Xbox News

Hands On: Xbox 360 250GB Hard Drive

Published March 24, 2010

Looking for a little extra space for your Xbox 360®? How about a lot of extra space? Available now for $129.99, the Xbox 360 250GB Hard Drive gives you tons of room for game add-ons, Games on Demand, HD movies, installed games, and anything else you can store on Xbox 360.

You can use the Xbox 360 250GB hard drive if you don't currently have a hard drive on your Xbox 360, or if you have a smaller drive and you're looking to upgrade to more storage. The drive comes with a transfer cable and disc that makes it a snap to transfer all of your game saves, profiles, and Xbox LIVE Marketplace downloads from your old drive to the new one.

Fill 'Er Up!

Some gamers will have no trouble figuring out why they'd need that much storage space. Whenever I've wanted to install a large game on my 60GB drive, I've had to delete stuff because the drive was full of game add-ons, downloaded Arcade and Games on Demand games, and videos. My Inside Xbox co-host Ryan Treit filled much of his hard drive not just with games, but also with high-def Battlestar Galatica episodes, catching up on the series with episodes from Zune Marketplace.

If you already have a hard drive, you can easily
transfer your saves and downloads to the new drive
with the included transfer kit.

If you're wondering what you're going to do with that much space, here are some examples of ways you can take advantage of all that storage:

  • Games on Demand: Buy full games like Fallout® 3, Crackdown™, and Viva Pinata™: Trouble in Paradise from the comfort of your couch, from Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and then play them without having to insert a disc. Ranging from about 3GB to over 7GB in size, these demand a lot of space, but it's great to buy, and play, hit games on a whim.
  • Game Add-Ons: Many game add-ons are relatively small, but the largest, such as Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, can be up to 2GB in size. These add up!
  • Demos: With hundreds of demos of both retail and Xbox LIVE Arcade games available, it can take time to check them all out. A big hard drive lets you keep plenty around.
  • Xbox LIVE Arcade Games: Some of these are small enough to fit on a Memory Unit, but others, like the award-winning Shadow Complex™, approach a gigabyte in size.
  • Zune Movies and TV Shows: With the ability to buy both movies and TV shows to watch on your Xbox 360, the Zune Marketplace can fill a Hollywood buff's hard drive in no time at all.
  • Game Installs: Did you know you can copy most Xbox 360 games to your hard drive? You still need to have the disc in the drive to play the game, but copying the game to the hard drive speeds loading with some titles, and it eliminates the noise from the DVD drive. But like Games on Demand, game installs take up many megabytes—over 20GB for multi-disc titles like Final Fantasy™ XIII.
  • Other Stuff: There's lots of other stuff that fills up space over time: Dashboard themes, game saves, music CDs you copy to your hard drive, and much more. 

Now that I have the 250GB hard drive, I can keep over a dozen full games installed on my drive, and still have plenty of room to spare for downloads, demos, videos, and lots of other stuff.

Installing the Drive

The Xbox 360 250GB hard drive is super-easy to install. If you don't currently have a hard drive, just turn off your console, remove the cover on the left side (or top, if you're using your Xbox 360 vertically), snap the drive in place, and you're ready to go.

If you already have a hard drive, you can easily transfer your saves and downloads to the new drive. Just connect one end of the included cable to the USB port on the back of your Xbox 360, and the other end to the new 250GB Hard Drive. Then, insert the included disc into your console, turn it on, start the transfer tool on the disc, and follow the instructions on the screen.

For more info on the transfer kit, visit our Support section for step-by-step directions.

After your content has been transferred over, turn off your console, unplug the cable, remove your old drive, and snap the new 250GB Hard Drive in place.

Note that if you've copied any games from DVD to your old hard drive, you'll need to install them again on the new 250GB unit, as they're not transferred over, and if you need the optional iPod support, you'll need to re-download that as well. Otherwise, you should find all of your data in place and ready to go—along with a ton of free space for new stuff.

 

Article by Denny Atkin
Gamertag: Editer