You can use your Xbox 360 as a media centre by attaching an external USB Hard Drive, which you can use to view photos, play music and watch films on your TV via Xbox 360.
If you are looking for the Xbox 360 Fifa 2008 Skill Moves guide – it’s here.
Using one of the USB inputs at the front of the Xbox 360 it is possible to plug in a Mass Storage Device such as a USB External Hard Drive, this means you can watch films, listen to music and view pictures stored on the Xbox hard drive – here’s how to make it work…
There are loads of USB External Hard Drives on the market, not all of them are compatable with the Xbox 360 and I wanted something really big, something that would hold stacks of films and TV shows so I could create a library and have them all in one place for easy access via my Xbox 360.
When I did further research all the articles on the internet said the Xbox 360 would not recognise any External USB Hard Drive over 4GB in capacity without the drive having to be formatted and having all sorts of settings changed (which sounded very complicated) – well I can confirm this is not true.
I got myself a Western Digital My Book 2 500GB External USB Hard Drive, the Xbox 360 recognised the hard drive as soon as I plugged it into the USB input.
I have already put tons of content on there and watched films, music videos and TV shows through my Xbox 360, one point to note is that the Xbox only recognises certain video formats, so I have been using videos in DivX format, it also recognises MP4 files.
If you are looking for an external USB Hard Drive to watch videos and films on your Xbox 360, get this one, it looks good, has tons of storage space and above all – it works!
The other beauty is that you can store all the other documents from your PC on the hard drive, including your iPod songs – which can take up a lot of space if you have a big collection.
If you are looking to find films to put on your Xbox Hard Drive I recommend using a file sharing application such as Limewire
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Im wondering once i hook up my 1 tb western digital hard drive, How do you make thumbnails of the video files to scroll through>? or any files.
BenHizzlle,
its easy to make thumbnails for vids. all you do is get the pic you want, rename it so it is the same as the video file and place it in the same directory. done. when u plug it in they should come up. at least thats how i do it.
not sure if u can do it with other file types such as music. u could try, but id image ud need to make several copies of the same image and rename them to all the individual tracks on an album.
dont no bout u but ive got bout 150gb of music so i dont really fancy doin that. maybe there is some kind of program u can get to do it for u?
let us know how u go.
THERES A SITE CALLED MODCHIPSTORE.COM THAT CLAIMS TO HAVE A DEVICE CALLED USB360 THAT ALLOWS THE XBOX 360 TO READ ANY AND ALL EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVES INCLUDING THE ABITLITY TO PUT YOUR GAME SAVES ON IT, AND A COUPLE OTHER TRICKS. IT SELLS FOR $50.I’M GOING TO TRY IT OUT AND I’LL LET YOU GUYS KNOW HOW IT WENT. BUT IF YOU GO TO MODCHIPSTORE.COM 4 YOURSELF, YOU CAN READ THE CLAIMS AND MAKE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT
Hi Lumurk1,
NO NEED TO SHOUT!…LOL
I hope you haven’t gone ahead with this just yet as it won’t work on all 360s. It depends on the DVD drive in the machine and the make and firmware model. I checked mine and it won’t work.
See this guide before handing over your hard earned cash!
http://sws.vxcomputers.com/x360usb/
Cheers
Oly
A few years ago I was the proud owner of a full-on Home Cinema system! I had the works, Infocus DLP Projector, 6ft Beam Mounted Screen, Yamaha Amp, Bose Speakers and a Samsung Upscaling DVD Player.
I’m not here to boast as I am now no longer the proud owner of this awesome system due to what can only be called a change in focus…We had a baby boy…and moved house…all in the space of a few months. I left the projector and screen as a sweetner for the house sale and I sold the rest on Ebay to pay for a Cotbed and other nursery items and scaled down the mighty moviephile system to a simple Samsung 2.1 virtual surround unit.
Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well over the past 18 months I have missed the Home Cinema experience and after learning that I could download MKV format HD movies and play them back from an external hard drive using my XBOX 360 (There you go, the thread link) I have striven to re-build said experience.
I had a nice 32″ HD Ready TV and my Xbox 360 plus an IOMEGA 1TB external hard drive and I’ve been remuxing HD MKV files to MPEG4 files to play them on my 360.
Then I decided I needed glorious 5.1 surround sound back in my life and set to work doing a “Cash in the Attic” clear out through Ebay. I made £270 and now started looking for a cheap 5.1 system. After much Googling I plumped for the Sony HT-SS1300 slim amp and 5.1 speaker combo. This has 3 HDMI inputs on the amp and one HDMI output and sounds great for my 700+ collection of DVD movies and 2000 CDs of music (now I’m boasting).
The problem came when playing back my remuxed MKV files. I use a program called GOTsent, which takes the MKV container and strips out the audio and video and reconverts the audio to 2 channel stereo and then joins it back together as an MPEG4 that the 360 can handle. This takes around 20-30 mins as it doesn’t need to re-convert the video.
As you can see, there is a problem! It loses the 5.1 audio that most old HDDVD and new BluRay rips have embedded. It’s a shame as I now have over 200 MKVs I’ve already converted to MPEG4s. Luckily, for future converts you can choose to convert to XVID or MPEG2 in GOTsent and retain the 5.1 surround sound. There is a drawback though…instead of a 20-30min convert it could take around 1-2 hours as it needs to convert the video.
So, if you have a 5.1 system and want to keep the 5.1 audio in your MKV files, get GOTsent and you’ll be laughing. Also send an email to Microsoft and petition them to add MKV support to the 360.
Cheers
Oly
oly,
sorry to hear that mate, that sux the big one.
there must be a progam that can do it quicker, or one that u can queue up multiple vids at a time so u dont have to keep chekin on it. im not fimiliar with one but if anyone knows, post it here.
on another topic, just out of interest a mate brought his wd 1tb my book round to my place the other day and i though id try pluggin it into my 360 forgetting that i already had mine plugged in.
turns out the 360 can read multiple drives, i was pretty sure id tried this before and it didnt work. either im mistaken or theyve resloved it in an update. either way this gives the 360 a 3tb plug and play ability (1tb per usb port). now im gonna hav to save to get a new hdd.
GOTsent is the best option really and it’s not a problem, I just leave them going overnight. GOTsent will batch convert also. Most other methods are too complex and use progs like TMPEG encoder which can be a pain.
Yeah I’ve had two drives connected for a while now! It’s awesome!
Oly
Has any1 tried using an external drive with ethernet connection, 360 sees a pc across the network why not an external drive. Shouldn’t matter then if fat32 or not.
crackhour,
nah mate cant say i have. be interested to hear if it works tho.
Do you know if the Western Digital My Book Essential 640GB, 750GB, or 1tb will work as good as this one that you recommend? If I am already spending the money, wouldn’t it be better to shell out a few extra dollars to get more storage?
As far as I’m aware the FAT32 thing is to do with what the Xbox is able to read. I remember putting a USB pen drive on the USB that wasn’t FAT32 and it didn’t recognise it.
I personally wouldn’t touch a WD My Book again. I’ve had three and each packed in just over their warranty periods. I’m using the IOMEGA 1TB drive and they’ve been great.
brendan,
ive got a 1tb my book which plugs straight in and works out of the box. unlike oly ive never had any problems with mine. ive had it about a year and a half and its had a lot of use and gets moved round a lot.
if its more storage you after, you could look at getting 2 1tb drives or i think now you can get a 2tb hdd in one drive (ie. not 2 1tb in a single case).
seeing as its a single drive the 360 should recognise it. not sure what theyre worth. check out ebay.
Hi all,
im thinking about buying an exernal harddrive and waswondring if i could save game saves on to it as i have the premiem model with only 20gb and i have ran out of space.
when i say gamesaves i mean downloaded ones from my computer ad saveing games from my 360.
please get back,
Kaasim
Hi Kaasim,
As far as I am aware you cannot save put game save on an external hard drive. The only drives it will recognise for game saves are the 360 Drives or the plug in front memory cards.
On a new note from me, I’ve decided to move away from the XBOX 360 for playing MKV files now. I’ve just got a Western Digital WDTV media player and it plays everything you throw at it MKV (no conversion needed with full DTS or DD), AVCHD files direct off my Lumix TZ7 HD camera, Divx, AVI…the list goes on.
I highly recommend this amazing product!
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Hello I have been watching avi movies on my xbox 360 for a while but I recently got a game and it updated my dashboard and now I am unable to watch my avi movies. The error message that I am getting is I needed a media update status code 51-C00DF236.
I have already gotten an update before when I first tried to play the avi files so I updated the media and the movies played but now I don’t know what else I need to play the movies.
FYI: I do have one movie that is mp4 format and it does not play as well.
Please let me know what I should do. Thanks.
Quite good – but it would be better if you could upgrade the “internal” hard drive, like you can in the PS3. I dont think you can play games off an external hard drive.
Hi Birdman,
I’ve never had the problems you mentioned with dashboard updates. I did the update once and that seemed to be it. The only problem I did have was when my 360 got the RROD. I got myself a new 360 and used my original hard drive but it kept asking me to update the video codecs every time I turned off the 360. The only way to make it permanent was to create a new profile. I’ve now flashed my 360 so I can play back-ups and my movies play okay.
The whole codec thing with the 360 is the reason I’ve moved away from the 360 for playing films. I’m downloading MKV files with DTS audio and the 360 needs these to be converted. Okay the conversion is fast-ish (25mins) but I lose the DTS audio and sometimes certain films won’t convert. Also some Divx. MP4, AVI, MOV files won’t play due to them having the wrong audio.
If you have a HDTV and a Surround Sound system that can decode DTS and Dolby Digital (AC3) then I would highly reccommend the Western Digital WDTV box (£79 UK)…This little unit has played every single file I’ve thrown at it and the only problem I had was is that it would have no sound if the audio was in the AAC format but this can be easily converted in less than 10 mins. But DTS/AC3 sound awesome!
On another note…with the latest dashboard you can legaly RIP games to the 360’s hard drive. I think you have to have the disc still in the drive even after you have ripped it but it does work and games load that bit faster. You cannot get this info of the hard drive though and remember that most games are over 7GB a time and will fill your Hard Drive up very fast.
Cheers
Oly
You guys have all been so helpfull i thot id add ny bit to help use all back, with regards to playing films and media update/codec from live, this is no longer necessary.
If you create a second profile on your 360, then add it to live get the FREE silver membership usually with 30 day free gold trial,
Once thats all set up go to game downloads, then search ‘O’
Scroll down and you will find ‘optional media update’
Download and install to hdd, sign out and do the same with your original profile,
Even if it statea you already have it just download and replace,
Disconect fron live and bobs your mothers aunties best friends brothers uncle
When u play videos itl never tell u to get media update from live and youl never need to b conected to live to watch films.
thanks for sharing this info. there are a lot of things we can do with 360 and it is worth its price.
i think every microsoft gadget is ready for plug-and-play so i think any kind of USB drive will be compatible with it.
Great tips! I just bought the WD external HDD, and it works. Well done.
xbox 360 skins – enjoy mate!
Walmart has the 1tb western digital mybook drive for 99 bucks. Wanted to make sure my 360 would recognize it before purchasing. Searched google, found this article. Off I go to pick up the drive. thanks.
Just incase any other storage addicts are interested, I just purchased a Samsung Story Station 1.5TB which comes already formatted in FAT32 and works perfectly out of the box with both my XBox 360’s !! I have a standard 360 with 20g HD and a black 360 with 120g HD and the 1.5TB Samsung works perfectly with both systems……. These are well priced as mine was AU$149 so you guys in the US or Canada should be able to get one for around US$125. Cheers, Marty Monsta
thanks marty. good to know mate.
ive just bought a iomega 500gb desktop hard drive and my xbox is failing to recognise it…..its formatted for an apple mac but ive used a hard drive which was formatted for a mac beofre and it worked fine….has anyone please got any tips for me please!!!!!?????
Hi Walkerhooks,
Check how the drive is formatted! It needs to be FAT32! It’s been a long time since I had an Apple Mac (it was one of those two-tone imacs) so I’m not sure on how a Mac drive is formatted.
Best thing to get is a dedicated drive just for use with the 360. I no longer use my 360 to watch movies, the whole MKV conversion thing was a pain in the butt so I got a WDTV box…they are amazing!
Cheers
Oly
aaahhhhh fixed it thank god!!!!! thanks for the types…..yeah think i will eventually get a wdtv they seem to be worth it definately…..which one would you suggest????
Hi Again!
Glad you got it fixed! Yeah the WDTV is an amazing piece of kit and to be honest I love the standard WDTV. I’ve had no experience with the WDTV Live model which streams I believe! The only thing I have found with the WDTV is that you really need an external amp that is Dolby Digital/DTS capable to get the most out of the audio on Xvid, Divx, MKV files.
Cheers
Oly
Hey guys, I’m trying to buy a gift for someone and I need some help. My friend has a lot of movies saved on his computer and is tired of burning dvd’s. He has an xbox 360 so I’m wondering if what you guys are talking about (the western digital mybook 2 500gb external hard drive) is what I need to solve his problems???? CAN ANYONE HELP ME?
please email me back asap… i need to know if this item.. would i be able to save my games and would it load and be able to play with no problem??
courtneyluv – u have a couple of options which u could explore
1: a wd essential my book will solve your friends problem however they will need to transfer the data from the computer to the hdd then plug the hdd into the 360 to play it. a 500gb would do it but u can pick up a 2tb one for about $300au that work straight out of the box which i have and would recommend.
2: if the computer is netowrked to a pc with media centre edition windows or sp3 or higher u can just stream straight to the xbox with the media centre extender built into the 360.
3: you can buy a wdtv or similar media player with lan and network the pc to that and plug that into ur tv. the advantage here is that this will allow you to play .mkv files and other extensions the other options do not. the media players are basic, so it will depend on the level of customisation ur friend wants. personally, i bought a wdtv live and returned it within a week as it kept freezing coz i had too much media plugged into it.
up to you but id go with the mce option first as it will cost nothing.
luis – u cannot write or save to any external drive from a 360 to my knowledge. definatley not without opening ur 360 and playin around with it with some special hardware anyway.
This is really cool I will have to try my external hard drive and see if it works. I have loads of videos and music on there.
Can i plug my Western Digital USB External HD into my xbox to save game content on it?
You can save game saves only unlike the original xbox where you could save and play the games from the HD. Remember to plug your drive in to your pc first, go to explorer, right click the drive letter, left click properties, check that the drive is FAT32 and not NTFS as the 360’s work with FAT32 !!
I’m not sure why, I’ve never checked into it. The old xbox, you had complete control. You were booting to custom dashboards and running homebrew software that actually copied the game to a larger hard drive.
With the 360, now all I’ve ever tried is the DVD drive firware mods, which are pretty striaghtforward as far as function.( play backups) but the mod chips I don’t know. You use to get mod chips that could do dual boot. Load hack or not, but I think those also delt with the DVD, not to sure. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen homebrew for the 360. Probably why you can’t play HDD backups without games.
I’m going to google it now, lol
The article was actually stating that you’d be able to use your usb HDD. which last time i checked go up to 2TB.I already have a 500gb external HDD plugged into my 360 for playing videos and music. It works perfectly so it wouldn’t be a huge leap to be able to transfer game data to and from it.
yo i have the same thing, i try it on my xbox and now i’m stuck with only using 16gb
I own an Xbox and a Playstation and both are really good game consoles. Let’s see what are Microsoft’s future updgrades on its Xbox game console.’-:
We dont really need this now MS have released the new 250gb xbox 360! Hopefully the ‘next gen’ consoles will come with like 1TB discs as standard.
According to me this external USB Hard Drive (HDD) is pre-formatted and immediately compatible with Xbox 360 console. Moreover main advantage of this Xbox 360 external USB Hard Drive can format and use 16GB of this portable expansion drive as a memory card for secure storage for downloaded games, demos, save files, profiles and settings.
I’m little much shocked and thrilled with this. It is about damn time. Some of us only need a little extra storage. It has multiple uses. I also must say that Those Xbox 360 memory units are horribly expensive.