DJLinus - Dell.com has had 360's on sale quite often over the last few months, and just a week ago had the Pro system (w/3 games and a 60gb hard drive) for about $220 shipped. I would personally do something like that before buying a used one with 20gb hard drive for $130. Sounds like from Dell a lot of people get the newest models, they'll all be HDMI, and you get a full warranty.

I'm sure that has been covered in one of the many 360 threads, but a quick search doesn't find it.

I'm finally opening up my 120 gig HD and am preparing to transfer the data from my old 20 gig on to it.

The transfer software message screens state that the old 20 gig will be formatted and empty after the transfer. Is there a way to stop this and save it as a backup?

The screens also state that the new drive will be formatted first, losing all the videos, demos, and games pre-loaded on the 120 gig. Is that true?

Seems stupid that there is no way to save all my data.

What you read is correct and I don't think there is a way around it.

The way it works:
120GB -> formatted
20GB -> transferred to 120GB
20GB -> formatted

You can still use the 20GB, but it gets formatted back to factory default.

I guess one could try turning the system off after step 2....

I won't, going to start the transfer now. It just would have been nice to have a fully set up back-up waiting to pop in if the new drive ever fails or fills-up.

And it seems silly to give me all those demos, videos, and even full games (Hexic, maybe another?) on the new HD and have me lose them as I install the thing.

So anybody have any tips in getting .srt (subtitle files to use in conjunction with video) working?

Other than burning to a DVD and playing that, of course

You don't get the benefit of knowing when step 2 ends and step 3 begins.

Even if you did, there's no way you could be quick enough to get it before the 20gb format started.

One end of the the transfer cable has a USB plug. You can hook it up to your favorite Windows machine and use a homebrew app to save off the data first. Of course, youd have to not sell the cable afterward in order to be able to restore later.

I thought about that, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. I have some OCD/hoarding issues, and hate giving up "free" content on the new drive, but decided to just ignore it and move on.

I even have a 3rd party device for backing up the 360 hard drives that I bought a couple years ago, but can't find the cable/port for it right now.

Thanks.

Demos and videos are probably free on the marketplace anyway, just jot down what they are and re-download them after the transfer. That leaves Hexic. If it does get erased, I've read you can call and get a code to re-download it.

You don't have Hexic in the 20 GB drive?

I'm beating a dead horse, but just to be thorough...

A lot of the videos on my old drive and on my new drive were no longer in the marketplace. I may have been able to re-download them thru the download history tool, but have read that many old files are no longer available even that way. And again, I have/had this sick OCD-like thing where I hate to lose any content, even lame freebies.

Must have, because it's still on my new 120. Transfer went well.

I also got my 120 gig in the mail today. 40 minutes left on my transfer.

YMMV, but Viva Pinata Party Animals was $4.96 at K-Mart.

Going through my download history on Xbox.com, I saw 5-15 things out of 240 or so that were "No longer available". I honestly have no idea what they were, if they were things like contest entry gamerpics or what, but they're no longer accessible.

Does anyone else encounter megadelay whenever accessing the "My Games" thing? I can go into there, pick an Arcade game to play, play the game, back out, and it will still take between 10 seconds and over a minute to refresh the "Games" listing. Until it does, the only thing I can see is the game in the disk.

yeah - the NXE is full of sweet delays like this.

Hrm, it said some files were corrupted and i couldn't transfer them so they were deleted.

It concerns me a little it gives no indication what those files were.


So do i need to do license transfers or anything?

edit: It did make me re-download NXE.

I don't think you need to run the process for the license transfers. The one that has been mentioned before.
When I did the transfer from the 20 to the 120 GB hard drive, I didn't do anything special after that. If you need any license the game should be able to download it itself when you play it.

I think that's why the hard drives are deleted in the process, to be sure you don't have 2 copies of the same game in different drives, for the ones that have a license.

Storage (Hard Drives and Memory Units) has nothing to do with DRM or licensing. It's your gamertag and console serial number that affect it.

The limited edition Resident Evil 5 360 Elite bundle is available for pre order on Amazon for $400. I wonder if they still send you another red system when you get the RROD?

Yeah pretty much. I find looking at the Friends area annoying because it takes forever for the images to show up. I mean you can't even tell who's sleeping until the graphics/Avatars show up.

It's quicker and easier to hit the guide button and look at the Old style Friend's list.

Mine hangs when I try that route as well. Looking at either friends list is lose-lose anymore. Shame.

Pretty funny how the 360 can run games at 60fps and 1080p, but can't process a simple menuing system. The back end code for NXE must be extremely bloated.

I agree the graphics have something to do with it because when I switched to the N+ premium theme it is a little faster then when I was using the Gears theme

thats why it pays not to have any friends