All 360 owners

[Mitternacht]

I need some help; Google's not too good a friend for me.

Are the HDD's in the Xbox 360's hot swappable? I have a NFS Carbon profile on my friend's 360, and I need that profile on mine. I don't know anybody that has a memory card and I wont have enough to buy one after getting the elite. My idea was to load the profile on his, unplug his hard drive, plug in mine and save it. Would it work?

[Omega]

I wouldn't suggest doing that, just in case they're not hot swappable.

Perhaps ask your friend to buy a memory card so you can get his profile (and so he has it for future use)?

[jdbnsn]

I don't know either, but Microsoft's XBox support is pretty good (better than for windows IMO). You should ask them if it would work.

[xRyokenx]

Imagine them as a PC HDD (they're pretty much the same), would you unplug the HDD from your precious compy while it was running? The last time somebody around me did that, they killed the computer... damn cheap Dell laptops...

But they _are_ swappable while it is turned off, lol.

[Mitternacht]

Imagine them as a PC HDD (they're pretty much the same), would you unplug the HDD from your precious compy while it was running? The last time somebody around me did that, they killed the computer... damn cheap Dell laptops...

But they _are_ swappable while it is turned off, lol.


Think about it. The core systems boot up without hard drives.

[Durrthock]

why do you need it I beat nfs carbon in 2 days.

[xRyokenx]

Think about it. The core systems boot up without hard drives.


It's still establishing electrical connections and whatnot, it can't be safe... but then again, only people who have tried this and Microsoft know for sure...

[Spawn-Inc]

isn't there a usb slot? can't you just grab a memory card? someone here took apart the hdd and it was just a sata hdd so hook it up to the computer and copy the files you need with that xboxviewer program.

[Mitternacht]

isn't there a usb slot? can't you just grab a memory card?

I had that idea, but I dont know if the drive has to be formatted a special way or anything. It's worth a try, I guess.

[DaveW]

I believe it's a SATA connection. I know SATAII drives are hot swappable, but i'm not sure about SATA.

-Dave

[Mitternacht]

I believe it's a SATA connection. I know SATAII drives are hot swappable, but i'm not sure about SATA.

-Dave

+rep, that's part of the answer I was looking for. That kinda helps.

[LiTHiUM0XiD3]

the old Xboxs used to flash the drives to FATX format... but they didnt come with USB.... so i unno.... thats when u wanna use a USB flash as a memory card..but on the old XBOX.... coinsidering the 360 actualy comes with a USB port.... we can only hope it dont reformat em lolz... wipe a card... give it a shot..... see if it FKs up...... if it does... meh.. reformat it on ur PC... simple as dat..

[luciusad2004]

One time i ripped my hard drive off my unit in a fit of rage and i believe it shutdown on me. I could be wrong though. I was so angry i disconnected all of the cables after i yanked the hard drive so i might have just pulled the power so fast that i thought it went out when i pulled the hard disk. On the plus side of things, doing so didn't cause any trouble that i noticed... but i might have just gotten lucky. I'm sure if it was in the middle of saving or loading i would have gotten corrupted data. I wouldn't recommend trying tough.

Edit: Ok i just got the bawls to try it out for you and i can confirm that when i yanked my hard drive the system rebooted.
I guess i should mention that i wasn't logged in to any of my profiles when i tried but i imagine the effect would be the same if i was.

[xRyokenx]

One time i ripped my hard drive off my unit in a fit of rage and i believe it shutdown on me. I could be wrong though. I was so angry i disconnected all of the cables after i yanked the hard drive so i might have just pulled the power so fast that i thought it went out when i pulled the hard disk. On the plus side of things, doing so didn't cause any trouble that i noticed... but i might have just gotten lucky. I'm sure if it was in the middle of saving or loading i would have gotten corrupted data. I wouldn't recommend trying tough.

Edit: Ok i just got the bawls to try it out for you and i can confirm that when i yanked my hard drive the system rebooted.
I guess i should mention that i wasn't logged in to any of my profiles when i tried but i imagine the effect would be the same if i was.


You, my friend, are never getting near my PC.

Just kidding. :D I've done worse... a LOT worse... but let's not go there, too many bad memories...

Just buy/rent a memory card, it'll be safer...

[Omega]

the old Xboxs used to flash the drives to FATX format... but they didnt come with USB.... so i unno.... thats when u wanna use a USB flash as a memory card..but on the old XBOX.... coinsidering the 360 actualy comes with a USB port.... we can only hope it dont reformat em lolz... wipe a card... give it a shot..... see if it FKs up...... if it does... meh.. reformat it on ur PC... simple as dat..

First off, I doubt that the console would reformat a flash drive without some sort of user confirmation.

Second off, if I'm not mistaken, files can be transferred from filesystem to filesystem.

And anyways, I'm pretty sure that the xB360 supports more than just it's native file system.

[luciusad2004]

You, my friend, are never getting near my PC.

Just kidding. :D I've done worse... a LOT worse... but let's not go there, too many bad memories...

Just buy/rent a memory card, it'll be safer...


lol yeah. I would never actually do something like that to some on else's property. I forget why i even got that aggravated. Might have had something to do with what i would consider the excessive number of snipers i tend to encounter while playing battlefield 2.

From hear on out i promise to be nice to my xbox.
:bunny:

@Omega: Yeah it has to support more than its own file system or else the flash sticks wouldn't work properly. I know my flash stick is formated to FAT and I imagine it would without a doubt recognize NTFS. I'm not positive on this but it might even recognize whatever proprietary format it is that Mac's use. Don't quote me on that though. But i know that before i started using my drive with my PC it used that Mac format and I'm pretty sure it still worked fine.

[Airbozo]

...all HD's can be made to be Hot Swappable. It is not the HD that is the problem though. It is the controller and OS that must work together on this. Even if the drive is hot swappable, it does not mean the controller can handle a hot swap (signals will be shorted and then over driven), or that the OS will be able to recover (need to have internal hooks in place to rebuild hardware tree's in the kernel).

I have a friend who wants to try this as well. Couldn't you just hook up your friends as a secondary drive (Is there even a connector?).

[Redundant]

1. I'm almost 100% sure you cannot put your profile from the 360 on a USB drive. If this is allowed, then people may edit their profile on the PC and cheat to get awards.

2. You can't hook up 2 HDDs to one 360 at the same time. There is ONE SATA connector on the top of the 360 and the 360 will only recognize the HDD as a 360 HDD if it is in that connector, there is a custom SATA connector going from the HDD enclosure to the 360. One exception to this is on the 120GB HDD which comes with a migration cable to move your files from the 20GB HDD; they are then deleted off the 20GB HDD.

3. The USB ports will recognize "Mass storage devices" such as MP3 players, and Flash Drives. From what I can tell, you can copy picture, music, and video files to the 360 as it is also a Media Center.

I currently don't have a 360 but am planning on getting an Elite next month and will try to answer more questions.