Excellent HDD, it's just not required! (Microsoft Xbox 360 Hard Drive 120 GB)

Member Name: spidercallum

Product:	Microsoft Xbox 360 Hard Drive 120 GB
Date:	16/08/08 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lots of space for those that need it, stylish and easy to install/remove

Disadvantages: very expensive unless bought with the elite console, can't put your own movies/photos on it

At the retail price of £130 in leading game stores such as GAME and Gamestation, most people think, including me, that this gadget is extremely overpriced. I do own this product, but only because it's standard with the Elite version of Microsoft's Xbox 360. There's no way I'd fork out this much cash for something that, lets face it, hardly anyone needs.

Of course, 120gb's isn't really all that much nowadays, with the amount of space modern software takes up, and not forgetting the huge amounts of music, videos and photos people store. But remember, this is Microsoft's Xbox 360 we're talking about here, not a PC.

The best feature of the 360's hard drive is that is saves your games, which means no more memory cards that cost a fortune if you're still a Playstation 2 fan! Your games save straight on to the hard drive, end of! You'll never fill up even a tenth of a 20GB hard drive though, so the 120GB hard drive obviously wasn't released for this reason.

Only those with hundreds of pounds to waste on downloadable content such as game expansion packs, standard definition or high definition movie rentals, arcade games or even original xbox games will get close to filling up this massive hard drive.

If you like to listen to music on your 360, this could be one of the excuses to use to buy this hard drive, but with Microsoft being extremely careful with the copyright laws, they only allow you to rip the CD's contents on to the hard drive other than copy and pasting from one place to another like we're so use to doing on our PCs, MP3 Players and other portable devices... So if this is the reason you want this hard drive, just keep in mind that it will take you hours and hours on end to transfer your music, even if you purchased your downloads legally through an online service such as iTunes!

This also means you can't put your photos or videos on your hard drive. In my opinion it's a lot easier just to stream your music, videos and photos through a wired or wireless network. This saves you a lot of money as you can share your PC's hard drive with your 360's instead of forking out for this product. I find it's a lot easier, and you can view videos etc on any computer on your network (as long as they've allowed the media sharing of course!).

The hard drive is only available in black, as it was released at the same time as the Elite console, which as earlier mentioned is shipped out with this 120GB hard drive. It's 'shell' is made out of plastic, which I guess is a little cheap considering the amount people are paying for the upgrade. However it is good quality, and is made out of the same materials used for the 360's faceplate and controllers. It's finished with a matt black finish, and on the sides it has a chrome-like finish. There's also a long oval shape with the same chrome-like finish on the top of the hard drive with grey writing stating that it is the 120GB HDD. It's incredibly easy to attach and detach from the top of the 360, making it easy for anyone to install and even easier to take it round to a friends house so that you can play your saved games with your extra content and even listen to your own music!

You'll be looking to pay a good £130 in the shops for this product, but you can get it online for about a £100 from Amazon UK or Play.com. But I personally recommend you just buy the Elite console as this also includes the high definition cables (inc. the HDMI able) which also cost a bomb by themselves. You'll save a lot of money this way, and you'll also get the much more stylish black console. All this and only for £60 more than the premium console which only has a 20gb hard drive and no high definition cables!

Overall, this most definitely isn't required if you're an ordinary gamer, it's almost impossible to fill all the space unless you have lots of money to spend on downloadable content, or just choose to play demo's over and over again instead of buying the full game!

Summary: it's a nice upgrade to have but isn't worth the full £100-£130...

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