movies. This is like handing the DLC battle to Sony since they now both sell movies AND sell BluRay disks.

[samwapi]

Doesn't this void the warranty though?

[billytech]

About Sony's letting you "BUY" a movie. they allow you to download it...once. Thats it. you want to upgrade your hard drive afterwards?. nope. you get it once.You can't back up a copy or redown load it again. if you call customer service, they'll tell you that it's because Sony allows you to remove the hard drive, and the movie is copy protected with DRM. You can't even put the drive in another PS3 and play the movie.( I guess that PS3 will NEED that big hard drive you put in, because it will fill up pretty quick with HD content. I know my HP computers 250 G HD fills up fast with HD TV shows.) If you have an XBox, at least MS allows you to re-download the TV shows you have purchased whenever you want. I think they though it through better, and realised it would be an issue.

[lordofcheese]

i would totally be happy if they did this, considering it costs me over 200bucks a month to get downloads off of live alone, for net speeds of 256k down, 56kup sat wifi connection...........also a means of transfering data between drives would be decent......like when you get the 120hdd if you got it...so we wouldnt have to restart all of our(my) games.....dont see how they dont see these things seein how they in the game bizz...lol oh well it would DEFINATLY help wid costs for me..........alaska is one mean mofo to live in.......aside from partly not known to be part of the 50states, the..ill stop haha this aint no bio page for me, all of this aside, this would be a nice improvement for me(and others of course)

[hatrickwah]

What about all our saved game data as well as any video on our current drives? What's the trick to transferring the data to my new drive?

[surgfly]

Can you use higher capacity WD scorpio drives for this hack?

[Mandingo]

Step 5 says to run hddhackr but you didn't mention that it needs to be downloaded and copied on the thumb drive in Step 1.

[M45732]

I'm quite concerned with this how-to. I read this article in the magazine in the car one day and when we got home, I just about went directly to my favorite online computer parts vendor and ordered the hard drive. BUT! Then the thought ran through my head, "Will I get banned from LIVE?" That's where I'm very concerned. I regularly use LIVE to download demos and play online with friends. My 20GB HDD is full and I must delete something if I wish to add anything. That's where this tutorial seems like a no-brainer. I've built many computers and love opening electronics up. This how-to is exciting even if for the simple fact of doing it. Yet I ask PC World and readers alike, "Is there any knowledge that I would be -or people have been- banned by LIVE for doing just this?"

[PaulKemp]

Yes, we need to know if this gets you banned from xbox live! Can somebody please confirm that you dont get banned?