External USB Hard Drive question

[samuelsteven]

I dont have a hard drive for my XBOX 360, i bought it without one and it sux because i cant save any of my games so it makes it pointless to play them right now. My question is,instead of buying a 20GB or 120GB for the 360, can i just use an external hard drive that runs off of the USB port? Will it recognize it as a storage device, and will it let me save on it?
Also, if i get it working, how would i save a game image on it, so i can play it? Would i just leave it as an ISO or DVD file, or must I extract it to a folder?

[lilrevuk]

I think you can take the file structure and replicate it on another (specific) HDD to work, but you definitely can't get it to boot games...

I wouldn't be making backups if you could

[Jman 31]

Yeah there is a way to do it with a different drive, but like lilrevuk said you have to have a hard drive to get the info off. I believe its risky to go on live with it that way as the information on it is from another hdd. I don't know all the details, but you still won't be able to store games on it, only your gamesaves and maybe some songs if you are into that. Not worth the trouble imo.

[CoFree]

if you dont want to get a hard drive
get a 360 mem stick
i think they have them now at 256mb it will do your game saves that way

[sadalius]

With external hard drives on the USB port, there is no way you can use it for save games or anything like that. It has to be a 360 drive or a 360 mem card. You can load up an external drive with media files like MP3's and video files that the 360 will play and play them back through the 360, but thats about it.

Now you can purchase a certain brand of western digital laptop HDD and download a certain bin file and mod that drive to make it a 20 gb or 120 gb 360 drive, but I can't remember the name of the program or where to find the bin file to do the mod with. It's a whole lot cheaper than buying an OEM 360 drive. If this is something your interested in, search around over on xboxhacker.net and you'll at least find the program that you need, I don't know where you'll find the bin file for the 20 or 120 gb drives though.

[samuelsteven]

Yea, i think i read about that somewheres, i think the program was HDD hacker

[lilrevuk]

If I remember correctly, the file is hdd.dll or something like that...

[sadalius]

I can't remember the file name for sure, but I know that the file contents is the data from sector 16 of a legitimate xbox 360 20 GB or120 GB hard drive. This has to be injected into the hdd firmware and then written to the intended replacement drive. I've never done this myself so I don't know how involved it is.

[sadalius]

Sorry for the double post, but I have some information. The name of the file is hddss.bin. You can find it if you search for it. You can find it for 20 GB drives and 120 GB drives. You have to get a Western Digital sata laptop drive in the BEVS family. And you need the software by TheSpecialist, hddhacker v.90 to do it.