RichKS
Established Member
I don't know if this is going to be helpful to anyone, but I thought it couldn't hurt to post it here.
I recently bought a 120 GB drive for my Xbox. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it was cheap off some bloke on these very forums. It's a US version and came with the transfer cable, but not the software needed to do the transfer. Even if it had, apparently the software which comes with the US version doesn't work on UK 360s.
I don't have a memory unit and wanted to get my data transferred. Being the "poke it and figure out how it works" type, I had a play around and managed to get it all transferred after a few false starts. It all seems to be OK and working fine now, but I've only tested my XBLA games, some demos and game saves. Also some videos. Haven't looked for my ripped music, but didn't have much anyway and really only played about with that since I have a Squeezebox for that sort of thing.
This is what I did which finally worked:
I plugged the new drive into the transfer cable and connected it to my PC. The PC saw it as a mass storage device, which I was only slightly surprised by. It shows up in the Disk Manager as unformatted and gives you the option to initialise it. Since IIRC the 360 file system is bespoke and not readable, this was also not a surprise. Obviously, initialising it under windows would effectively kill it's usefulness as a 360 drive, so I didn't do that.
I then installed Datel's Xport 360, which I downloaded free from their website. It says it supports 120 gig drives and I can safely say that it does. (I'm pretty sure I'd be OK to like to that software here, but not 100% sure so i won't. It's legal and all and pretty easy to find)
Fired up Xport 360 with the drive connected and it saw it fine. Looked at Partition 3 and found the Content directory. Had a nose about, all looked pretty straightforward and I have a healthy "DO NOT TOUCH" attitude to stuff like that, so didn't bugger about with anything.
I shut down Xport 360, stopped and disconnected the drive and transfer cable and then plugged in my old 20 gig drive. Same thing, only obviously more in the Content directory because I have many save games. Exported the whole Content directory to my PC (Drag and drop in Xport 360). That took ages, I probably should have deleted the demos first, but there you have it. Closed Xport 360, stopped the drive, unplugged it, plugged in the 120 gig drive, fired up Xport 360. Copied the contents of the Content directory over to the new drive. Took about 40 mins. The old drive had 6.5 gigs spare.
Stopped the device once that was done, disconnected, put the 120 gig drive back on the 360 and presto, sorted.
Tested my Paid For XBLA games and they are all present and correct and play fine. Tested the Bioshock demo and that ran. Tested a video (the Jericho trailer) and that worked fine. Loaded Bullet Witch and Oblivion and was able to load my save games and the DLC I'd paid for from Oblivion loaded fine too.
My profile appeared not to copy correctly for whatever reason. I needed to recover my profile from XBL. Before you do that you need to delete the copied profile from the drive. But after recovering it worked fine.
So, to summarise:
1) Connect your old 20 gig drive to the transfer cable and plug it into your PC.
2) Run XPort 360 and copy the Content Directory from Partition 3 to your PC.
3) Disconnect the old drive and connect the new one.
4) Run XPort 360 again and copy the Content directory from your PC to the new drive.
5) Disconnect, connect it to your XBox 360 and delete your profile.
6) Recover your profile from XBL.
That worked for me, no problems so far but that doesn't mean there won't ever be any.
Hope that helps someone,
Rich
I recently bought a 120 GB drive for my Xbox. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it was cheap off some bloke on these very forums. It's a US version and came with the transfer cable, but not the software needed to do the transfer. Even if it had, apparently the software which comes with the US version doesn't work on UK 360s.
I don't have a memory unit and wanted to get my data transferred. Being the "poke it and figure out how it works" type, I had a play around and managed to get it all transferred after a few false starts. It all seems to be OK and working fine now, but I've only tested my XBLA games, some demos and game saves. Also some videos. Haven't looked for my ripped music, but didn't have much anyway and really only played about with that since I have a Squeezebox for that sort of thing.
This is what I did which finally worked:
I plugged the new drive into the transfer cable and connected it to my PC. The PC saw it as a mass storage device, which I was only slightly surprised by. It shows up in the Disk Manager as unformatted and gives you the option to initialise it. Since IIRC the 360 file system is bespoke and not readable, this was also not a surprise. Obviously, initialising it under windows would effectively kill it's usefulness as a 360 drive, so I didn't do that.
I then installed Datel's Xport 360, which I downloaded free from their website. It says it supports 120 gig drives and I can safely say that it does. (I'm pretty sure I'd be OK to like to that software here, but not 100% sure so i won't. It's legal and all and pretty easy to find)
Fired up Xport 360 with the drive connected and it saw it fine. Looked at Partition 3 and found the Content directory. Had a nose about, all looked pretty straightforward and I have a healthy "DO NOT TOUCH" attitude to stuff like that, so didn't bugger about with anything.
I shut down Xport 360, stopped and disconnected the drive and transfer cable and then plugged in my old 20 gig drive. Same thing, only obviously more in the Content directory because I have many save games. Exported the whole Content directory to my PC (Drag and drop in Xport 360). That took ages, I probably should have deleted the demos first, but there you have it. Closed Xport 360, stopped the drive, unplugged it, plugged in the 120 gig drive, fired up Xport 360. Copied the contents of the Content directory over to the new drive. Took about 40 mins. The old drive had 6.5 gigs spare.
Stopped the device once that was done, disconnected, put the 120 gig drive back on the 360 and presto, sorted.
Tested my Paid For XBLA games and they are all present and correct and play fine. Tested the Bioshock demo and that ran. Tested a video (the Jericho trailer) and that worked fine. Loaded Bullet Witch and Oblivion and was able to load my save games and the DLC I'd paid for from Oblivion loaded fine too.
My profile appeared not to copy correctly for whatever reason. I needed to recover my profile from XBL. Before you do that you need to delete the copied profile from the drive. But after recovering it worked fine.
So, to summarise:
1) Connect your old 20 gig drive to the transfer cable and plug it into your PC.
2) Run XPort 360 and copy the Content Directory from Partition 3 to your PC.
3) Disconnect the old drive and connect the new one.
4) Run XPort 360 again and copy the Content directory from your PC to the new drive.
5) Disconnect, connect it to your XBox 360 and delete your profile.
6) Recover your profile from XBL.
That worked for me, no problems so far but that doesn't mean there won't ever be any.
Hope that helps someone,
Rich