Xbox 360: Backup your harddrive and memory unit

January 15, 2008March 27, 2010 technofranki backup, how-to, Xbox 360

This is a small guide to how you can backup the content on your Xbox 360 harddrive and Memory Unit. This may be consider as a hack, since it’s not offical Microsoft products. But there are many legal reasons for doing this.

At the bottom of this post I have links to sites where I found the information I need to do, and there is also links to where you can buy the different gadgets/hardware you need. I recommand you to read my post and on the websites I have linked to. This will give you a good picture of what you need to do and how to do it.

WARNING! When you follow this guide (and the related links), you do it on your own risk. Things can go wrong. So be careful.

My reason for doing this, is that I bought the new 120GB on eBay without the transfer cable. So I couldn’t transfer all of my stuff from the 20GB to the 120GB drive. So I went to Divineo.cn and bought the 360 MiniSpy SATA Hard Drive Adapter. It’s easy to install in your PC (there is also a USB version of the device). You only need to find i a free SATA port and powerconnector (I think I used my last one).

It’s very important that you connect the device to the Xbox 360 drive as showed on the pictures. Any other way will brake you HDD, so do it right.

When you have connected everything (don’t hotswap the HDD), turn on your PC and start Xplorer360. If you get a message from Windows saying that you have to i format, initialize your HDD or something similar, DON’T DO IT. This will make your HDD unusable on Xbox 360. If you have a 120GB (like me), you need Xplorer360 extreme2 version that suppport this drive.

Selecet Drive, Open and Harddrive or Memcard.

You will will the see three partitions. Partition 0 is caching (I think), Partition 2 is for backward compatibility and Partition 3 is userdate (gamesave, music, etc.)

You will find a lot of folders. In Partition 3 under Content, you will find the profiles. To backup a folder or file, right-click and select Extract and save the files to your PC harddrive. If your need help, check this site: http://360.kingla.com/. This will help you identify which game is in the different folders.
When you have made backup of all the files you need; Turn of your PC, switch Xbox 360 drives and turn your PC on again. Then you you insert the backuped files.

For some reasons, my 120GB drive did not have Partition 2. I had to make a backup of Partition 2 on my 20GB and restore that on the 120GB drive. There is a option in Xplorer360 to do that.

To make a backup or ectract files from a Memory Unit, you do the same as with a harddrive. But you need Datel’s Transfer Kit to read the memory card. You have to install X360MemoryUnitDriversV1.2 so that Xplorer360 can read the Memory Unit, both the 64MB and the 512MB (I haven’t tested it with 256MB, but that should work to).

Legeal reasons for doing this

With most games, you can move your savefile from one Memory Unit to another or the HDD. But some gamefiles are locked to the drive your first saved it on. For me that was Viva Pinata and Perfect Dark Zero. [UPDATE] The Viva Pinata game save was reported broken, so it may not be possible to transfer locked gamesaves from one unit to another.

Hexic was on my 20GB, but not the new 120GB. With Xplorer360 I was able to extract that game from my 20GB and insert in on the 120GB. The same goes for Arcade games that usualy are on new Memory Units when you buy them. You can’t move this games on to your 360 HDD with your Xbox 360.

When you buy the 120GB drive in stores, you get a transfer cable that will make a backup of the 20GB. But not everything is backedup. From what I read, savefiles from Xbox 1 games will not be backed up, and people have had problems with music to. with the Xplorer360, you can backup everything.

So good luck with the backup. Remember, read everthing both one and two times, inlcuded the links below.

This links will help you do everything the right way:

http://360.kingla.com/

http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=91993

http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=94897

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=163&t=601318

Here is the links to where you can buy the different devices needed to make backups. I have listed different sites, so you can select one close to where you live or one that is cheaper than the other.

Datel’s Transfer Kit (for reading memory card)

360 MiniSpy SATA Hard Drive Adapter (for reading the harddrive)

Alternative HDD reading devices. I have not tested these, but they should work fine as well (google it to find out more).

MiniSpy USB Hard Drive Adapter for Xbox+Xbox 360