Xbox 360 USB Storage Is Live
Gamers turning on their Xbox 360 today will be greeted by a message to update their system. Why the update? As it turns out it's actually something useful added to the system: support for storing Xbox 360 data on a USB drive. If you're like me and have refused to upgrade from a launch system's measly 20GB drive due to the obscene price of Microsoft's 360 hard drives, then this is some of the best news to hit the 360 in a long time.
Now, this new feature does come with a few limitations. The USB drive must be at least 1GB to work, and only up to 16GB can be used for Xbox 360 data. That means that even if you have a larger USB drive you're still limited to only using 16GB of it. 16GB isn't necessarily a tiny amount though, as users of the original 20GB hard drive will remember that it only gave you access to around 14GB of it. Be careful though, because even if you're only using 16GB of a larger USB drive, if your USB drive uses NTFS formatting the entire drive needs to be reformatted for it to work. I tried to connect my 500GB USB backup drive this morning and got a warning that the entire thing would need to be formatted and erased just to get 16GB of it available for my 360. That seems a bit extreme, so I plugged in an old 4GB drive instead. And though my 360 said that my 4GB USB drive wasn't quite the right type and might run slowly, I tried playing a few Arcade games from it and everything worked just fine.
Once it's plugged in, you can transfer just about anything to a USB drive: profiles, trailers, demos, Arcade and indie games, saves. The only thing that I wasn't able to transfer were the save files from original Xbox games that I have stored on my 360. I've also heard that installed 360 games might not transfer to a USB drive, but I didn't have enough free memory on my system or USB drive to try that feature out. One thing that I found very nice about using a USB drive though was that all of my Live Arcade games appeared in the "Game Library" tab without needing to select a storage device.
You can also connect up to two USB devices for a maximum of 32GB of USB storage. Yes, the 360 has three USB ports, but once you have two devices plugged in it won't register a third. Of course, this can be easily worked around by simply swapping USB drives.
As of this morning before the update, I only had around 500MB of free space on my 360's hard drive. And that's with a lot of selective deleting. I've gotten into a habit of playing more downloadable games than retail ones and, thanks to Live Arcade and Xbox indie games, my hard drive has become full to the point of bursting. In that sense, this update is a godsend. It's not a perfect solution, but for gamers in need of extra space it's at least a huge step up from having to pay Microsoft's ridiculous hard drive prices.
Edit: Thanks to Nick Bell in the comments I've discovered that my 500GB drive mentioned above uses NTFS formatting, which was the issue causing it to not work with the 360. The 360 only accepts USB drives using FAT32 formatting. To check if your USB drive is compatible check the properties of your drive when plugged into your PC and make sure the "File system" setting says FAT32. Thanks to Nick Bell for the heads up.
NaviFairy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 6 April 2010
· Comments (8)
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Yes, the 360 has three USB ports, but once you have two devices plugged in it won't register a third.
Is the problem limited to USB storage devices? Or any/all USB connections? That seems weird to have 3 USB slots and not be able to use them all simultaneously.
For your 500 GB drive, you CAN format only part of the drive. Just click on "Customize" instead of "Configure Now". You can then select how much of the drive you want to use. This will leave the rest of the drive's data alone.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981974
@SZK It is a limit only to USB storage devices. Other devices can use all three ports. You can even go beyond that, with a USB hub (I think the max supported by any one game is 7 in Beatles: Rock Band - two guitars, drums, a wired controller, and three mikes).
@Nick Bell
I suppose I wasn't completely clear. I did select "Customize" and still received a warning that my USB hard drive would be completely erased. I had heard that the "Customize" option would work, but I have a lot of important files on that USB drive and wasn't about to risk it when my system was telling me it would be erased. The exact message I received was:
"The device isn't formatted, or the format isn't recognized. To continue, the device must be formatted, and all content will be removed."
My drive is formatted fine and hasn't had any problems with my computer. Perhaps the 360 just doesn't like Seagate formatting.
@NaviFairy
Possible that the drive you tried was not formated in FAT32 (it is probably in NTFS). The USB drive support can only use FAT32. Its a minimum requirement, just like the drive being at least 1 GB.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981975/
If not, I don't know. I'm having my own issues, with drives that DO meet those requirements still getting "Performance Warnings."
@Nick Bell
Thanks for the correction and info, I've edited the article to better reflect the situation.
So can the 360 access add-on content on a USB storage drive while playing a game? Like can I store Rock Band and Lips songs there and still access them from the game?
@Wootini
You can definitely run DLC in-game from a USB device. What I'm not completely sure about is whether the save file for the game and DLC can be separated (ie save file on hard drive and DLC on USB). A lot of games ask you to select a storage device when you initially load your game, and I don't know if the game will then only check that storage device for DLC add-ons. Just to be on the safe side, I've been trying to keep all of the data for each game together.
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