Xbox Network – How to Use an Old Hard Drive on a New Xbox

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My old XBox RRoD'd for the 2nd time. No more repairing it, instead I got a new XBox 360 4GB. I ordered a drive enclosure for my old XBox's 120GB hard drive to fit the form-factor of the new XBox however it hasn't arrived yet.

My question: I want to start playing the new XBox, I realize I won't have my profile, namely saved games (when is all that stuff gonna move to this cloud I've been hearing so much about?). I just want to make sure before I go through the setup process that once I've setup my new XBox, I'll have the chance to import my profile from the old HDD once it's installed?

Secondary question: do I have the choice to move the profile info (saved games, etc…) to the 4GB inside the new XBox (which I'm presuming is SSD) or should I leave it on the HDD?

Best Answer

First of all, keep in mind that on the 360, saved games and Xbox Live profiles are ultimately stored in different "places". While you can keep both on a hard drive (or on a memory unit or flash drive if the saved games are small enough), saved games are only kept locally, while your Xbox Live profile is tracked on Microsoft's servers.

If you're talking about an Xbox Live profile, then it will "move" the first time you recover it - once you recover it from Microsoft's servers, that becomes your up-to-date profile, so you won't need to copy it from your hard drive. Your saved games won't be accessible until you get that enclosure so you can connect your old hard drive.

Local profiles, ones not associated with an Xbox Live account, are only stored locally, so if that's what you have, then you'll need to wait for the enclosure to arrive.

Once the hard drive is connected to your new 360, you can move whatever saved files will fit to the internal flash drive. (If you go to My Xbox, System Settings on the far right, and choose Memory, it'll show up as Memory Unit (3.x GB free), and you can copy files from your hard drive to it and vice versa.) I don't personally believe there's a difference between storing your profile on the internal drive and storing it on the hard drive. However, if you find yourself playing away from home on occasion, you may be better off picking up a small USB flash drive (up to 16 GB), formatting it for the 360, and storing your profile on that. You can simply pull the USB drive and take it to your friend's house without needing to recover your profile at either place.

Related Solutions

Xbox – the most cost efficient way to increase storage on an Xbox 360

The cheapest option is definitely going to be the USB route as mentioned by others.

Ignoring the fact that Microsoft's hardware prices are inflated and overpriced, if you go strictly off a cost per GB, then buying the console with the 250GB drive is your best bet for the money. Using the averages prices these days

GB    Total $    $ per GB
250   $100.00    $0.40    (w/console)
250   $130.00    $0.52    (standalone drive)
120   $100.00    $0.83    (standalone drive)
60     $70.00    $1.17    (standalone drive)
16     $20.00    $1.25    (USB Drive)

I would assume the standalone drives have a warranty of their own, and the one with the console would be part of the console warranty, but I'm not sure on those.

Xbox 360 – Hardware Differences in 4GB vs 250GB Models

First, realize that, among other things, your old drive will not work in the new 360 Slim, so you would need to find one of the old models in order to keep your harddrive. If you do happen upon the old design, the second thing you should realize is that a lot of the downloaded content on your harddrive is keyed to your current console. There are ways around it, but it isn't as straight forward as plugging your old harddrive into your new console. Note that this method should also work with the new slim models.

As for the differences between the 4GB and 250GB models, the 4GB model is pretty analogous to the old Arcade models. It comes with an empty harddrive bay, which accepts the same style harddrive as the 250GB model. Some games may not allow all of the features for the 4GB consoles, although this may have been fixed. As far as I know, the rest of the hardware is the same. You could just buy the harddrive to put in a 4GB console, but that's paying an unnecessary premium. Personally, I would get the 250GB slim model if I were forced to replace my console at my cost.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Xbox – the most cost efficient way to increase storage on an Xbox 360

Xbox 360 – Hardware Differences in 4GB vs 250GB Models

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