Upgrading Xbox 360 from 20gb to 60gb

So I’m looking at this new 60gb HDD starter kit and thinking now might be the time to upgrade from my base 20gb drive with the NXE just around the corner.

My question is, how do I transfer all my content over? I don’t believe it comes with a transfer cable, so am I expected to just re-download all my DLC or shuttle everything over on a 512Mb memory unit? Both options sound like a pain, particularly when you’re talking about dozens of individual Rock Band songs. So what’s the easiest way to make the leap?

I figured you’d be able to buy the cable for like $900, but I haven’t been able to find one. The 60gb kit says it’s designed for Core and Arcade owners, which is I guess their way of saying “you don’t get no cable”. Although it does come with an ethernet cable for some weird reason.

edit: Actually, it would appear MS is offering a free transfer cable. It says it’s for a limited time, but there’s no date listed on the form so who knows if it’s still available.

So basically my only option would be to make a manual note of everything I want from my old HDD, then re-download it onto the new one? What a pain.

The easiest way to make the leap is to find someone who has the transfer cable already and borrow it from them. I can lend you mine via mail if you don’t know anyone local to you that has one.

That kit is only available if you’re upgrading to an Elite or other special edition console.

Yeah, I just read that part. Seems weird that they wouldn’t be selling this damn thing.

Another potential solution is to spring for the 120gb drive, it costs $40 more and doesn’t come with the headset (likely something you already have), ethernet cable (ditto) or the 3 month Xbox Live card (always nice, but really only a $15 value), but you get double the HDD space and the transfer cable comes right in the box. Even 60 gb is likely to seem a bit cramped once you get a couple of games on there.

Yeah I was just thinking that myself… would the 120gb drive be transferrable to a new Arcade 360 at some point in the future? I’m still on my original launch 360 and am permanently waiting for it to finally die.

Provided you’re always online, you can use any hard drive with any 360. I have one in my bedroom and one in the living room. It would be cool if I could just have my account active on both consoles, but I suppose swapping the drives out isn’t all that terrible.

I don’t think this is true. I took the HDD from my Xbox over to a friend’s last weekend for some Fable 2, and even though it had all my login info, I wasn’t able to get online. It would just say “Unable to sign in to Xbox Live” even though we were online with his HDD just minutes before.

I believe that your Live account is tied to the serial number of the Xbox you’re on, or at least the last Xbox you recovered your account to.

Nah what RobotPants said is true, you must have ran into some other problem. I have 2 Xbox 360s and I swap HDDs on them all the time depending upon which room I want to be in and which HDD has the game saves and Xbox Live login I want to use at the time (the Xbox Live login can be moved between the two HDDs but requires an annoying recovery step thing), and I’ve also used my HDD on friend’s 360s and it always works just fine and logs me into Live as normal.

I’m picking up a 120GB for NXE and will be re-downloading everything since I’ve moved my licenses onto this replacement 360 and haven’t done the redownload yet.

I’m planning on borrowing a friend’s MU to move my savegames.

I just transferred my 20 gig harddrive to a 120 gig I picked up Friday…and then returned my old busted 360 (drive died on me) to Costco for a brand new one. Put my 120 gig HD into the new 360, and worked fine.

FWIW I have 6 games installed on my 120Gb drive (and plan for more, just haven’t gotten to them) and I’ve got 65Gb left over (this is with very few arcade games and NO game demos at all on the drive).

So if you think you might install more than a handful of titles (trust me, you will) and/or have quite a lot of DLC, arcade games or demos, I’d be seriously looking to upgrade from the 20Gb drive to the 120Gb drive and skip the 60Gb all together.

I bought a 120, which is expensive enough that poor old bancrupt Microsoft can afford to throw the transfer cable in.

I’m going to break down and do a 120… or I might get an elite as a second machine. I’d just like for there to be some special editions or something cool to make me take that second machine plunge.

I have an Elite, and I’m generally below 90GB free. A few demos eat 5-10 gigs at all times, but the rest is all DLC and games.

Buying an Elite is what I did to solve the space barrier. I bought it the last time Dell had their $100 off coupon for it, so it was $300 for the Elite plus Forza2/Marvel Alliance packin, plus 2 faceplaces (that I honestly don’t give a damn about, but whatever).

A special edition would be nice, but $100 off is nicer. It is kind of ridiculous that Microsoft charges so much for the HDDs that it is easy to justify just buying a whole new machine to get the same result, but who am I to judge them for it when I was willing to take the bait and buy an Elite myself (thereby giving them even more money and increasing their overall installed base of units in the process).

I’m begging the GF for a 120 gb for my birthday in February. She really doesn’t understand why it’s something I need, but I keep pointing out that it would mean she’d never get a dirty disc error in Oblivion ever again.

Next time Dell does this deal that is exactly what I am going to do-I will probably give me regular one to my brother after transferring my stuff. My DVD drive is insanely loud and its a near-launch model that will likely die anyways. Since I am a big Netflix user I figure I will use the big HDD quite a bit, so I think it’s worth it to me over the long run.