I believe the lack of transferability is intentional on Microsoft's part. If you read the Terms of Use agreement to the media you download off Live Marketplace, it specifically says something along the lines of having a limited use version of the media only to be used on your Xbox 360.

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Zune Tag

Im trying to figure out the whole external hardrive thing, you know connecting it to the 360. Me and my friend are looking for ways to connect a external hardrive and save games to it. if we find any thing out ill say something.

Does anyone know if you can get a Network Storage Drive (NAS) to work on an xbox 360?  Possibly connect the usb side to the 360 and use the ethernet portion for use with Media Center PC to update the NAS?  I'm looking to setup a media server without keeping the Media Center PC on all day.  Thanks..

 Strubes01 wrote:

Does anyone know if you can get a Network Storage Drive (NAS) to work on an xbox 360?  Possibly connect the usb side to the 360 and use the ethernet portion for use with Media Center PC to update the NAS?  I'm looking to setup a media server without keeping the Media Center PC on all day.  Thanks..

Not sure about getting a NAS to work, though I have feeling it won't work.

On the other hand I keep my MCE PC on 24/7 up in my office and it works just fine.  I also use my MCE to record TV though so I sorta always need it on.  I run it headless, without a monitor, and when I need to actually do any work on it I just Remote Desktop into it.

thanks dude, i was trying to put thumbdrives and external hdds and the format was in ntfs, so i changed them to fat32, thanks alot dude

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Frankie C. HALO3 IS THE BEST GAME IN THE WORLD!!!!!!

can i download demos to my external usb Hard Drive?

 GEORGE55 wrote:

can i download demos to my external usb Hard Drive?

No.

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Zune Tag

I finally was able to get access to my Pc through my Xbox 360.  Changing routers helped alot, but that's not why I am posting.

The reason I am posting is that I getting concerned with room on my hdd for the 360.  I still have 5plus gb left on it.  I would love to transfer most of my games on to my Pc hdd or even an external hdd exclusively for the 360.  I know!!!  I know!!!  There is no possible way until Microsoft will allow it.  Sure would be nice to have that feature on the 360, but then why would you need the memory units.

Food for thought.

I don't think that M/S will ever allow transference to an external USB Device, it doesn't make sense from a Copyright perspective. If one could transfer save-game files, then it stands to reason one could transfer movies/tv shows over to the external drive. Once that content has left the safe DRM confines of our happy little consoles, it would be a matter of hours until we could download it from our local torrent sites, at which point the copyright holders would be instantaneously panty-bunched over the whole state of affairs.

But I'll throw this out there for the moderators to edit........

 

The 360 uses a standard laptop hard drive from all I've read............and that casing is just plastic................hmmmmm.

 

Anyone tried it yet? I ain't quite ready to rip mine apart. lol

 

 

I'm picking up what you're putting down but a few things jump out:

• You said "it stands to reason one could transfer movies/tv".  I see this differently because Microsoft would still control the how and what of you transferred.  They could allow transfer of save games but disallow movies/tv.  Of course people would want to transfer media but that doesn't mean they'd have to allow it.
• Even if they did allow transferring of media (music/movies/tv) off the 360 they could still wrap it in DRM.  For example the dvr-ms file format that MCE uses has the ability to DRM certain recordings (like certain HBO shows) so they only playback on the MCE that recorded them.

That being said I think some of the issues are:

• Peripherals.  If you can just use an external USB drive then why buy an "official" XBox 360 Memory Unit?  Plus, if Microsoft ever does release a larger HDD they're going to have a really hard time marketing it if you can just use a cheap USB HDD instead.
• Transcoding.  I imagine the format that movies/tv are downloaded in is optimized for downloading and picture quality, NOT for DRM.  To transfer from your 360 to an external HDD the 360 would probably have to transcode the media into a format with strong DRM and transcoding is very processor intensive.  You probably wouldn't be able to do anything but sit there and wait.
• Support.  With so many different external USB drives, some with slightly buggy USB support or only having USB 1.1 support your phone calls are going to increase.
• The potential for people to get around DRM.  Even though there are some DRM schemes out there everything gets cracked at some point.  The more files that people have access to the more chances people have to examine it and see how to get around it.

Of course, I still would really, really like to be able to move my less often used items over to an external HDD.  Game demos, trailers, TV shows, etc.  I'd even settle for being able to "Archive" certain items over my network to computer.

I just picked up a very nice Lacie 320 BG external that'd be perfect for storing/serving music through the 360. Its USB 2.0, came pre-formatted Fat-32 and runs absolutely silent (fanless)--plus its quite small, just right to tuck on top of my HD-DVD add-on. So, my big question is, what's the best way to get music onto this drive for use by the 360. My library on my PC laptop is all MPEG-4 (iTunes). MCE can see it and I can stream it from the laptop to the 360 using Media Extender...but I want it on the drive/local so I don't have to have my laptop on. Sorry, I know this might seem so very basic...but I'm basically a PC/MCE newb. I'm gathering from comments above that I cannot rip CDs through the 360's Media Center to the external drive? Or is that one functionality not prohibited?

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“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” -- Soren Kierkegaard

 ShaneWalker17 wrote:

I just picked up a very nice Lacie 320 BG external that'd be perfect for storing/serving music through the 360. Its USB 2.0, came pre-formatted Fat-32 and runs absolutely silent (fanless)--plus its quite small, just right to tuck on top of my HD-DVD add-on. So, my big question is, what's the best way to get music onto this drive for use by the 360. My library on my PC laptop is all MPEG-4 (iTunes). MCE can see it and I can stream it from the laptop to the 360 using Media Extender...but I want it on the drive/local so I don't have to have my laptop on. Sorry, I know this might seem so very basic...but I'm basically a PC/MCE newb. I'm gathering from comments above that I cannot rip CDs through the 360's Media Center to the external drive? Or is that one functionality not prohibited?

All you have to do is attach you exteranl hdd to your PC. MOve or Copy the folders onto the external Hdd, it should have a letter.  click on the My computer and you should see all the listings of devices attached to your PC.   Once you have copied or moved the folders you want on to the External Hdd.  Next thing you need to do is to make them a share folder.  So you can gain access to them through you xbox360.  If you need further help. Please let me know. I can break it down further.

It did indeed end up being much simpler a process than I'd feared it would be. The ripped CD audio files that comprised the vast majority of my iTunes library were .m4a files (unprotected AAC). It was a simple matter of setting up a folder on the new drive, plugging it into the 360. The drive mounted just fine, and all I had to do was navigate to the folder to play music. The only extra step was, upon prompting by the system in the music player, downloading a patch to allow unprotected AAC playback. Took seconds. Now, my only further investigations are how to clean up the playlists and artwork (track names/data/artwork don't seem to carry over from iTunes 100%). Overall, though, easy as pie. And pleased as punch. Love that 'visualizer' on a big HD screen!

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“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” -- Soren Kierkegaard

By the way, if you buy a internal hard drive and buy a external hard drive enclosure, make sure the hard drive is set to MASTER.

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Ask me about crouching on dead bodies.

How are you all getting video to play on the xbox 360 from an external hard drive mine says there is no video in it. What formate does it need to be and is there a converter?

The anly video I'm aware you cana play off an external drive directly connected tot eh 360 is WMV.  In regards to mp3's or audio, the 360 can only recognize a maximum of 5,000 files per folder so you might want to organize your music into folders by artist to prevent music from not being displayed. 

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JCSWW - The official home of the Gamer Angels

Wii came, Wii conquered!

Does anyone know were i can find a free Converter that you can Convert all Video to WMV???

There are a ton of ones out there.  Here are two I've heard good things about:

Free: Encode360 @ http://dcunningham.net/

Pay: WinAVI @ http://www.winavi.com/

I use WinAVI, it converts anything to anything and it's only $30 but if you're into free then Encode360 seems to be the ticket.

 

Downloaded aload of HD content the other day to use on my 360 through my EX-HD.

Unfortunnatly you can`t put any file over 4gb onto Fat32 so I converted to NTFS now I find out the 360 can`t read it! Gutted !!

i have a little 2GB USB Key & when i plug it in the s¢reen flashes as if it reads it but when i try to save a game file on it its not in the devi¢es

do i have to take my harddrive off or somethin?

i wanna move over a game save to another xbox

 soowoop wrote:

i have a little 2GB USB Key & when i plug it in the s¢reen flashes as if it reads it but when i try to save a game file on it its not in the devi¢es

do i have to take my harddrive off or somethin?

i wanna move over a game save to another xbox

You will have to purchase the xbox memory unit to transfer game save data. The Xbox 360 will only read certain media data from external storage devices, it will not write system data to one. I can only assume that this is intentional, as it forces you to purchase official Xbox products.

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Zune Tag

^^thx for dat
i should of already known

Well I've tried everything now but I still can't get my 360 to recognise my 320gb external hdd. I've already formatted in to FAT32, made it shared in xp, and put just a few mp3 albums on it for test only, but when i connect to 360 usb there is no sign of them!

Can somebody please write a short tutorial for connecting an external hdd to 360 for playing mp3s? I thought one of you fanboys would have done this long ago but obviously not.

When I go to Music in my 360 the Portable device is grayed out like theres nothing even connected to it, but it works fine with my pc! What could be wrong here anyone??

Hi, I am planning to buy an external 500GB hard drive and then attach it to my xbox360 system. Have you experience trying to view movies from such a device? I have heard that only WMV is possible. Anybody viewing AVIs? MPEG?

Thanks!

the only way I can think a xbox 360 could recognize a NAS drive if it was running a upnp program

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Ask me about crouching on dead bodies.

I've tried everything now but I still can't get my 360 to recognise my 320gb external hdd. I've already formatted in to FAT32, made it shared in xp, and put just a few mp3 albums on it for test only, but when i connect to 360 usb there is no sign of them!

Can somebody please write a short tutorial for connecting an external hdd to 360 for playing mp3s? I thought one of you fanboys would have done this long ago but obviously not.

When I go to Music in my 360 the Portable device is grayed out like theres nothing even connected to it, but it works fine with my pc! What could be wrong here anyone??

after calling us "fanboys", I doubt you'll get much help.

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Ask me about crouching on dead bodies.

 

 richy81 wrote:

I've tried everything now but I still can't get my 360 to recognise my 320gb external hdd. I've already formatted in to FAT32, made it shared in xp, and put just a few mp3 albums on it for test only, but when i connect to 360 usb there is no sign of them!

Can somebody please write a short tutorial for connecting an external hdd to 360 for playing mp3s? I thought one of you fanboys would have done this long ago but obviously not.

When I go to Music in my 360 the Portable device is grayed out like theres nothing even connected to it, but it works fine with my pc! What could be wrong here anyone??

 

Ok you made it shared in XP. Are you connecting this drive Via your PC or straight to the Xbox 360. Because sharing it in XP isnt going to help what soever if you connecting it directly to a 360 usb port.

Are you sure you formatted it to FAT 32. What did you use to format it?

Are your Mp3 in folders? How deep does your Folder tree go. ?

Try placing a few mp3 in the root of the drive.

 higrob24 wrote:

 

Ok you made it shared in XP. Are you connecting this drive Via your PC or straight to the Xbox 360. Because sharing it in XP isnt going to help what soever if you connecting it directly to a 360 usb port.

Are you sure you formatted it to FAT 32. What did you use to format it?

Are your Mp3 in folders? How deep does your Folder tree go. ?

Try placing a few mp3 in the root of the drive.

Drive is connecting directly to USB port on back of 360.

I used USB Extreme to format the hdd to FAT32 (others on this thread said it has worked for them, perhaps I should use a better app?), I tested by putting mp3s in root directory and some also in a folder called 'Music', but 360 still doesn't even recognise any portable device, its grayed out in the Music menu.

Any help is appreciated!

 richy81 wrote:

 higrob24 wrote:

 

Ok you made it shared in XP. Are you connecting this drive Via your PC or straight to the Xbox 360. Because sharing it in XP isnt going to help what soever if you connecting it directly to a 360 usb port.

Are you sure you formatted it to FAT 32. What did you use to format it?

Are your Mp3 in folders? How deep does your Folder tree go. ?

Try placing a few mp3 in the root of the drive.

Drive is connecting directly to USB port on back of 360.

I used USB Extreme to format the hdd to FAT32 (others on this thread said it has worked for them, perhaps I should use a better app?), I tested by putting mp3s in root directory and some also in a folder called 'Music', but 360 still doesn't even recognise any portable device, its grayed out in the Music menu.

Any help is appreciated!

I formatted my drive with the software that came with the drive. If you want, message me and i'll send you a ISO of the CD

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Ask me about crouching on dead bodies.