I'd like to state up front that I don't think there's anything wrong with the console itself, but it was my reaction when it happened.

Some backstory is in order: I was a clueless Playstation fanboy, praising the earth sony walked on. I owned both a PS1 and PS2, though my friend had bought an Xbox 360. At any opportunity he'd try get me to buy one, but I was holding out for a PS3. 1 year after it's release, I cracked. The PS3 had nothing interesting going for it. MGS4 was still far off and I found none of the current games appealing, while I had played a fair amount of good 360 games at that point and I think Mass Effect was the thing that really sold me on it. I save up some money and buy a 360 bundle with Forza 2 and Viva Pinata. My new 360 arrived broken. It had a weird graphical issue, and I got it replaced through the internet store where I bought it. My second 360 lasted 2 years. Annoyingly, I had just bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Darksiders. It was the infamous red ring. I bought 250 gb 360S almost a year after.

I've done a fair bit of catching up this year, while trying to keep up. I've bought Red Dead, Hot Pursuit and Fallout: New Vegas. I adore Bethesda. While I liked Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are among my favorite games of this generation. But New Vegas is a mess. Even now, a year after it's release and a hefty patch. I still played it though, and a lot. The game would freeze with regularity. More than once I've lost an hour or more, and more than once my autosave was also corrupted by such an incident.

The only reason why I'm talking specifically about Fallout is that, like when I'm playing Fallout, my 360 itself is now freezing up. I've had this problem for weeks now. When I turn it on, I can play and get a meaningful experience, but eventually it'll freeze. If I immediately turn it back on, it freezes after a short time. My xbox is less than a year old. How can this be happening, I thought. Unlike most people though, I consulted Microsof's customer support site, specifically on screen freezes.

I followed a step-by-step guide on the site. After completing a few steps, the conclusion was a hard drive issue. The last time my 360 broke, my harddrive was fine and I could import all my save games back into the new one. However, sending my hard drive away to get a replacement scares me. I tried using my MP3 player as temporary storage, but it was rejected, my old memory unit isn't compatible with my new 360, and the only other storage unit I can think of is hooked up to the TV. I suppose I could wait for cloud storage. Also, Skyrim is released in less than 2 weeks and I can't be in a situation where a physical copy of that game exists in my house and I cannot play it.

Edit: After removing the HDD and putting it back in two times I haven't had any troubles and hope this issue is resolved.