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Blacker, bigger and more expensive
Hardcore Xbox Live downloads will continue to swap drives

Prior to the announcement of the 120GB hard drive add-on for Xbox 360, the only way users could officially cram more demos, videos and other media was to simply purchase an additional hard drive. Just after rumors of a larger hard drive circulated last fall, Microsoft offered a temporary solution for those seeking more storage.

“At this point we’re not ready yet to roll out a bigger hard drive,” Aaron Greenberg, Xbox group product marketing manager, said last November. “I can tell you what people tell me they do to get around this. What they do is they put their Live account on a memory unit and then they have one hard drive that they put their games or related content on, and then they have another drive that they put their movies and TV on.”

He continued, “So you know, this isn’t ideal, but there’s some ways to work around that today. If you download the content on one hard drive, and save your Live account on the memory unit, you can still have your hard drives hold all the content. That’s not a perfect workaround, but there’s some flexibility that people can do.”

Greenberg wasn’t kidding when he stated that the workaround of having multiple drives was far from ideal and perfect. According to translated documents from the Japanese launch materials, as translated by Wired, the data from two 20GB drives cannot be combined onto one 120GB drive and “transferring data in the other direction, or any other combination, is not possible.”

The 120GB drive will only store information from the last drive transferred, meaning that any attempt to transfer more than one drive will overwrite the previous one. Furthermore, all contents previously written to the 120GB drive be automatically deleted. Also, once the data has been moved from a 20GB to a 120GB drive, it cannot be moved back to the 20GB drive. Presumably, a special cable will facilitate the transfer of data from one drive to the other.

So, for the hardcore Xbox Live downloader, it appears that swapping hard drives could be here to stay for a while longer.

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Poor foresight?
By FightingChance on 3/28/2007 3:16:08 PM , Rating: 3
I can see this becoming an even bigger issue as time passes; how can the Xbox360 be a media hub with such limited download space, and so poor an expansion option? The PS3 can accept any 2.5" HDD, and the Nintendo's ability to use any SD card is a decent setup as well compared to Microsoft's (currently, anyway.)

I wonder if they can manufacture a different HDD caddy that lets you drop in your own 2.5"?




RE: Poor foresight?
By BMFPitt on 3/28/2007 3:20:27 PM , Rating: 5
They can do that, but then who will pay $180 for their proprietary drive?

I wonder how much revenue they will lose in the streaming video marketplace in order to make a few bucks on their hard drives?


RE: Poor foresight?
By SunAngel on 3/28/07, Rating: 0
RE: Poor foresight?
By jtyson on 3/28/2007 6:00:16 PM , Rating: 1
^^Dumb Comment ^^


RE: Poor foresight?
By dome1234 on 3/28/2007 3:23:46 PM , Rating: 1
it genuinely decapitates any honest gamers to backup save files. Given the popularity of achievements points, losing your hard earned 5000 pts due to a tanked hdd isn't a nice experiment. Losing your 80hrs of oblivion could be fatal.

preventing pirates in cracking xbgames/etc is strange as a quick google you'd find few gadgets that void your warranty but let you transfer data to pc. I'm guessing this is more to do with hdmovies.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Scorpion on 3/28/2007 3:24:03 PM , Rating: 2
This is just more justification for FAIR USE and less DRM and content control schemes. There are always going to be these NON-Ideal situations that arise with have ad-hoc solutions, but completely restrict the portability of one solution to another. All it does is frustrate the customer. This is why there needs to be FLEXIBILITY in the way content is managed.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 3/28/2007 3:24:22 PM , Rating: 3
I've been saying this all along; there's a simple solution: allow USB thumb drives/hard drives to be used for data storage and not just songs/pictures.

Quick, simple, and pretty easy to implement.


RE: Poor foresight?
By outsider on 3/28/2007 3:58:37 PM , Rating: 1
They are selling the 120GB drive for 180$, when for that price you can get a 400GB drive. I dont think Microsoft isnt aware of your solution. Its just that they want to milk the cows, not feed them.


RE: Poor foresight?
By DFranch on 3/28/2007 4:24:55 PM , Rating: 2
The 120GB drive is a 2.5 inch drive not a 3.5. It's not really fair to compare the price of a 3.5 to a 2.5.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 3/28/2007 4:53:35 PM , Rating: 2
Even so, you can get a 120GB 2.5" HDD from NewEgg for around $80 USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...


RE: Poor foresight?
By edge929 on 3/28/2007 4:54:18 PM , Rating: 2
You're correct, but a 160GB 2.5" HDD on Newegg is currently going for less than $160 shipped. Why pay another $20 bucks for 40 less GB?


RE: Poor foresight?
By walk2k on 3/28/2007 5:37:57 PM , Rating: 2
160GB 2.5" SATA = $109 on the 'egg.

500GB MyBook (external 3.5" drive, 7200rpm, with powered enclosure) = $159


RE: Poor foresight?
By outsider on 3/28/2007 6:31:25 PM , Rating: 2
I've heard the XBox360 is quite noisy. So its users wouldn't mind much a 3.5inch HDD, since nowadays they are almost dead silent.
Also, the cheapest 120GB 5400RPM Notebook HDD at Newegg sells for 77$. Since Microsoft is a major source, about that much is the price they get for the drive+enclosure.
I was a little off with my last comment. Thats because I have never seen an X360 and I suspected that but couldnt figure it out from the Amazon offer (didnt bother googling further). Still, I stand by what I said.

1) Those drives are a huge price premium.
2) They chose 2.5" only so that if someone made a comment like mine, another guy could fight back with a comment like yours. I don't see a better explanation for their choice. Especially since you cant add a USB drive, so their drives are not a luxury, they are a necessity.


RE: Poor foresight?
By alifbaa on 3/28/2007 3:31:25 PM , Rating: 2
It isn't a lack of foresight... it's profit motive. There doesn't need to be some magical special enclosure that allows you to connect the drive of your choice, all they need to do is open up the USB ports to support any device you plug into it... kinda like, I don't know... any USB port on a computer? This would allow the 360 to truly become a media center. For storage, you'd be able to drop in any hard drive you want regardless of size. 2.5" drives could be powered by the port, 3.5"s would need a separate adapter that would come with the enclosure of your choice.
I'm no fan of Sony, but if I were them, I'd start making the 20gb PS3 much more available and start touting their true media center advantages, storage options, and the BR drive included for roughly the same price as the 360. If they had a decent selection of games (I expect they will by this time next year) and a decent Xbox Live type setup (this, too will get more competitive over time), I think the 360 would have a major problem on its hands. I think M$ did themselves harm putting this version out the way the did and at the price-point they seem intent on making things. When you compare the two systems side by side, I hate to say it but the 360 doesn't look so good any more. This new version should have been at the current Premium price, the premium should be at the current core, and the core should go away. The HD problem should have been solved too. This is M$ employing divergent thinking in an era of convergence. I think it will get fixed sooner or later or else it will be fixed for them by hackers or consumers going with the PS3. The problem will only get worse as download to own become more mainstream once Netflix's service comes on line and XBox live becomes more popular.


RE: Poor foresight?
By bkm32 on 3/28/2007 4:18:59 PM , Rating: 2
Once HD content becomes more "en vogue", 120GBs isn't going to get the job done. This is a serious problem for the end-user and shouldn't be taken lightly by MS. In fact, MS should begin to treat the X360 as a PC with the notion of upgrading certain parts (e.g. HD, Disc Drive, RAM, etc.) The consumer will put down hard-earned cash for reasonable upgradeable parts, but $180.00 and you can't get all your previouosly stored data on it--I don't think is reasonable at all.

Work on it MS, pronto! This console war far from over.


RE: Poor foresight?
By kilkennycat on 3/28/2007 5:19:42 PM , Rating: 2
I am fortunate not to have an Xbox360 or a PS3. So I do find the arguments slightly amusing, since MS is calling all the shots. I have just purchased a 500GByte USB2.0 drive for my PC for $150. It file-copies (measured) to my PCs internal disks at an average of 30Mbytes/sec (1.8Gbytes/min). Far faster than is required for DVD (MPEG2) watching and quite fast enough for many games. So please tell me why good ole' MS is not opening up the USB2.0 port on the Xbox360 for general peripheral-access (with a switch-box if necessary)? Because they have a <very happy> captive audience and can make lots of moola out of these so-happy sheep.


So what...
By h0kiez on 3/28/2007 3:07:09 PM , Rating: 5
Despite the ridiculous suggestion that people buy several 20GB HDs for $100 each, I serious doubt more than a handful of people did this. I see this affecting very few people.




RE: So what...
By S3anister on 3/28/2007 11:33:29 PM , Rating: 2
dude... i was about to say that. but seriously, who actually wasted money on another 20GB hard drive?

i mean, really?


Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By Nik00117 on 3/28/07, Rating: 0
RE: Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By h0kiez on 3/28/2007 4:17:46 PM , Rating: 2
Huh? I don't know whether you're talking about the PS3 or the 360, but both use 2.5" drives and it's a simple pin-mod to be able to use a 3.5" drive. I don't own a PS3, but I recall seeing pictures just a day or two after launch of SATA cables sticking out the side of the PS3 attached to a 500GB 3.5" drive.


RE: Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By Dradien on 3/28/2007 4:59:07 PM , Rating: 2
You can put any 2.5 inch SATA HDD in the PS3. It uses standard SATA ports.


RE: Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By walk2k on 3/28/2007 5:39:35 PM , Rating: 2
You can also hook up any external USB drive and download movies directly to it....


By darkpuppet on 3/29/2007 1:14:22 PM , Rating: 2
I'm curious, wouldn't it be possible to just redownload the content that you had downloaded from marketplace previously?

I would hope that with such online persistence such as iTunes and xbox Live (marketplace) that once you've bought something on your account, it stays on your account, not just the hdd.

It seems silly to not support that.. especially considering that you're paying for the content in the 1st place. -- and what would you do if you had a bad hdd? Do you lose everything you've ever downloaded?




By Eurasianman on 3/29/2007 3:01:48 PM , Rating: 2
I believe Microsoft's policy is that as long as you use the same XBOX Live account, you can redownload content that you purchased on XBOX Live Marketplace.

However, I think I read somewhere that some of the content is hardware ID locked. Meaning, that if you transfer the content to another XBOX 360, it will not work.

I could be wrong about the second statement.


By darkpuppet on 3/30/2007 9:23:00 AM , Rating: 2
so then, you're not really losing anything, and you can combine drives, so long as you have the time and wherewithall to redownlod off of marketplace... if you used the dual hdd scheme outlined above, right?


Can we say Opppps!!!
By Seemonkeyscanfly on 3/28/2007 3:09:28 PM , Rating: 2
Oppppps...Wasn't that point to be able to share information?




RE: Can we say Opppps!!!
By Puddleglum1 on 3/28/2007 3:35:00 PM , Rating: 3
I think this is due to the likelihood of piracy.
quote:
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is an extension to United States copyright law passed unanimously on May 14, 1998, which criminalizes the production and dissemination of technology that allows users to circumvent technical copy-restriction methods, rendering all forms of DRM-stripping and circumvention software illegal, as well as some aspects of research and reverse engineering of existing systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_manage...
But I agree that there should at least be a work-around or solution available. How can Microsoft verify the ownership of multiple drives? There should be a way to do this.


Buy an External HDD?
By elmikethemike on 3/29/2007 6:45:38 AM , Rating: 2
Given the cost of the 360 120GB HDD, and the cost of 2.5" HDD for the PS3, could you just buy an external hard drive and connect it via USB? If you could that would be a much cheaper route to add more storage. Has anyone ever tried it?




RE: Buy an External HDD?
By OxBow on 3/29/2007 10:47:16 AM , Rating: 2
You can with the PS3, but it only is useable for certain content, eg.- music and movie files but not game saves. Managing your old, PS2 game saves is a bit of a pain on the PS3 but PS3 games, digital media, etc. that's not involved in the old, PS2 stuff seems to work seemlessly. The PS3 has 3, fully functional, USB ports and three card readers, in addition to an easily upgraded 2.5" hard drive, more memory features than anyone would care to use. Moving files around is not intuitive using the sixaxis, but not difficult. In general, Sony got it right the first time with the hard drives on the PS3.

I don't see what was behind Microsofts thinking for hard drives on the 360. All the original XBoxes had hard drives, that was one of the prime selling points. The nuetered core 360 system just seems crazy. The proprietary housing seems like a callous marketing ploy. For them to not implement easy data migration seems amazingly boneheaded.

Many Sony bashers yell that Sony is forcing them to purchase things they don't want, and that the 360 component system allows for the "flexibility" that consumers want. Well, there's your "flexibility."


By SunAngel on 3/28/2007 3:50:17 PM , Rating: 2
Hackers clear hurdles everyday. This is just another hurdle. On second thought, this has probably already been resolved. It will be disclosed upon release of the 120GB drive.




Aftermarket-chinese
By Samus on 3/28/2007 8:54:50 PM , Rating: 2
Some chinese company is going to make knockoff cases and you'll be able to dump you own 2.5" drive in it. They'll probably even come in different colors like clear too.

And you can always get a drive prep kit from llamah's xbox site. It comes with a cable to connect to your computer and the neccessary prep files to format/partition/load your drive to boot the xbox. Last I checked the kits 50 bucks, but you can use it to prep all the HD's you want since its just a SATA to USB 2.0 cable, an AC adapter and a DVD with a bunch of files to XFER.

So you can build your own HD or make a kit for a few bucks less, but either way it'll still cost you 150




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