Adding a HD to XBox Arcade

[UrbanGator]

Okay, so i got lucky and scored and Xbox arcade from Walmart for $199 with a $100 gift card thrown in, not bad for net $99.00!

But now I want to add a hard drive so it will play the older games. Do I have to buy the Xbox HD or can I put any sata drive in?

[helix139]

There are a few sata drives that work if you get an XBox housing off of ebay. I believe they are all western digitals but the 360 is finicky about which model numbers you can use and which ones you cant. I don't have the list but it is out there and not too hard to find with google. Thus, I'd recommend picking up a cheap 20GB or 60GB on ebay.

[BLING]

Originally Posted by helix139

There are a few sata drives that work if you get an XBox housing off of ebay. I believe they are all western digitals but the 360 is finicky about which model numbers you can use and which ones you cant. I don't have the list but it is out there and not too hard to find with google. Thus, I'd recommend picking up a cheap 20GB or 60GB on ebay.

I read that Microsoft is banning MILLIONS of consoles that are modded and use non proprietary (i.e. non XBOX branded drives). So if the OP plans on playing any online games at any time in the future they might want to research what is OK to do per Microsoft policy. I don't know if just putting in a custom hard drive is banned or some other mod is needed to constitute a ban, but at the very least you should look into it. Supposedly once a console is banned from XBOX live it is banned for life with no recourse.

BTW good deal on that XBOX. I was VERY tempted to get that even though i just got a PS3. I figure it is worth $99 just to use it as another box to stream Netflix and to play some of the different games to what is available on Playstation (i.e. I have never played Halo, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, etc). I would have used that $100 gift card to buy so 3 or 4 "greatest hits" games. I meant to order it online when Amazon offered the same deal as Wal-Mart, hopefully they do it again.

[helix139]

Originally Posted by BLING

I read that Microsoft is banning MILLIONS of consoles that are modded and use non proprietary (i.e. non XBOX branded drives). So if the OP plans on playing any online games at any time in the future they might want to research what is OK to do per Microsoft policy. I don't know if just putting in a custom hard drive is banned or some other mod is needed to constitute a ban, but at the very least you should look into it. Supposedly once a console is banned from XBOX live it is banned for life with no recourse.

BTW good deal on that XBOX. I was VERY tempted to get that even though i just got a PS3. I figure it is worth $99 just to use it as another box to stream Netflix and to play some of the different games to what is available on Playstation (i.e. I have never played Halo, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, etc). I would have used that $100 gift card to buy so 3 or 4 "greatest hits" games. I meant to order it online when Amazon offered the same deal as Wal-Mart, hopefully they do it again.

The banning was due to consoles having modded DVD firmware to play games on burned disks and downloading pirated copies of games that werent patched correctly or were review copies of the game that had been flagged. It wasn't due to having a different hard drive. There are only a few western digital drives that will work, however, and they don't require any console modification as they are the same type of drives MS puts in their proporietary casing from the factory (all are WD Blue series). They may have to be flashed with MS firmware but that is about it and it is a very low risk endeavor that will work exactly like an OEM 360 hard drive.