Xbox 360 Hard drives

[Bee Cool]

I have a Slim 360 that only has the 4gb of storage, so I have been looking to upgrade as I want to install all of my 360 shmups. I've seen a lot of 3rd party hard drives for sale which are a good bit cheaper than the official hard drives. From what I've read they don't have emulation support for original xbox titles which I don't care about, my main concern is that I'm not certain about the build quality of the drives.

Has anyone here bought a 3rd party 360 hard drive? If they are pretty reliable I'll go and pick one up.

Thanks.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Getting an official Microsoft 360 HDD will be just fine for your shmupping needs. Whenever I get a new 360 game, it gets installed to the HDD with plently of room to spare. Of course, you can buy the 360 Slim 320GB HDD nowdays. Not only that, some 360 games require the need to access an HDD setup anyways. Some folks just get on by with using two 64GB USB drives for storage though. Plus there's Microsoft's Cloud Storage to consider as well (new for the 2012 season).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[StarCreator]

If you want to be really, really cheap about it, you can buy your own 2.5" hard drive and just slide it in - the connectors on the 360 S are standard SATA. The console should be able to format it IIRC.

They also sell enclosures that mimic the official one on sites like DealExtreme, if you're worried about a bare drive rattling around without one.

[Elixir]

Yeah, I have one of those obviously cloned knock-offs from Dealextreme.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/120gb-hard ... lack-48648

It's been about a year, but it works fine, no problems at all.

[Ji-L87]

I've used a 120gb HDD I bought from china for my non-slim 360 arcade back in...*checks* 2009, which have worked well. If it's 3rd party or just refurbished, I don't know, but as you say I'm not able to play Xbox originals and trying to install the necessary emulation files manually from a CD (was possible in the old dashboard, not sure about now) didn't really change anything. It does have a rainbow-ish Microsoft stickers on the bottom though.

As for slim-drives, I honestly can't answer but if they work anything like mine, it should work fine.

[SolderFace]

I would use a USB stick or USB hard drive if you already have one. you do not need to use microsoft brand stuff for external drives. I do because I like warranties and product support without people pointing fingers at other manufacturers. on the first xbox, opening your plastic hard drive holder to do a SATA install would result in permanent ban of your XBOX live gamertag with no refund for your $60, AND a permanent BAN for your console as well. good luck seeing if the policy has changed.

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Flash-Sa ... 003EV7ED8/

http://www.amazon.com/320GB-Internal-Sl ... 006NRMBF6/

the price is not that bad considering the hard drive shortage after the factories flooded. microsoft at one time would just double the price of what you would expect to pay but thats not the case here. microsoft retailers are locked into strict product pricing that is determined way in advance of the release date. computer hard drives have gone up with fluctuation however.

oh and I just got an email from dealextreme to say "sorry to everyone if your order is taking up to 3 months to ship"

so good luck getting shanghai'd

[Bee Cool]

Thanks for the advice guys, I just bought a 120gb HDD for pretty cheap.

[JBueno MD]

Also consider getting a Flash Drive for Mushihimesama Futari, I find it runs much better off from it than from the disc or HDD. A must if you plan on purchasing the game´s DLC Black Label mode.

[Bee Cool]

I've played Mushi Black Label on my North American Xbox with a 60GB hard drive, and on my Japanese Slim 4gb drive and I haven't noticed any performance issues.

What should I be looking for?

[JBueno MD]

I've played Mushi Black Label on my North American Xbox with a 60GB hard drive, and on my Japanese Slim 4gb drive and I haven't noticed any performance issues.

What should I be looking for?

Well I as other users experimented terrible slowdown replication while playing off from HDD, with sections that went in and out of slowdown too damn quickly and even some frameskipping when playing on traditional HDDs. It was really annoying and definitely got in the way of gameplay.

But if your Xbox has the built in flash 4GB drive you should be good to go. Mushi Futari disc install + DLC come around to about 1.1 GB, so you get plenty of space for saves, etc.

[SolderFace]

last time I checked, you need to have the disc in the drive even if you install to the hard drive. the hard drives from the old xbox 360 do not read faster than the disk in any game that I have tried. if you experience the 4gb internal storage being fatser than a hard drive, I believe you but I don't see how your average USB flash drive would be faster than a hard drive. even the official xbox 8GB USB flash drive that I own is slower than the 160GB hard drive that came in my slim 360.

once the level is loaded, its in ram. I did my own test and I found that the system resources are less available when your online and ready to receive messages. this is what causes the slowdown people are talking about. although I would not say it is game breaking and you still have slowdown in some places even on a good day. BL GOD will still have slowdown always but level 2 of 1.5 original feels noticeably slower when connected to xbox live.