Mar 26, 2010
Via Major Nelson, Microsoft announced today that the April 6 system update will enable support for USB flash drives on the Xbox 360. You’ll be able to do everything from store profiles, game saves, demos “and more.”
Even still, there are limitations. You can only use memory sticks that are between 1 and 16 GB, and only two sticks at a time for a total of 32 GB. You also have to format the stick so you can use it, so you can’t just grab a stick and throw it onto the machine for a quick backup.
Don’t have any USB sticks? Don’t worry! Microsoft is partnering up with SanDisk to put out some official Xbox 360 memory sticks (pre-formatted, even!) that’ll be out pretty soon.
Naturally these "pre formatted" USB sticks will cost roughly 500% more than a similar off-brand stick and will still manage to capture the enormous "what's a usb stick???" market.
Most importantly it was announced that those SanDisk sticks will come with the spring update already on it! What a deal!
it's a good solution for me. i can put my RB songs on there to lighten the load on my old HDD without overpaying for the big'un.
I was kind of excited about this, and slightly bummed that I traded stuff for a 60GB drive a few months ago. But I just remembered that my 360 (and my old RRoD'd 360, for that matter) has had USB problems. And also problems dealing with music on USB flash drives. So maybe I'm better off with the hard drive.
The update was released this morning. It also includes a transfer function that's probably similar to using the hard drive transfer cable's software. I'm using it now to move the last of the stuff on my old 20GB drive to a 4GB flash drive (which only ends up being 3.2GB usable :\ ).
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2...y-support.aspx
:\ ).
That's the smiley for Imacutchu.
oh man
MS already said that half a gig is set aside when you format your USB for MS's own use, so yeah you're going to be missing a decent chunk of your drive.
Anyway the two games I wanted to back up the most was Forza 2 and 3. Turns out that both are copy protected. Yay! So is Fable 2. Also you can't copy original Xbox saves. Seriously, what's the point of copy protecting saves that only work with your account? Am I missing something? Sony's been pulling this crap too, and Nintendo (but they have an excuse since you can't lock a save to a user because they never bothered adding user logins).
Yeah, I tried copying some protected saves earlier (formatted my Forza 3 drive for it) and got annoyed.
I think Microsoft will let you move those saves if you also move your profile onto the device, but that's kind of useless for the purpose of backing up as you'd have to then play all your games with your saves on the USB drive.
Nothing will be as evil as Demon's Souls, which doubly screws you over in the event of a PS3 failure.
It was kinda weird for me. After I'd done the transfer function from the 20GB to USB, I was able to just plain move stuff like Hexic HD and the Bejeweled 2 save, no problem. I think my Burnout 3 save may have gotten boinked somewhere in there, though.
I keep losing USB sticks on my course, currently just with the one which I'm using. But this whole update seems pretty cool...ish.