Reformatting External HD

Hi,

I just got a Western Digital 500gb portable HD for storing movies to use on my Xbox 360. It doesnt work when plugged in and i think its because the HD format is NTFS when it needs to be FAT 32 to work.

If it reformat will i loose all of my data? If so is there a way to do it without loosing my date as i have already transferred a large amount of info.

Thanks,
Tom

 

Yes, you will lose all your data if you reformat. The only way to not lose your data is to back it up somewhere else first.

But I have a feeling that FAT32 won't work for movies anyway thanks to the file size limit. Come to think of it, does the 360 even support external hard drives?

 

I was told that you can connect external hard drvie via USB to the 360 to store Videos, Music, and Photos on. But I am pretty sure you cannot save games to it.

And you will have to loose that data off the hard drive when you format it.

 

Thanks. FAT 32 can save up to 4gb files and i dont have any HD movies so they are all just shy of 1gb. I can just put a few movies onto a flash drive to get around this but it would just be easier if i could plug it all in. And yes portable HDs do work, a friend does it.

 

Also, will i loose the software that came installed on the drive? My guess is yes.

 

Yes, Format=Erase everything.

 

When i plug the drive in i get a new hard drive in My Comp as well as a new CD drive. Does anyone know how i would get that function back?

 

Better question, after re-formatting will i have to do anything or will it just work? Sorry for the questions, thanks!

 

You're going to have a problem formatting a 500GB HD with FAT32.

Search the net for options on doing that (No current version of Windows will do that).

As long as you can format the drive, then it should just work. (Not the original software that was installed on it though, of course).

Cheers!

 

Yea, there is a 137gb or so limit on FAT32, but the thing about it is... everything recognizes FAT32 like PS3, XBOX, and better Linux support as well. But you could just as easily just make a couple of partitions, like one for music and one for movies ect.. But i'm also not sure how the XBOX handles multiple partitions.

 

I'm pretty sure when a friend tried it partitions didn't work (but that was a while back). Only the first partition showed, I'm pretty sure.

As for everything recognizes FAT32, I agree. But in 2010, if something doesn't recognize NTFS, then its in the garbage for me. Obviously, I don't game, huh?

 

I agree. Im just going to leave it as is and stick with the USB, thanks!