More space is usually a good thing, especially when it comes to this generation of videogame consoles, with all their media capabilities and the plethora of downloadable content, such as game demos, downloadable games and expansion packs. I watched as my stock drives on both my 360 and PS3 inched closer and closer to capacity, bit by bit, byte by byte, until they finally hit the wall. Then I had to play the endless minigame of juggling content for a few months, until i decided to skip the game altogether and upgrade them both. On the same day!
With the PS3, this was a fairly simple task, involving first using the convenient and handy backup option in the XMB menu to back up all my data onto an external USB drive. This took about an hour for the system to complete the backup of about 40GB of data. Up next was the big swap, removing the side panel, unscrewing the hard drive and inserting in the new one. Once that was all done, and everything was put back together, restoring the data to the PS3 was just a matter of booting the system up, formatting the drive when prompted, and then going back to the XMB menu and choosing the restore option, which took about an hour again. Pretty simple indeed.
Upgrading the 360 was a bit more involved, as it takes some hackery with a DOS application called HDDHACKR, that was made specifically for this purpose, and also requires a very specific make and model of 2.5" SATA Hard Drive (Western Digital BEVS) for the replacement to be recognized by the console. Then there are the additional steps of backing up and re-copying the backed up data with another app, Xplorer360. The disassembly and reassembly was fairly easy, albeit a bit more complicated than the PS3, since there are more parts to worry about. The backup process took under an hour, but the restore process took over four hours, and this was with about 20GB of data.
What better way is there to put the old drives to good use than with an external enclosure? Especially with the prices the way they are now, it was cheaper to buy Western Digital My Passport Essential drives than buying bare drives and enclosures seperately. They also conveniently contain Western Digital BEVS hard drives, which are the only drives that can currently be swapped into an Xbox 360, with a little work anyway. The choice on the size of the 360 drive was fairly simple, since only 20GB and 120GB sizes are supported by the console, i went with a 160GB HDD as the 120GB Passport drives were impossible to find. With the PS3 i just thought 250GB was enough and didn't feel the need to spend $30 more for a 320GB Passport. Both upgrades are working flawlessly, and so are both of the old drives, which are now swapped into the enclosures.
More space is usually a good thing, especially when it comes to this generation of videogame consoles, with all their media capabilities and the plethora of downloadable content, such as game demos, downloadable games and expansion packs. I watched as my stock drives on both my 360 and PS3 inched closer and closer to capacity, bit by bit, byte by byte, until they finally hit the wall. Then I had to play the endless minigame of juggling content for a few months, until i decided to skip the game altogether and upgrade them both. On the same day!
With the PS3, this was a fairly simple task, involving first using the convenient and handy backup option in the XMB menu to back up all my data onto an external USB drive. This took about an hour for the system to complete the backup of about 40GB of data. Up next was the big swap, removing the side panel, unscrewing the hard drive and inserting in the new one. Once that was all done, and everything was put back together, restoring the data to the PS3 was just a matter of booting the system up, formatting the drive when prompted, and then going back to the XMB menu and choosing the restore option, which took about an hour again. Pretty simple indeed.
Upgrading the 360 was a bit more involved, as it takes some hackery with a DOS application called HDDHACKR, that was made specifically for this purpose, and also requires a very specific make and model of 2.5" SATA Hard Drive (Western Digital BEVS) for the replacement to be recognized by the console. Then there are the additional steps of backing up and re-copying the backed up data with another app, Xplorer360. The disassembly and reassembly was fairly easy, albeit a bit more complicated than the PS3, since there are more parts to worry about. The backup process took under an hour, but the restore process took over four hours, and this was with about 20GB of data.
What better way is there to put the old drives to good use than with an external enclosure? Especially with the prices the way they are now, it was cheaper to buy Western Digital My Passport Essential drives than buying bare drives and enclosures seperately. They also conveniently contain Western Digital BEVS hard drives, which are the only drives that can currently be swapped into an Xbox 360, with a little work anyway. The choice on the size of the 360 drive was fairly simple, since only 20GB and 120GB sizes are supported by the console, i went with a 160GB HDD as the 120GB Passport drives were impossible to find. With the PS3 i just thought 250GB was enough and didn't feel the need to spend $30 more for a 320GB Passport. Both upgrades are working flawlessly, and so are both of the old drives, which are now swapped into the enclosures.
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