I'm sending in my Xbox to Microsoft to get my crappy Thomson DVD drive replaced. I wanted to back up my saves in case they screw something up, so I bought a xbox-usb cable (female) at www.levelsix.com: http://www.levelsix.com/detail.aspx?ID=90

I hooked up my 256MB USB flash drive to the adapter, and my xbox recognized it as a memory unit with 15,868 blocks free. heh. This is definitely a more economical way of making backups than buying 8MB xbox memory units. I'm going to go out and buy a cheap 64MB USB flash drive and use it as a dedicated xbox memory unit to back up my saves.

Is your Xbox hacked?

nope. I've done nothing to it at all. not even opened it.

If that does work, that's great news. I hate not being able to bring saves of games to my friends house to play. Plus backing up all saves is a good thing too.

I didn't think so, since you were sending it off to MS. I just wanted to make sure.

Seems like this is the quick and easy way to do backups without any hacking.

nice. i'll have to try this out.

any usb flash drive worked? which one are you using?

can you backup xbox live downloads?

I'm using a Apacer Handy Steno. from newegg.com. I'm sure any USB flash drive will work. There's a 64mb USB flash drive from officemax this week for $9.99 after rebates.

I don't think so. Any files that are not copy-able to a official xbox memory unit to begin with (such as KOTOR save games) are still not copy-able (the xbox doesn't give you the option to copy them, only to delete them)

this is common sense, but just in case: make sure you don't have anything important on your usb flash drive when you connect it to your xbox. the xbox will reformat the usb device and make it unreadable to PCs. of course, you can just reformat it again on a PC to make it once again readable to PCs. But then it becomes unreadable to xboxes.

like a said earlier, you can find 64mb usb flash drives for as cheap as $10. Add in the xbox-usb adapter cable for $10 and you have a 64MB xbox memory unit for $20 total. since the official xbox memory unit is only 8mb and costs $25, you'd have to spend $200 to get the same storage using the official xbox memory units.

Not every USB thumb drive will work, here is a list of whats compatible, there may be some newer ones don't know how long since the list has been updated.

Finally!!! I've been wanting to buy a Flash drive but up until now I didn't have a reason.

Thanks for the great idea.

Hmm, are they charging you.. and if so, how much? My drive's been acting the fool lately too.

I'm in the same boat khai! I can get games to play after serveral DDE's. I've kinda put up with it. I've been thinking about sending it in, but I'm not gonna spend $100 bucks.

i, too, am beginning to suspect my xbox (which also has the thompson cd). i am starting to get more "disc not recognized. insert dvd or game" messages. it's still rare, but annoying. i thought it may be the new games that just had bugs, but it happened once even w/ motogp2 which had been a stalwart game.

that's it! i'm never buying another microsoft product again!

--
isn't the warranty 1 year? mine is still covered until may. this technique would be a life-saver for the, well, game saves.

Well I've started on my quest to get M$ to fix my xbox for free! Let's see how far I get.

Step one. Complain to M$ Support. They wanted to charge me $100 bones.
Step two. complain to The Better Buisness Bureau (I did this today)

(crosses fingers)

Yes. $99. They did send me an empty box via Airborne Express that included packing materials. And all I have to do is call Airborne Express again to have them pick it up once I pack by Xbox. I think $99 is not so bad to have them replace the drive & pay for shipping in both directions.

You can replace the drive yourself; expect to pay $60 for one, not including shipping & the time it'll take for you to fix it yourself.

I was initially pissed at having to pay $99 to fix it, but I got to thinking that I've used my Xbox for 2 years, and have certainly put at least several thousand hours of game time on it. Can't expect DVD drives to last forever, I guess.

ok, i got the usb cable from levelsix and a lexar jumpdrive secure 256 mb usb drive (listed as a working drive on the other page linked above).

it worked fine but a caveat:

1. some games won't let me copy them. like Star Wars KotOR - 1600 blocks and copy isn't an option.

in general, i had no problems backing up the rest of the stuff. even made me clean up my saves of games that i don't even have anymore like Project Gotham Racing 1.

so, thanks for the tip. i think 15000+ blocks may be overkill, but what the hey...

Update: They called me up and offered to fix my drive from $50 bones. I'm still trying to see if I can get it fixed for free.

lol, go get 'em, golucky! ms punks...

i've been told that the samsung drive models are the best...


i, of course, have a thompson drive

Semi on topic question:

Does PS2 support USB flash drives?

I've never thought about it until the price has come down on the drives.

Just wanted to bring back this thread. I picked up this 64MB flash drive for $19.99 ($9.99 AR) at Office Max today. Seems like a really good deal to me.
Thanks to the OP for posting this information.

So has anybody tried doing this with a USB hardrive?

I have a Thompson drive!


But ive had my xbox for 2 years with no problems...