Be Excellent To Each Other

I am sorely tempted by this: http://www.thegametrain.com/xbox-360-60 ... p-918.html

given that the 120Gb ones are so expensive (and I doubt the Comet deal is still going)...

...do they ALL come with transfer kits?

Is there anything else I need to know?

120gb drives certainly have always done as far as I know.

If not, several here, me included, could surely lend you a kit.

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That is tempting.

Anyone know of that Comet deal (£59.99, was it?) is still going?

You could always try popping in your local branch. Mine have never discounted anything in their lives though

I upgraded last month. You get the cable and the software to do the transfer with the hard drive. Pretty painless task, done in an hour or so.

Blockbuster have 60gig ones for £59.99, and 120gig ones for £79.99. Which isn't bad at all, frankly. I've yet to subject myself to thegametrain's ordering system (fuck off with creating a fucking password, you gits) to find out how much shipping will be, but at least I know that somewhat reasonable deals are available practically on my doorstep.

One voice says: '60 gig is plenty! You've had to accumulate a lot of crap over the last two years to just fill 20, and how many games d'you think you'll really have installed at any one time, eh? Y'bassa.'

Other voice says: 'Won't you feel a schmuck knowing that for an extra £20 you could have had TWICE the capacity! You know how it is... at first you marvelled at all the space of a new hard drive, next thing you knew stuff came out of the woodwork to fill it utterly!'

Other other voice says: 'Well, buy a big hard drive and you'll feel a right twat when your 360 finally succumbs to old age yet again. Er, unless you just buy an Arcade and then plug this big hard drive into it, that is...'

I'll have a peek in Comet tomorrow and see.

Go for 120GB. Realistically, you won't fill it with XBLA games, saves and DLC. BUT, you will fill it when you realise how awesomely good it is to play without the DVD drive whirring away constantly. I've installed a few of my most played games to the hard drive now, and it probably won't be long before I've passed the 60GB mark.

Yep, I've filled up about 55GB, now, and I currently don't have any demos, and very little music or videos. It was hovering around 25GB until the NXE came out.

All 360s are now equivalent in terms of HD output and such now, right? The only difference between an Elite and a Premium/Pro/Standard is 60 or 120Gb HDDs, right? And even the Arcades do HDMI and such now, RIGHT?

Just so my final voice in my head is right if my 360 (2006) conks out again.

Of course, for twice the price of the 120Gb disk, plus the cost of a decent takeaway, you could get an entire 360 Elite.

I regret not picking up the 120GB disk from Woolworths for £50, oh yes. I have too much stuff on my 60GB drive already.

When you're umming and aahing over twenny pahnd for twice the capacity, though, I don't think that's in the equation.

It's in my equation, I hate my overfilled 20Gb hard disk (with no room at all for any games now, thanks to Rock Band DLC) and could really use a second 360 so I don't have to cart my current one up and down stairs.

Don't really see the point in buying a whole other 360 when this one is still doing fine.

There are a lot of posts around t'intarweb of people whose otherwise fine 360s were RROD'd by Fable's ridiculous disc thrashing wearing the drive out, though.

For a non xbox owner.

Is the elite worth buying over the 60gb version?

Not really at the moment, unless you're a goth.

Which is why you have one, right?

Heh, the difference between 20GB and 120GB and the HDMI port was enough to tip it for me. If I was buying one now, I'd get a Pro.

And then paint it black. And put a huge skull sticker on one side, and a Bullet For My Valentine sticker on the other.

I think I still have some Guitar Hero stickers left over with skulls on...

Kind of on-topic
a friend has an elite, 3 months old with all the new stuff included and COD5.
He wants £150 - is that a decent price ?

I already have a 20gig console and was considering a new HDD...
By the time I flog COD5 its looking more like £125 for an Elite.

Yeah, that's a good price, I reckon.

Checking my bank for funds now

That's a terrible deal, you should definitely not buy that. You should give me his number though. So I could... err... tell him it's a terrible deal. Yes, that.

Now that is mean!!

LOL

Pretty tempted, makes sense seeing as its like £80 for a 120gb drive.
could have a backup system in case, or for lending out to a mate for instance.
When I get a bigger place with two TVs will be useful too

Might see if I can squeeze the price a bit hah

My 20gb drive has about 6gb left after Rock Band DLC and a fair few Live Arcade games. After installing Top Spin 2, it left me with less than 1gb so I've taken that off in preparation for the Fallout DLC instead. I'll have to upgrade at some point though if I'm going to keep download songs for Rock Band though.

Went on the grand tour today while the car was being MOT'd. No sign of hard drives ever even being sold in Comet, and the staff didn't even show their faces so I couldn't ask. Same deal in Currys and PC World.

GAME in Cardiff actually employed someone who was friendly and knew his stuff (good grief) and said all he had was the 60 gig ones for £60, the 120 gig ones he said sold out in a flash.

So... it's either a cheap 60 gig from that website or a 120 gig from Blockbuster, I guess.

EDIT: 60 gig ordered... for less than £50, so I'm happy with that.

HDD arrived today... and it is just the drive itself, nothing else. So, while it's a good price, unless you have access to a transfer cable you're probably better off paying the extra £12 and getting the proper store-bought version and enjoying the bonus headset and 3 months of Live.

Stuff won't transfer, dammit!

I plug the transfer cable (generously supplied by Dimrill) into the rear USB on the 360, and the new HDD onto the other end. Stick in the disc, start the 360, run the disc.

And then it just sits on the 'Connect your new hard drive' screen... seemingly not recognizing it. I tried connecting the new HDD to the 360 properly - worked fine, could see the usual preloaded demo shit on it.

Tried it the other way around, nothing.

Tried formatting the new HDD (it asks you to put in your serial number!) and STILL nothing.

After HOURS of searching, found this:
http://forums.xbox.com/24462608/ShowPost.aspx

Apparently, the original transfer kits/cables only worked with the 120Gb drives, as the 60Gb ones are newer the older kits come with a disc that doesn't know what to do with them.

So, need to ring MS tomorrow and get them to send me one that works with 60Gb HDDs.

This is a fucking pain in the ass.

You do realise that they take up to six weeks to send out the transfer cables, don't you. You'd think they'd put the bloody software on marketplace for you to download.

I have a cable that I bought from eBay a couple of weeks ago but didn't use - it came with the original sellers 120Gb HDD but it was a new one, so it might work - I'd try it but I have two separate profiles running on the two different machines and I don't think I'd be too impressed if I erased one of them while trying it. In the end I just shifted everything over via memory card as all the DLC stuff can just be redownloaded from marketplace - it isn't ideal, but it's wasn't that big a deal as I didn't have that much stuff anyway. Your profile is tiny - about 8Mb, most game saves are quite small, and most arcade titles can be redownloaded from marketplace if you put your profile on a memory card.

Some save games refuse to be copied to a memory card, for fucking fuck's sake.

Anyway, it apparently is not down to the cable so much as the software - which only recognizes 120Gb drives.

Not just a 360 problem either. I never managed to copy my Endless Ocean save from GJ's Wii onto my own as it refused to copy to memory card and as a result I've not been arsed to start it again.

I also have a lot of music and stuff on there as well which I cannot be fucked having to burn onto CD again and then rip back on and then have to type in fucking names and artists for.

Ordered the cable just now - the non-English speaker on the other end told me to go and order it online from the support site! I asked why I had to do that given the instructions on there said to call this number, and he said 'oh, are you wanting to order it over the phone?' and I said 'YES!!!' and he then took the order over the phone anyway! Grrrr.

I can't be arsed with ripping stuff to the hard drive. Are you able to stream stuff from a PC at all?

Nope. My newest PC is dead (and ran Win2k so was no good anyway), my only other operable PCs run 98 (and are 10 years old). The only other option would be that payware Mac thing that mimics Windows Media Centre that I don't really feel I should have to go and buy to get my music back on. I don't want my whole collection anyway - so I just make a playlist that'll fit on a CD-RW and then rip it in. Over the two and a bit years I've had the 360 I've done maybe 250 tracks this way.

Which still doesn't help with the uncopyable-to-memory-card save games. In fact, why the hell isn't there a 'backup all saved games to memory card' option in the menus? Doing them all individually will likely take longer than the transfer kit will!

I almost, ALMOST wish I'd just bought the fucking 120gig one now, but £80 is ridiculous for all that space that I'll never use.

This is one area where the PS3 is miles ahead of the 360. You can attach a USB hard disk or memory card, select the "backup" option, and everything is copied to the card in one go. Buy any off-the-shelf laptop hard disk, put it in the PS3, format it, put the memory card in, and select "restore". The 360 is shamefully fiddly and limited. Boo, Microsoft.

Yeah, you can't even copy stuff back to the 20gig drive, even if it will all fit!

MS's cable came yesterday, job's done, took about 90 minutes to transfer the stuff over. It then claimed some items were 'corrupt' and couldn't be transfeed, but I've yet to work out what (if any).

Dimrill, DBSnappa, cheers for your help (your disc came this morning) I'll be posting them back on Monday.

Fable 2 is now installed and runs like a dream off the hard drive.

It always does that, I think it's cached stuff. Nothing to worry about.

I didn't know that. Does that mean that you can replace the PS3 hard drive with a much bigger one if you wanted? I assume it would invalidate the warranty if you did though?

No warranty problems. Instructions on how to replace the hard disk come with the console.

So, DrG, you can go and buy yourself a 60 gigger from the link provided earlier if you like. Just imagine it... Gears 2 and UT3 loading fast, a quiet 360, whoosh!

I can't quite justify £47 for it. It's just a bit too little benefit for a bit too much cash. Or I'm very tight.

That's a rhetorical question, right?

You are just very tight, then.

like a gnat's chuff

Are there any games that bundle the NXE yet? I've got a mate with a 360 that isn't online, and me telling him that installing games to the hard disk is excellent is starting to piss him off.

Surely he can just plug his 360 into his (or indeed, any) internet connection for the ten minutes it'll take to get it?