I take it your a little miffed on the upgrade solution for the xbox360 for Harddrive upgradeability?

yea do I think it's a little crappy? you be do.

I think Microsoft could have made the Harddrive can that connect's to the xbox360 at the top be opened so you could do that upgrade your self . yes you bet.

but since Microsoft's own software need's to be on the Harddrive in the partition, I can understand why they do it that way,

do i care for it much. no but I understand why they do it that way.

the XBOX360 is a good unit that is one of the only real fault's I find with it. but that is just me being a tech in the PC field .

Theres a download on Microsofts website that makes HDD upgrades very cheap. You have to buy an empty HDD case from ebay or wherever else, though. You connect the HDD you want to put in your 360 to your PC via an external enclosure and make sure its formatted, then you can install the software onto it available via MS and put in the enclosure and into your 360.

Do most people know of this? No. It means you'll have to pay a whole 20 bucks extra but you can easily put a huge HDD in your 360.

My problem is the fact that MS sells smaller HDD all set to go for rediculous prices. It does explain their release of the HDD transfer cable, though.

yea , I agree it's a little troublesome for the end user. but Microsoft tend's to be very protective of the HARDWARE they put out less than IDEA  for people that do not fool arround with their Hardware. like I like to see what the inner chipset's are and inner working's are, but many people just want their unit to work the way it is.

I guess I am from that old school, that even though nothing's wrong with the ticker, let's open it up to see what make's it tick.

I also agree the guy's at microsoft could of made it a little bit easy to do what you need to do to upgrade the HARDDRIVE hell with the PS3 since it's FAT32 it's very easy.

PS3 Internal HDDs are not Fat32. The ps3 formats them into a custom file format after you install them.

You can pre-format it on your PS3 into a FAT32 and the Ps3 will reformat it after you install it. If you take it back out and hook it up to your PC afterwards, the file format will not be recognized.

Externals must be in FAT32, though. More than likely to ward off piracy.

yes you are right  it is a ver of fat 32. not the exact same. sorry about that. in a rush.

linux partition mainly

yes it's not the same after the PS3 get done with it. but like you stated all external must be FAT32

A little advice for taking off the 4 screws on the tray, use pliers to loosen the screws first. When they say there "extremely" tight, there EXTREMELY tight. And they do strip very easy. So get some pliers and loosen the screws first with it then you can remove it with the screw driver.

Other then that, I can't really help you with transferring your data, my only advice is to buy a external HDD, if only I had my 1 TB External HDD when I switched HDD on my PS3, I still would of had 2 very important saves.  

There is a build in back-up, but youll need a 3rd drive, externally attached through USB for that. I suggest just copying sava data files, but youll have to reinstall game data.

If you have a spare drive do the back-up.

Its just incredibly easy to save all of your stuff and the need to upgrade at all has diminished ever since the Xbox 360 and PS3 both started coming standard with 120GB HDDs. Fewer people even need to do it, and the price for ease of use is expense.

How do i convert my Hard drive to FAT format on windows 7 i tried the directions in the thread but i don't know how to do it on Windows 7...

Ok i partitioned and and formatted the drive from my computer, 320 gigs, but my PS3 only reads it as 32 gigs available to back up to, Anyone think they can help me cause i don't know whats wrong