Xbox Insanity

So after a year of suffering with a 4gig Xbox I am fed up! Tired of switching out thumb drives, tired of having to delete and redownload arcade games, and dont get me started on load times! But the idea of spending 130$ on the Xbox branded hard drive makes me a little sick when I can buy an 1T external drive for thirty dollars less. So I ask you, Giant Bomb community, should I just buy the 1T hardrive and format it for my 360? Will it act functionally the same and allow me to install games to it, and even let me finally play Burnout Paradise online with the 2 people still crashing cars?

No, what you do is buy a 360 hard drive enclosure (if you're not using a slim) and a hard drive that's supported by (MOD LINK REMOVAL)

The max storage that's supported by the 360 for flash drives (I don't think it even works for external hard drives) is 16GB. The max storage a non-dev/non-jtag Xbox 360 will recognize is 320GB, if you have a 320GB HDDSS.bin and a compatible drive.

You can only use non M$ branded storage on a hacked Xbox.

@Beaudacious said:

You can only use non M$ branded storage on a hacked Xbox.

That's false, you only need a JTAG if you want to use more than 320GB (the current largest available HDDSS.bin.) If you have a drive that's supported by hddhackr and the correct size HDDSS.bin you can flash the firmware on the drive and use it on an unmodified 360.

Ugh, god damn you Microsoft...... Well thanks for the help guys.

@david3cm said:

Ugh, god damn you Microsoft...... Well thanks for the help guys.

If you don't want to flash your own I'm pretty sure you can get those pre-modified hard drives for cheaper than what you'd pay Microsoft on eBay, like $50 for 120GB.

Check around for some deals. I got the 250gb drive for about $50 from woot.com.

Just eat the cost and buy an official drive. It's bullshit they cost so much, but spending the money to avoid the headache is well worth saving yourself the frustration. I limped along with a 20GB drive until early '11 and it was really annoying having to constantly delete DLC and uninstall/reinstall games all the time. Finally caught a 205GB on sale and just ate the cost. Haven't had to spend a single second worrying about or dealing with storage since. It was worth the added cost, even if it made me feel dirty.

My original 20 gig 360 red-ringed for the 2nd time so I said enough is enough (and it's time for a change!) and bought a 250 gig elite back when that was a thing.

@david3cm Also chiming in that you should just eat it - ever since my 250gb it's been heaven I install 2-3 disc Games without blInking an eye. Unless you want use hacking tools and visit websites that look like you're getting keylogged then look fr a sale or just straight up buy it. MS costs are bullshit but so are fast food prices when you think about it and were ok with paying those.

buy a new xbox.

best solution. it's not THAT much more expensive than a stupid proprietary hard drive AND you get the added benefit of having the newer "safer" (!!!!) machine.

edit: okay sorry, for some reason I thought the 250gig 360 was down to $199-ish. apparently that's the evil 4gig model ...

but you could sell your current machine and even out the cost that way.