External hard drive for use on 360 and PC?

Gabe3

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If I get a non 360 branded hard drive the 360 can only use 16gb of it. can I plug the drive into a PC and use the remaining space for storage? do I need to do any partitions? the 360 requires fat32, will I run into issues because this for storing files from PC?

thanks.
 
How big is the drive? And what are you planning on storing on the drive in WIndows? Fat32 maxes out a a 4GB file size.
 
How big is the drive? And what are you planning on storing on the drive in WIndows? Fat32 maxes out a a 4GB file size.

will probably be around 300gb, was going to store pictures, video, maybe even a hard drive image. if i can't put files larger than 4gb then it might not work too well. do you know if the drive can still be used on a pc and 360?
 
yes, once it's formatted for the xbox you can use the drive for storage, just keep in mind it's in fat32 format so that limits the file size. I do it with an external drive I have.
 
yes, once it's formatted for the xbox you can use the drive for storage, just keep in mind it's in fat32 format so that limits the file size. I do it with an external drive I have.

thanks. so I assume if theres a demo thats over 4gb in size, 360 can't download it to the external HD?
 
If I get a non 360 branded hard drive the 360 can only use 16gb of it. can I plug the drive into a PC and use the remaining space for storage? do I need to do any partitions? the 360 requires fat32, will I run into issues because this for storing files from PC?

thanks.

Partition the drive. Create a 16gig partition and format it fat32, the remainder you can format ntfs. The xbox will see the 16gig partition and use that fine.
 
thanks. so I assume if theres a demo thats over 4gb in size, 360 can't download it to the external HD?

the way xbox storage works is it is split into a bunch of 1gb files on the drive and then individual files are broken up and encrypted amongst them. If you connect a 360 drive to pc with the option to view invisible files, there will be a folder called "Xbox 360" or something like that with 16 or so files inside it. Long story short, you can put anything on it from the xbox just fine, it is just the size of files that you add from the pc which will be limited.
 
the way xbox storage works is it is split into a bunch of 1gb files on the drive and then individual files are broken up and encrypted amongst them. If you connect a 360 drive to pc with the option to view invisible files, there will be a folder called "Xbox 360" or something like that with 16 or so files inside it. Long story short, you can put anything on it from the xbox just fine, it is just the size of files that you add from the pc which will be limited.

thanks!
 
I would think that you would be able to make the first partition on the drive a 16gb FAT32 partition, and then make a second partition with the rest of your space and make it NTFS. I don't have a 360, but I would think that it would just see the first partition on the drive, and you'd be able to use both partitions on your PC (though you'd only want to use the 2nd one).
 
I would think that you would be able to make the first partition on the drive a 16gb FAT32 partition, and then make a second partition with the rest of your space and make it NTFS. I don't have a 360, but I would think that it would just see the first partition on the drive, and you'd be able to use both partitions on your PC (though you'd only want to use the 2nd one).

^^ I have done this with a flash drive. The first partition is a hidden folder that you can go into if you want to do some modding and the rest is available for whatever.
 
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