If there is a thread that discusses this topic already please let me know the link. I didn't see it when I was looking around this forum. Anyway... I have a Simpletech 500 GB NTFS External Hard Drive. I know it is supposed to be in FAT32 to run on xbox 360. but i have also heard that you need the hard drive to be 32 GB at most for it to work. my question is what do i have to do to get this to run in XBOX 360 this model i have of my external hard drive? Can someone explain the process to me? I wanna store my mkv's on the external hard drive and run it directly off the external hard drive so that i don't have to go thru the streaming hassles i get sometimes with TVersity. thanks a lot.
You can't unless you extract the security sector from the HDD or you get it off the internet. There's a procedure to follow but I won't cover it here (I'm too lazy...). I will tell you that you cannot use that 500GB HDD you have to do this.
please disregard this information, as you can do what you want to as you are not intending to make your external hard drive for game saves and that stuff it sounds like. all you have to do is just copy and paste those mkv's to your external, and plug it into the 360 and it should read them. however, you will have to be connected to the internet via the xbox so it can download the codec for them. if mkv's are not supported on the 360 you will have to change them to avi, wmv, dvix or something that is supported.
hi. yeah i'm not going to use this for game saves or downloads from the marketplace. i have my 100 something gb (Can't remember the exact number off hand) hard drive that came with my XBOX 360 Elite for that. I just want my MKV's on there and any other movies i put on my external HD for easier playback. i didn't try hooking up my external hard drive to the XBOX 360 cause i thought it wouldn't work since like i said i thought i read that you need a FAT32 formatted external drive. mine's NTFS. i'm on the internet on xbox so i should be able to download that codec easily. btw do you know what format your drive is - FAT32 or NTFS? you can find out by going to windows explorer and click on your drive and right click on it and click properties. it'll say next to "File System". let me know pal.
my external is partitioned into fat32 and ntsf, with 640 gigs on it, so you dont have to worry about the whole max storage thing, but i have a couple of USB sticks that are NTSF that work fine on it. but you could just reformat your external into fat32.
wow i didn't know you could have your external or any hard drive for that matter formatted into both FAT32 and NTFS. interesting. i may reformat my drive into FAT32 if need be. just have to backup my data first is all. and i can do that with all 500 GB since i also just got a new internal 1.5 TB hard drive on my computer now too.
Oh I thought he meant he will use it for save games and the dashboard and use it as a replacement drive for the 360... My bad.
If I were you I would just run tversity on your computer and stream those files, I dont think the 360 will play mkvs but you can convert them easily. Personally I think the PS3 is a way better media extender to use with Tversity and you can easily convert to vobs which usually involves no decoding just muxing which will take like 2 minutes for like 6 gig files. Mkv2vob is a good program you could also convert to mp4 or divx in hidef but I'm not sure of the limitations of those file types, you could even choose your codec and you have the option to use x264. All around good stuff. I know I was pretty weary of streaming files at first but it realy is the best option. And I can stream multiple HD files to different tv's over the network no problem. Just a suggestion.
hi. yeah i just might do that. i tried hooking up my external to the XBOX360 last night and it didn't recognize so i did some further research on Google this time using a different set of keywords and i learned more about this process. from what i read it needs FAT32 to recognize. mine was NTFS as i pointed out. i have to reorganize my external anyway so i am gonna format it and try it that way. but i have Vista SP1 and they have something new on that now that can format to exFAT. instead of fat32. it's like fat32 but better. not sure if it's compatible with XBOX360 yet tho. i intend on getting a PS3 eventually (no money right now). but until then it's my xbox 360 i have to use. thanks for the tip pal
you could probably use like partition magic or something like that to get it into fat32 and not that exfat thing you were talking about.
Holy shit ! can i say shit ? *muttley laugh*,fantastic man so i assume it would be poss to run movies from an external instead of that streaming nonsense. exfat is 64bit partition magic has not been updated for a while it would be better to get acronis partition manager to convert the hdd to FAT32,there's xxclone as well or you might find some freebie hdd manipulators around
hey guys, yeah that's what i hear is possible scorpNZ. didn't know exfat is 64 bit. i have Vista 32 bit Home Premium. would that mean i can't run it on my computer after i format it to exfat? yeah i downloaded partition magic and the version i got wasn't compatible with Vista. it was one of the latest i believe. is acronis partition manager the best? what do you recommend for being the most reliable in formatting stuff to fat32?
Not sure as you're talking about cluster size not actual bit computing. acronis 10 would be your best bet it's free trial for so many days,forget about pm8.0 (partition magic) as it has not been updated for more than 6 years or more,if you have a spare hdd you could install linux to it & use that partition manager to format,or perhaps a live cd that has patitioning tools,actually partition magic is a live so is acronis
ok i formatted my hard drive to FAT32 using acronis disk director suite. i backed up my stuff to my hard drive before formatting of course. but after copying my hd mkv's to the external HDD, the XBOX 360 read the folder it was in but it said there was no files in it. Keep mind i use a Simpletech drive for my external HDD. when i copy files i use the program that came with it called "totalmedia back and record". when i copy files to this drive using this program it makes a folder on the drive. i can't access these files that are copied without using this program and using it to copy to a hard drive like the C drive (my main computer drive). So i'm stuck in other words. is this drive usable for this XBOX 360 job? or am i stuck with just streaming my mkv's thru something like TVersity? i hope not. or should i buy a usb stick. i found a nice 64 GB here. i need something that's not too much money and has a big capacity usb stick wise. i encoded these mkv's at 1080p and they're split up into 2 or 3 parts each. so they total around a little less than 30 GB each. any advice?
One would assume if you let windows do the transfer then folder could be read,i see no reason why it would be necessary to use any bundled software,the reason it may not be read is to do with how the data is crypted,take nero incd,on some computers you would need to install incd reader to be able to view the data etc,using windows should make the data std so the 360 should be able to read it,then again this is all based on assumption as i have'nt tried it yet
yeah i use vista. i'm figuring windows was part of the process when using that program i mentioned i use with the external HDD. "nero incd"? i'll look into that. that's part of the complete nero package right?
You should'nt need any burning program as all your doing is transferring files,either create a shortcut of the hdd on your desktop or open the hdd in explorer & do a direct drag n drop into the folder,forget about incd
hes not saying u need to use incd or nero he was making a comparison that if u wrote data with those prgrams u would also need them to read it which may be the same case with the software u are using. DO NOT use any software to move the data just use the basic copy and paste to the external HDD and make a folder manually if u want it to be in a folder. there is no reason to use any type of software to do something as simple as move data. if that software is embedded on the hdd i would recommend disabling it anyway u can and just accessing the hdd thru windows and my computer and doing simple copy/paste to transfer files.
