I was looking at my Xbox 360 the other day realized that the HD that came with the unit is just too small. I have the newer version of the system with the HDMI port but they skimped on the HD, 10 gigs. I have found that I can plug a thumb drive into the system and the 360 reads the content without a problem. I tried to plug my external SATA drive into the 360 but it did not see the content at all. I went online and priced an external HD that Microsoft sells, 129 gig for $179. What? Just like the wireless connector for the 360, that is too much. I was able to get around the wireless signal issue with a network bridge but now this. After doing some research, I found that thumb drives are FAT32 but my external HD that I tried to plug in is using NTFS.I took an old 2.5" laptop HD and converted it to the FAT32 format. I found an enclosure an plugged the HD into the 360 without an issue. The Xbox now sees the HD content and I am now able to use the sneaker net method to take content to my Xbox. With the latest 360 OS updates, I can now play .avi, xvid and also HD H264 content. It is nice to be able to take HD movies and play them on the Xbox. So for $79 I found a 120 gig HD and for $12 I found an enclosure that looks great on top of my 360. The FAT32 system is limited to 127.5 gigs unfortunately but that is better than 10 gigs. I don't use the network sharing feature of the 360 because of my network setup but this works nicely. Don't ask, it's a long story.
