Review of Xbox 360 320GB Hard Drive

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List Price: $129.99
Sale Price: $99.95
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I bought this to improve a sale priced 4gb 360. I still saved money doing it this way at the time compared to what the 320gb 360 packages were selling for.

The 320gb hard drive came with a code to download LEGO Star Wars and the 250gb does not at the time of this review.

There is a grill door on the side of the 360 where you simply insert the drive, and like magic, your 4gb slim 360 is now a 320gb model that can store games, movies, music, etc. This hard drive works with the newer slim 360's and not the older models I believe.

With this drive, I can now upload the entire contents of the game disc for improved play and performance. To be honest, I cannot really tell the difference. You still need to have the disc inserted to play the game anyway...I wish that was not the case.

I really only bought this so that Battlefield 3 can be played with the high definition graphics, as the standard 4gb on the 360 I have is only flash memory, and won't support that feature without a hard drive.

Overall, it works and it was easy to install.

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The reason this product says 293 GB on the data screen is this.

Sizes go as follows from large to small

Gigabyte, Megabyte, Kilobyte, Bytes

1 GB = 1000 MB

1 MB = 1000 KB

1 KB = 1000 Bytes

But computers can't divide by 1000 because they have to use the binary system. This means they have to divide by 1024 for every division, so here goes the math.

5 GB are taken out of every hard drive for system use.

315 Are now left over

315 GB x 1000 = 315,000 MB

315,000 MB x 1000 = 315,000,000 KB

315,000,000 KB x 1000 = 315,000,000,000 Bytes

Now Let's divide these by 1024 instead of 1000

315,000,000,000 Bytes / 1024 = 307617187.5 KB

307617187.5 KB / 1024 = 300407.40966796875 MB

300407.40966796875 MB / 1024 = 293.366611003875732421875 GB

Rounded to the nearest whole number, 293.366611003875732421875= 293 GB

Hope this review can help some people breathe a little easier

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I purchased this drive as an upgrade to my previous 250gb slim drive. It IS the official Microsoft 320gb slim hard drive and it comes with a full copy of Lego Star Wars III. Not sure what the previous review about it not being Microsoft was talking about. Not much else to say. More space, works great.

Honest reviews on Xbox 360 320GB Hard Drive

I find it extremely hilarious that people are claiming to be computer literate, but complaining that the hard drive only shows 293 gigabytes (GB) after installed. So let's have a lesson. Hard drive manufacturers advertise 1 GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes. All manufacturers do this, and this is correct. Computer operating systems (OS), including the OS running on the Xbox 360, see a GB in terms of binary (2^30 bytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes). This is also correct.

1,000,000,000 bytes = 1 GB reported by the manufacturer

1,073,741,824 bytes = 1 GB formatted by the OS

The OS sees 320,000,000,000 bytes on the hard drive (the manufacturer didn't lie), and reports it in terms of binary GB. The math is as follows: (320,000,000,000 bytes)/(1,073,741,824 bytes PER OS formatted GB). The result is approximately 298 OS formatted GB. Microsoft has firmware, OS, games, and other info on the hard drive built in, which takes up about 5 GB. This is why the Xbox reports a new drive as 293 GB.

The drive works, and works well. It is a snap to install, and there are no initialization steps to take. It just works. Don't rate something low because you're not intelligent enough to know how operating systems report GB.

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Just recieved in the mail... it may be expensive but its an official MS product... There another guy on here named joseph martin or whatever his name is, claiming its a third party that doesn't work...

I can tell you his review is missleading, bottom line its an official ms product and it works