80GB 360 Hard Drive Leaked

If they do bring out a new HDD, will it be an addition to the 20GB one or a replacement?

Apparently, pro-g got this statement:
"The device is modular and there's the possibility that different hard drives will be available in the future. To reiterate, we have no plans to announce such an accessory in the near future," said a Microsoft spokesperson.

If one is coming out it will probably be a replacement, with current downloads having to be re-done and saved games transferred by memory card (could be included?)

Alternatively, there are the USB ports for another ad-on but I can’t see MS wanting too many bits hanging off the 360

I've been thinking about this since I asked about it a while ago and I can't see an easy migration path for either the 360 or the PS3 when changing the hard drive.

Without some way of migrating your game saves, you are effectively stuck with the drive you first bought.

The solution would seem to be one of the following;

1) A memory card transfer
This has the disadvantage that if you have more saves than can go onto a memory card, you're stuffed. Also if you don't have a memory card, you have to buy one for the sole purpose of moving your data. Not too bad if the (premium) PS3 can use SD cards since they can be used elsewhere, but a nasty sticking point for the 360.

2) A hard drive USB cradle
This would enable you to connect both drives at once and transfer directly. Once more you are buying something that won't be used again, but you also have the issue that USB doesn't deliver enough power to spin a hard drive and you'll need an additional power source.

3) A network transfer
Sony and Microsoft avail some disc space to you on their network service to enable you to upload your saves and then download them again to the new hard drive. This may require a lot of storage space to be available with little utilisation, a cost both companies can do without. Also not everybody with these consoles will have access to a network connection.

4) A transfer service in shops
Like some mobile phone shops provide a contacts transfer service, Sony and Microsoft could provide shops with quick copy machines that take the old and new hard drives and transfer the data. This obviously requires the co-operation of retail and the production of machines that may not get much use.

5) A mail in transfer service
I'm adding this for completeness, but nobody would use it. Same as above, but you mail both drives to your local branch of Sony or Microsoft and they transfer your data. Never going to happen.

So, any thoughts or comments? How would you manage this issue if you were Sony or Microsoft? Have I missed an option?

With the memory card wouldn’t you be able to transfer saves onto MC
Swap HD's
Save to a new HD
Swap back to old HD
Delete saves from the MC and redo the above?

I know it’s a serious pain in the arse but it’s doable?

The only other stumbling block is what you've said about not having a memory card in the 1st place. Which can only be sorted by including one with the new hd.

My Western Digital Portable HDD runs fine from just a USB port, no need for a external power source. Although it does have a port for one.



I think Sony where talking about having something like this where you could rip DVD's, CD's and things to a network storage so they would be available to both your PS3 and PSP... But uploading large files over broadband is painfully slow.

You could just get around this whole thing by making this new drive an additional add-on and not a replacement.

You would remove your existing drive, slot the new on in its place and then slot your old one on top of that... your 360 would get a little taller/wider but it would be a more elegant method of doing this. You get more disk space and you keep your existing saves, demos, themes, gamer pictures, etc!

of all the options this is my favourite and probably best combination of ease of use and easy on the eye

What about streaming from a pc, but in reverse. Would certainly get more people using the netconnect. Just conect to a PC on ur home network and upload all the files (in some sort of single fancy encrypted form of course) to ur PC, swap drives (hot probably) then download the backup file. Would be like sincing a PDA.
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Just to lock down everyone's excitement, the dev kits have an 80GB HDD. It's very likely the pic is from one of these.

i've read this many times but i've also read just as many saying dev kits are based on as close as possible to the retail model and has the same hd

seeing as online storage is dirt cheap now, microsoft could simply back-up your saved games online and link it to your gamer id. be a kinda cool feature they could sell as well, in case anything went wrong.

then when you buy your new hard drive, you set up your gamer id as you would have to anyway, and it auto downloads all your saves!

also, they could just create a tiny data file saying what downloads you have, then offer you the option to download all or some of them again. they are already stored on their servers anyway! reduce the upload size more, so your back-up would be around 1GB or less.

if microsoft wanted to be tight as well, they could offer it as a service only to xbox live gold subscribers!

as for people without xbox live... well they dont really need a bigger hard drive so theres no point supporting them. simple really, you want to upgrade, you have to have the net. you want the latest update to a program for your pc, you download it off the net!

finally, when the xbox 1080 comes out, you just link your old 360 gamer id to that and it downloads all your old saves for backwards compatibility!!

There's no real need for a bigger HDD - once you paid for it once, it goes on your "previously downloaded" list. You can then delete with impunity, as you already paid and as such can re-download. I know, as it was part of accessing the test room glitch on Oblivion.

The problem with that is that with more and more downloadable content, you can't be sure what you want to use when. So you may find yourself needing a larger hard drive to avoid having to juggle stuff just to be able to watch movies or trailers, play demos and arcade games and make use of premium content.

If you have to delete your favourite arcade game to make room for a movie that you end up not watching because you don't have time, you'll delete the movie to re-download the game, play it for a while, then have to re-delete it to re-download to movie to watch when you have time.

It's a forced example, I know, but the same sort of thing will happen. Anybody who has a Sky+ box will have seen the same sort of dilemmas.

It's about convenience, not access rights.