So, I just got my new Xbox 360 Slim! I absolutely love it! Its small, quite, and uses the new wireless N standard, which means next to zero buffering while watching my Netflix vids! Now, Netflix isn’t the only entertainment I get from my Xbox. I also like playing my ripped DVD’s on it, which usually involves me hunting around for my memory stick, and copying the files over. The problem with this is that my movie library is located on my computer, not on a hard drive, so after each video, I have to go in and run back to my computer, and reload the next episode of what ever show I am watching or movie I might be viewing. So, while this isn’t terribly inconvenient, its a pain in the haunches. Thankfully, I have a little trick that can turn that old external USB hard drive you have laying around into your Xbox Media Repository. Read on for the details!

This is where you plug in your external hard drive

So, honestly, its not that hard to do. The xbox 360 will recognize any hard drive that is formatted in the Fat32 format. This is good and bad. Good because it doesn’t require any skill to do, but bad because you need a program to actually do the work, you cannot format your drive using windows (it will give you the NTFS and EXFat formats, neither of which will work). If your drive is fairly small, you can format it using this guide. Note that the Swissknife program is no longer free, use instead the Command Prompt (it takes a little while).

Now, if you are using a drive bigger than 32 gigs, I instead recommend that you use this program. It is quick, painless and easy, with an easy to follow GUI. The program is called Format Fat32 (crazy name, I know), and it does exactly what it says it does, and more importantly, what windows cannot do by itself.

As you can see, the format is dead simple. Choose your drive, choose your size, and then hit start. Nothing difficult about it. Please be warned, that formatting ERASES everything on your drive, so please make sure you have backed up your files. And that is it. When you are done, you can still use the hard drive on your computer (although, the files you load on the hard drive have to be smaller than 4gb or they will not fit, that is the sacrifice you make for Fat32), but you can also plug it into your Xbox, and it will recognize it as a portable drive. Load that sucker up with movies, and plug it in! Enjoy!

Download: (Mirror)