So last weekend I sold my old 3+ year old 360 and got a shiny new Arcade with a HDMI port.  I kept the 120 gig hard drive from my old 360 and just put it on my new arcade.

A few days ago I started Fallout 3 back up and I noticed while I was playing it was using the hard drive, which was odd because I installed it back on my old 360.  I figured since I started Fallout 3 signed out of my profile (I had forgotten how to do auto-sign in, figured it out now) that's why I didn't play from the hard drive.

So today I try to play Fallout 3 again and make sure to say play from hard drive and it turns out you can only play from hard drive on the console it was installed on.

That just seems odd to me. 

At first I thought well maybe it's like a computer in where you generally can't install a game and then just move it to another computer but every 360 is the same (more or less) so that shouldn't matter.

Then I thought maybe it was some sort of copy protection but you still have to have the game in the drive anyways to play so that didn't make sense either.

So I wonder why it's done like that.

(just random little observement/thread while waiting on my game to install again)

-edit-

Just curious, does this affect people that have had their consoles break, get sent off, and then returned to them?  I don't know how much actually changes or if they get a new console.  Not really complaining since this is nothing more than a small annoyance, just curious.

Also, this is a question that I've always had, just never bothered to ask and this is good enough of a place to ask it: after installing a game to your hard drive, do you always have to press Y and select play from hard drive?

I always do but I've never been sure if just selecting to play it from the menu plays it from the hard drive automatically if you've already installed it.

 No you can just click play game and it will play off the HDD. It will automatically play from the HDD unless you say play from disc.

As for your other question i have no idea and it makes no sense to me either.

ive got a question myself being a new 360 owner, if you save a game to the hard drive does that mean you can play the game without the disc being in the x360?

Yes this is a strange annoyance although I can only assume it's a extra DRM defense to prevent hackers getting games to run from the HDD. I notice it when I take my HDD round to my parents and games have to run off the disk that are installed. If you delete the game then reinstall obviously it works fine until you reverse the HDD move again.

No the disk must be in the drive to play the game but it doesn't read it other than to check it's an original.  It's just to stop people borrowing games putting them on the HDD and playing them for free.

@megaman.2

no the disc has to be in the 360

@twesterm..... it is gay copyright protection, they send a not back with your 360 saying that you will need to delete and re-download all dlc and game installs if you want to use with out being signed onto live ..... something that pisses me off to no end.... oh well ill wait to do mine till i get a new HD holding out for 250s right now

Twes try the DRM license transfer: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/

This should solve the prob.

Right now my 360 is being repaired, so I'll be interested to see if my installs (about 8 of them) work when it comes back.