backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 31 comment(s) - last by darkpuppet.. on Mar 30 at 9:23 AM

Blacker, bigger and more expensive
Hardcore Xbox Live downloads will continue to swap drives

Prior to the announcement of the 120GB hard drive add-on for Xbox 360, the only way users could officially cram more demos, videos and other media was to simply purchase an additional hard drive. Just after rumors of a larger hard drive circulated last fall, Microsoft offered a temporary solution for those seeking more storage.

“At this point we’re not ready yet to roll out a bigger hard drive,” Aaron Greenberg, Xbox group product marketing manager, said last November. “I can tell you what people tell me they do to get around this. What they do is they put their Live account on a memory unit and then they have one hard drive that they put their games or related content on, and then they have another drive that they put their movies and TV on.”

He continued, “So you know, this isn’t ideal, but there’s some ways to work around that today. If you download the content on one hard drive, and save your Live account on the memory unit, you can still have your hard drives hold all the content. That’s not a perfect workaround, but there’s some flexibility that people can do.”

Greenberg wasn’t kidding when he stated that the workaround of having multiple drives was far from ideal and perfect. According to translated documents from the Japanese launch materials, as translated by Wired, the data from two 20GB drives cannot be combined onto one 120GB drive and “transferring data in the other direction, or any other combination, is not possible.”

The 120GB drive will only store information from the last drive transferred, meaning that any attempt to transfer more than one drive will overwrite the previous one. Furthermore, all contents previously written to the 120GB drive be automatically deleted. Also, once the data has been moved from a 20GB to a 120GB drive, it cannot be moved back to the 20GB drive. Presumably, a special cable will facilitate the transfer of data from one drive to the other.

So, for the hardcore Xbox Live downloader, it appears that swapping hard drives could be here to stay for a while longer.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Poor foresight?
By FightingChance on 3/28/2007 3:16:08 PM , Rating: 3
I can see this becoming an even bigger issue as time passes; how can the Xbox360 be a media hub with such limited download space, and so poor an expansion option? The PS3 can accept any 2.5" HDD, and the Nintendo's ability to use any SD card is a decent setup as well compared to Microsoft's (currently, anyway.)

I wonder if they can manufacture a different HDD caddy that lets you drop in your own 2.5"?




RE: Poor foresight?
By BMFPitt on 3/28/2007 3:20:27 PM , Rating: 5
They can do that, but then who will pay $180 for their proprietary drive?

I wonder how much revenue they will lose in the streaming video marketplace in order to make a few bucks on their hard drives?


RE: Poor foresight?
By SunAngel on 3/28/07, Rating: 0
RE: Poor foresight?
By jtyson on 3/28/2007 6:00:16 PM , Rating: 1
^^Dumb Comment ^^


RE: Poor foresight?
By dome1234 on 3/28/2007 3:23:46 PM , Rating: 1
it genuinely decapitates any honest gamers to backup save files. Given the popularity of achievements points, losing your hard earned 5000 pts due to a tanked hdd isn't a nice experiment. Losing your 80hrs of oblivion could be fatal.

preventing pirates in cracking xbgames/etc is strange as a quick google you'd find few gadgets that void your warranty but let you transfer data to pc. I'm guessing this is more to do with hdmovies.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Scorpion on 3/28/2007 3:24:03 PM , Rating: 2
This is just more justification for FAIR USE and less DRM and content control schemes. There are always going to be these NON-Ideal situations that arise with have ad-hoc solutions, but completely restrict the portability of one solution to another. All it does is frustrate the customer. This is why there needs to be FLEXIBILITY in the way content is managed.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 3/28/2007 3:24:22 PM , Rating: 3
I've been saying this all along; there's a simple solution: allow USB thumb drives/hard drives to be used for data storage and not just songs/pictures.

Quick, simple, and pretty easy to implement.


RE: Poor foresight?
By outsider on 3/28/2007 3:58:37 PM , Rating: 1
They are selling the 120GB drive for 180$, when for that price you can get a 400GB drive. I dont think Microsoft isnt aware of your solution. Its just that they want to milk the cows, not feed them.


RE: Poor foresight?
By DFranch on 3/28/2007 4:24:55 PM , Rating: 2
The 120GB drive is a 2.5 inch drive not a 3.5. It's not really fair to compare the price of a 3.5 to a 2.5.


RE: Poor foresight?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 3/28/2007 4:53:35 PM , Rating: 2
Even so, you can get a 120GB 2.5" HDD from NewEgg for around $80 USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...


RE: Poor foresight?
By edge929 on 3/28/2007 4:54:18 PM , Rating: 2
You're correct, but a 160GB 2.5" HDD on Newegg is currently going for less than $160 shipped. Why pay another $20 bucks for 40 less GB?


RE: Poor foresight?
By walk2k on 3/28/2007 5:37:57 PM , Rating: 2
160GB 2.5" SATA = $109 on the 'egg.

500GB MyBook (external 3.5" drive, 7200rpm, with powered enclosure) = $159


RE: Poor foresight?
By outsider on 3/28/2007 6:31:25 PM , Rating: 2
I've heard the XBox360 is quite noisy. So its users wouldn't mind much a 3.5inch HDD, since nowadays they are almost dead silent.
Also, the cheapest 120GB 5400RPM Notebook HDD at Newegg sells for 77$. Since Microsoft is a major source, about that much is the price they get for the drive+enclosure.
I was a little off with my last comment. Thats because I have never seen an X360 and I suspected that but couldnt figure it out from the Amazon offer (didnt bother googling further). Still, I stand by what I said.

1) Those drives are a huge price premium.
2) They chose 2.5" only so that if someone made a comment like mine, another guy could fight back with a comment like yours. I don't see a better explanation for their choice. Especially since you cant add a USB drive, so their drives are not a luxury, they are a necessity.


RE: Poor foresight?
By alifbaa on 3/28/2007 3:31:25 PM , Rating: 2
It isn't a lack of foresight... it's profit motive. There doesn't need to be some magical special enclosure that allows you to connect the drive of your choice, all they need to do is open up the USB ports to support any device you plug into it... kinda like, I don't know... any USB port on a computer? This would allow the 360 to truly become a media center. For storage, you'd be able to drop in any hard drive you want regardless of size. 2.5" drives could be powered by the port, 3.5"s would need a separate adapter that would come with the enclosure of your choice.
I'm no fan of Sony, but if I were them, I'd start making the 20gb PS3 much more available and start touting their true media center advantages, storage options, and the BR drive included for roughly the same price as the 360. If they had a decent selection of games (I expect they will by this time next year) and a decent Xbox Live type setup (this, too will get more competitive over time), I think the 360 would have a major problem on its hands. I think M$ did themselves harm putting this version out the way the did and at the price-point they seem intent on making things. When you compare the two systems side by side, I hate to say it but the 360 doesn't look so good any more. This new version should have been at the current Premium price, the premium should be at the current core, and the core should go away. The HD problem should have been solved too. This is M$ employing divergent thinking in an era of convergence. I think it will get fixed sooner or later or else it will be fixed for them by hackers or consumers going with the PS3. The problem will only get worse as download to own become more mainstream once Netflix's service comes on line and XBox live becomes more popular.


RE: Poor foresight?
By bkm32 on 3/28/2007 4:18:59 PM , Rating: 2
Once HD content becomes more "en vogue", 120GBs isn't going to get the job done. This is a serious problem for the end-user and shouldn't be taken lightly by MS. In fact, MS should begin to treat the X360 as a PC with the notion of upgrading certain parts (e.g. HD, Disc Drive, RAM, etc.) The consumer will put down hard-earned cash for reasonable upgradeable parts, but $180.00 and you can't get all your previouosly stored data on it--I don't think is reasonable at all.

Work on it MS, pronto! This console war far from over.


RE: Poor foresight?
By kilkennycat on 3/28/2007 5:19:42 PM , Rating: 2
I am fortunate not to have an Xbox360 or a PS3. So I do find the arguments slightly amusing, since MS is calling all the shots. I have just purchased a 500GByte USB2.0 drive for my PC for $150. It file-copies (measured) to my PCs internal disks at an average of 30Mbytes/sec (1.8Gbytes/min). Far faster than is required for DVD (MPEG2) watching and quite fast enough for many games. So please tell me why good ole' MS is not opening up the USB2.0 port on the Xbox360 for general peripheral-access (with a switch-box if necessary)? Because they have a <very happy> captive audience and can make lots of moola out of these so-happy sheep.


So what...
By h0kiez on 3/28/2007 3:07:09 PM , Rating: 5
Despite the ridiculous suggestion that people buy several 20GB HDs for $100 each, I serious doubt more than a handful of people did this. I see this affecting very few people.




RE: So what...
By S3anister on 3/28/2007 11:33:29 PM , Rating: 2
dude... i was about to say that. but seriously, who actually wasted money on another 20GB hard drive?

i mean, really?


Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By Nik00117 on 3/28/07, Rating: 0
RE: Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By h0kiez on 3/28/2007 4:17:46 PM , Rating: 2
Huh? I don't know whether you're talking about the PS3 or the 360, but both use 2.5" drives and it's a simple pin-mod to be able to use a 3.5" drive. I don't own a PS3, but I recall seeing pictures just a day or two after launch of SATA cables sticking out the side of the PS3 attached to a 500GB 3.5" drive.


RE: Sony needs to allow BIGGER HDDs
By Dradien on 3/28/2007 4:59:07 PM , Rating: 2
You can put any 2.5 inch SATA HDD in the PS3. It uses standard SATA ports.