Xbox 360 getting USB flash drive support this April

[fgghjjkll]

Microsoft has finally set a date for when Xbox 360 owners will be able to use USB flash drives for storing profiles, game saves, and demos. The feature will be enabled on April 6th via a new system update.

The feature will let you use up to 16 GB of space on a USB flash drive for storage. You can connect up to two devices at the same time, which gives you a maximum total of 32GB to play with. Major Nelson notes that USB hard drives "may work", but you'll still only be able to use up to 16GB of space.

You can use any flash drive brand, but those who want to go Microsoft all the way can wait for a Sandisk Xbox 360 branded USB flash drive that comes pre-configured out of the box. This should arrive sometime in May.

Source

 

[DarkWay]

this I find pretty useful...makes a change really

 

[Finishoff]

Hopefully the jtag community will have this new update with USB support.

 

[YayMii]

Hopefully they'll update later so the Xbox could use more space/more than 2 flash drives (USB hub, anyone?)

 

[DarkCrudus]

Well this is certainly neat =]

also wanna lol at the topic title and this

This should arrive sometime in May.

 

[FAST6191]

Hopefully the jtag community will have this new update with USB support.

If you mean freeboot/xbreboot updates then it will probably happen at some level (porting the existing hacks is the main holdup there I reckon) but we already have extensive USB running capabilities and have had for quite a while now.

 

[Raki]

Hopefully they'll update later so the Xbox could use more space/more than 2 flash drives (USB hub, anyone?)

I guess this is no technical limit, but rather a limit, so you still buy their harddrives to store games on

But it's still cool, because now you can just grab a USB drive and put your profile with you if you want to go to a friend and play there

 

[Gariscus]

Well this is certainly neat =]

also wanna lol at the topic title and this

This should arrive sometime in May.

I believe the author meant that the Sandisk Xbox 360 branded USB flash drives will arrive in May.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

So could I partition part of a larger external hard drive and use that? I've got my external one I use for Wii games and I doubt I'll be using all 250GB of that.

Seems like a nice idea though. I just wish it didn't limit up to 16GB. I mean, I know they did it so they wouldn't start losing sales on their hard drives (since even the smallest hard drive is 4GB larger), but still, it' just a wish.

 

[Jamstruth]

Hopefully the jtag community will have this new update with USB support.


If you mean freeboot/xbreboot updates then it will probably happen at some level (porting the existing hacks is the main holdup there I reckon) but we already have extensive USB running capabilities and have had for quite a while now.

Possibly hacks will be found and made easy to use in the non-Jtaggable boxes as we can now get files to and from a 360 easier (save files etc.)

QUOTE(Guild McCommunist @ Mar 27 2010, 12:02 PM)

So could I partition part of a larger external hard drive and use that? I've got my external one I use for Wii games and I doubt I'll be using all 250GB of that.

Seems like a nice idea though. I just wish it didn't limit up to 16GB. I mean, I know they did it so they wouldn't start losing sales on their hard drives (since even the smallest hard drive is 4GB larger), but still, it' just a wish.

I heard tell that the 250GB HDD will be £64.99 £79.99 in the UK but cba trawling through SuperKaylo and MrPointyHead's tweets to find out. £64.99 £79.99 is a pretty nice price for it but sounds too low to me...
Edit: Watched Sentuamessage which had the 250GB UK Pricing. Still not a bad price really.

 

[zuron7]

It would be better to buy the pre-configured one because it is 250 GB in size but 120$.

 

[Inunah]

I find this completely useless because my Xbox 360 already supports my USB Flash Drive in the only way I would ever use it: with the music player!

Thanks for the info, though. At least now I know that if I run out of memory in the Hard Disk I have I'll still have space for new games.

 

[RupeeClock]

That's good to hear, but Flash drives being slower than hard drives and all, you wouldn't want to use one for game installs.

 

[YayMii]

I thought flash drives were FASTER than hard drives. Someone told me that no moving parts=faster hardware.

 

[RupeeClock]

I thought flash drives were FASTER than hard drives. Someone told me that no moving parts=faster hardware.

Flash drives tend to have slower read/write speeds and are not as good at handing multiple small files, as fewer large files.

 

[FAST6191]

No moving parts does eliminate part of the problem (also with random seek) but the problem often comes with the interfacing mechanism and that flash is usually made rather cheaply (not to mention price to size ratio). A well made piece of flash memory will beat out any mechanical drive hands down.

@Jamstruth that would be nice but unless MS screw up badly it will be done in the same way as memory cards and hard drives which we have had full access to for some time now and nothing has (read can) come out of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjpmc8ZIxM&fmt=22 (the recent JTAG stuff was actually an extension/evolution of what they describe in said video).

Re price it might not have been a 2.5 inch drive but I paid less than that for a 320 gig drive in early 2007. While it is not as outrageous as their older drives it is still rather steep, better example would be 2.5 in drives- double the space at the same price point: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist....&subid=1667 (that site is not known for being all that cheap either).

 

[Maz7006]

So let me get this straight, is this MS's way of saying: We can't be bothered making bigger memory card sizes, so were going to let you use your USB flash drives instead.

... ?

something of the sort ? i find this useful only if you don't have a HDD (an arcade) or a small HDD 20GB. Still nice to see this, i could use this, hoping there will be an offline update available ( i don't want to ban my last flagged 360)

 

[shakirmoledina]

they are possibly trying to merge xbox and MS products such as drives and u may never know but they may allow u to use other normally used devices of the pc on the xbox