Back in the old days, most consoles came with built in hard drives where your data would be saved, or you had to use memory cards or extra storage devices. Sometimes your games were even saved onto the discs themselves such on handheld consoles. With the Xbox 360, there is an external hard drive that can be replaced and you can buy different sizes. I am reviewing the 20 GB version although you can even buy an enormous 120 GB one.

I am certainly not a massive gamer - I only really have time for it in the summer when I don't have to study much! Despite this, I still find the 20 GB hard drive a bit small. I don't have loads of games - about 14 Xbox 360 ones and a few original Xbox ones.

The hard drive comes in a plastic box, which is as usual a bit hard to cut into so take care. However the hard drive is so large, you can easily grab it and pull it out without worrying about breaking it. Once you've got it out, it simply clips onto the top side of the Xbox 360. You push one side in first and click down the other. To release it, you simply press the little button down on the side it clicks and this ejects it.

The hard drive has a simple design - it's grey with a silver part on the top that has 'HD' on it. Once it's plugged in, you should switch on the Xbox and only then will it recognise it. You can then view it in the menus through your game saves, demos, videos, music and more. It's used to save everything and its space can fill up unreasonably quickly! I genuinely don't think the 20 GB version is large enough.

There's not much else to say about this product. The loading times differ from game to game and some games take a while to save or load: notably Forza Motorsport 3, which I find a real pain! You will get this hard drive with the standard console or a 120 GB version with the black Elite console. The 120 GB one is a lot more suitable at 6 times the size of this one and I'd recommend the larger one for most gamers!

Thanks for reading!

:)