Formatting a harddrive to be used in a xbox360

the_syco

Mate recently tried to do a data transfer to a 2nd hand xbox360, but failed (transfered from a 120GB HDD to a 4GB HDD :pac:). Seems it "transferred" the data and then formatted teh drive.

Unfortunately when he put the 120GB back into the xbox, the xbox doesn't detect it. Anyone know of a way to use the xbox harddrive in the xbox again?

Gweedling

If he formatted the xbox hard drive via a PC then it's a term affectionately known as "bricking" the hard drive: Essentially turning the HDD into a rather attractive brick. In other words, a useless lump.

If he formatted the HDD in the xbox, then something horrible happened. Either the console is buggered and can't detect hard drives, or the hard drive is fried. Chances are it's the latter as you said it's "formatted"

Option 3 is most likely. If you used the hard drive transfer kit, then formatted the HDD while it was plugged in via the USB cable, then what you've done is turned the 120GB HDD into a rather large 16GB USB stick. Consoles can use USB drives up to 16GB, if an unrecognized USB device (USB stick formatted to work with PC) is plugged in, the console will give you the option to configure it ("Configure" meaning to format it to work with Xbox consoles). As the maximum amount of space that a console can read from USB is 16GB, it's formatted to work in that way only, and there's no recourse.

Didn't your mate read the instructions? A hard drive transfer can only be used from a small hard drive to a larger one i.e 20GB to 250GB etc
Did he honestly think a transfer _onto_ a 4GB hard drive would be practical?

Gweedling

Addition: Since the recent system update, consoles can now recognise up to 32GB on USB, instead of 16GB before.

Meesared

Really? That's interesting!