Switching the hard drive of an Xbox 360

[Arnizipal]

I bought my xbox 360 in the year it was released, so I have the classic (non-slim non-elite) version with a 20 gigabyte hard drive.
10 gigs is used by the xbox system itself so I have about 10 gigs worth of free space.
At first this wasn't really a problem. Most early games didn't come with DLC, and xbox live didn't offer any (big) games for download.

Lately though, I've been downloading games and extra content for my games (mostly extra stuff for Mass Effect) and my storage capacity is shrinking rapidly.
I've been looking into getting a larger disk, but all I could find were hard disks for the xbox 360 slim, which don't fit on my system.

I scoured eBay and managed to dig up a 60GB drive. Once connected, it seemed this disk has a Chinese name, which I thought was a bit fishy.
Years ago I bought a Nintendo DS game with internal memory and it went kerplonk on me after a few weeks.
When I sent it to Nintendo for repair it turned out it was a Chinese fake.
I would dread to think this could happen to all my stored xbox savegames.

As such, I have some questions:

• When you transfer stuff from one hard disk to the other, is it a copy or a move?
  Basically, if something goes wrong with my new disk, can I still fall back on the stuff I had on my older disk or is the older disk emptied when the copy is done?
  
• Should I decide not to take the risk and just shell out for a new xbox with larger hard disk, will I be able to transfer my stuff from the old type of drive to the new type?

[Jedi152]

I only transferred from my old white 360 Pro to my new Slim, but that was a move. The old Xbox only retained startup info - not even my Gamertag was saved.

Microsoft sell a lead to transfer the data from the old drive to the new style one easily. You just connect it, switch on and select 'start transfer to console' and pick what files you want. Alternatively (since the lead is cheekily quite expensive) you can apparently just use a USB stick to transfer to data to the new XBox.

TBH i wouldn't risk it with your saves. Was the drive from Hong Kong or somewhere local?

[Arnizipal]

I won it on eBay from an Italian online shop.
Only the "dashboard" name of the disk is in Chinese, the menu's and stuff are in regular English.

That said, the disk looks decidedly less fancy than my current disk.
More plastic, less chrome. Different type of serials...

[Grimmeth]

Apparently the new 'slim' disks are exactly the same as the older style when you take the casing off - that is, if you unscrew the case for the old HDD the new ones should fit right in.
I've not tested this theory myself mind.
Otherwise you can transfer save files and things through USB since an update around 18 months ago I believe, as Jedi said.

[Arnizipal]

Thanks. I'll give the USB stick a try then.

[TheBigBadWolf]

Otherwise you can transfer save files and things through USB since an update around 18 months ago I believe, as Jedi said.

You need to go online and change the licences for any dl content you have though

[Arnizipal]

You need to go online and change the licences for any dl content you have though

Wut?

[Jedi152]

I didn't, all my DLCs and arcade games work fine.

[Wintermute]

Microsoft sell a lead to transfer the data from the old drive to the new style one easily. You just connect it, switch on and select 'start transfer to console' and pick what files you want.

Which is what I did last year when I 'upgraded' from a 360 Elite to a 250S

[Sgt John Keel]

I scoured eBay and managed to dig up a 60GB drive. Once connected, it seemed this disk has a Chinese name, which I thought was a bit fishy.
Years ago I bought a Nintendo DS game with internal memory and it went kerplonk on me after a few weeks.
When I sent it to Nintendo for repair it turned out it was a Chinese fake.
I would dread to think this could happen to all my stored xbox savegames.

If there's an actual HDD in there (and not some jury rigged arrangement of flash chips like this) there are just a few manufacturers left, none of them Chinese: Western Digital, Toshiba and Seagate (and apparently an Indian company named Simmtronics). Everyone else is a subsidiary and all of them should be making decent quality drives (no promises for Simmtronics though, and obviously some still break).

But: never trust a hard drive to not break. Back up! It is also rather more likely that the power supply in the enclosure breaks than the actual hard drive, and I wouldn't assume a 3rd party drive bought on eBay to have the best components in that area. (Although ideally you would be able to extract the drive and put it in a new enclosure, I wouldn't count on it when it comes to proprietary solutions.)

[Arnizipal]

Otherwise you can transfer save files and things through USB since an update around 18 months ago I believe, as Jedi said.

Just tried that, but apparently the xbox needs to format the USB device first.
I'm not going to lose 500GB worth of series and MP3s just to transfer 13GB of data

[Poseidal]

I didn't, all my DLCs and arcade games work fine.

The games are tied to account & console, not to hard drive. I've taken my HDD to use on my friend's 360, but to play a lot of the games I have to log in and connect to LIVE; it won't let you play them without checking your account in this case. If you played them on my console, you could just play them straight away without connecting to the internet.

[Stormtrooper Clark]

I just bought a Slim when my harddrive was used up. I searched for "fat" hardrives and there's a certain irony that finding one that has 50gb usually comes in about £100 more expensive than buying a 320gb for the Slim.