I know that when you beat the final boss of Mass Effect, the game made an "endgame" save that the player does not have access to. To remedy this when Mass Effect 2 came out (and I had a new Xbox) I simply transferred over my last Mass Effect save before the last boss fight and beat it again to create an endgame save on my new system.
In Mass Effect 2, however, we can't transfer game saves (and I have yet another new Xbox). I'm wondering if I can start up my most recent Mass Effect 2 save file on my old system, make a save to my flash drive, load the game from the flash drive on my new Xbox, and then make a save to the HDD on my new Xbox and load it in Mass Effect 3. The only problem with this is if Mass Effect 2 generates an endgame save similar to how Mass Effect did or if I can't specify which storage device to save to. Is there a way to change your storage device to save to when you've chosen a different storage device to load from?
I've continued playing ME:2 after the endgame (for the DLC missions) and don't have a save before the final mission anymore. If ME:3 imports based on an endgame save of ME:2 then I think I'm screwed. Does anyone know if ME:2 creates an endgame save? If so, has anyone heard anything from BioWare about whether or not the ME:3 import system will be based on that save or if it is based on any save after you have beaten the final mission?
Edit: Resolved: The Xbox would not let me 'Copy' my game save to a new location, but I was able to 'Move' it to cloud storage. Thank you Ktash for the suggestions (could have sworn I tried that).
Best Answer
While I can't shed any light on how to troubleshoot your file transfer issues, I can shed some light on how Mass Effect 2 saves work (and this should be true across all platforms).
Every Mass Effect 2 save file has a "QuestCompletion" variable that can be one of three values. Gibbed's save editor has dubbed these, "Quest Incomplete", "Lived To Fight Again", and "Went Out in a Blaze of Glory".
There is no "mission complete" save generated by ME2 like there is in ME1. Instead, every save file has this variable in one of the three states. Presumably, only saves where Shepherd "Lived to Fight Again" will be viable to import, as Bioware has previously stated dead Commander Shepherds won't be importable into ME3. (And obviously, you can't import without beating the game).