The ToyBox

Ricardo Bilton & Gloria Sin

Microsoft steps up Xbox 360 external hard drive to 250 GB

By Rachel King | February 1, 2010, 3:47am PST

Summary: Microsoft is bumping up the size on the external hard drive accessory for the Xbox 360 to 250 GB. The downside? It’s only available in Japan…so far.

Microsoft is bumping up the size on the external hard drive accessory for the Xbox 360 to 250 GB. The downside? It’s only available in Japan…so far.

Normally only sold as a part of a bundle with a new Xbox 360 gaming console, interested gamers will have the option to buy the larger hard drive as a stand-alone accessory.

Set to be release in Japan on March 11, the new storage space key will cost ¥15,540 ($172.10)

Right now, the Xbox 360 Elite has the largest HDD capacity at 120 GB. All of that extra space would be great for downloading content (TV shows, movies, games, etc.) from the Xbox Live Marketplace, so maybe Microsoft should get cracking on shipping this accessory across the Pacific.

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Topics

External Hard Drive, Hard Drive, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Xbox 360, Microsoft Xbox, Game Players, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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RE: Microsoft steps up Xbox 360 external hard drive to 250 GB

Burnt_Past 29th May 2010

With the new update you can use ANY HDD for game saves and for installing games

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Get the Xbox 360 External hard drive here

manager2 1st Feb 2010

Authorized Microsoft Store at http://dlservicesincservices.com

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RE: Microsoft steps up Xbox 360 external hard drive to 250 GB

djouija 1st Feb 2010

I bought one off eBay before Christmas for $80 and I'm in Canada... plus, you can get the 250GB HD with the COD Modern Warfare 2 Special Edition XBOX...

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Yawn

tikigawd 2nd Feb 2010

Oh my, a proprietary HDD. Good thing I can pop an off-the-shelf 2.5" HDD in my PS3 without a hitch.

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RE: Microsoft steps up Xbox 360 external hard drive to 250 GB

derekcfoley 2nd Feb 2010

Re Japan only - your facts are wrong. Its available in the UK with the XBOX 360 Elite limited edition.

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Call me when Microsoft gets a clue....

KineticArtist 2nd Feb 2010

call me when Microshaft allows us to buy any HDD like a 1TB hitachi and stick that to the side of our xBox 360. 250GB is nothing if you are using your 360 to store movies, music photos, and oh yeah games as we all know the best bet to make sure your xBox doesnt die a horrible RRoD death is to put your game disk data onto the HDD... and have you ever tried to migrate your data off your original HDD on your xBox? using the spendy Microst HDD tansfer kit? its painful... I also own a PS3 and one of the first things I did was to buy a 320GB notbook drive (under $100) and swapped out the 80GB HDD that my PS3 came with... (which my Girlfriend now uses in an external rocketfish enclosure on her mac) Was it painful? No Was it time consuming? again no. Was it expensive still no.... Sony has it so easy to swap out your HDD for a larger one and back up and restore all your disk data, Microsoft might really want to take a good look at how its supposed to be done.

$172+ for a 250GB HDD?
nah Ill pass....

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RE: Microsoft steps up Xbox 360 external hard drive to 250 GB

JBDragon 4th Feb 2010

It should be at least 500 gig's for the price MS wants!!! Really, a larger HDD means buying more content to put on it!!! If MS is going to charge these crazy prices, I'll keep the smaller HDD and just not buy very much on LIVE!!! MS not only looses a sale on a over prices HDD, but lost many sales on LIVE from me!!! Kind of a dumb move on MS part, but whatever. There should be no reason at all to not allow people to install any HDD they want just like Sony does. MS can still DRM the content, nothing changes.