Using an External Drive with the Xbox 360

Posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008. Filed under Apple, Gaming, Technology, xbox 360.

Xbox 360Microsoft’s Fall Dashboard update to the Xbox 360 added DivX and Xvid codec support for media playback on the console, reestablishing the 360 as the leader of the next-generation console pack in terms of features and making the Xbox 360 a compelling media centre device. Not only is the 360 a rocking gaming platform with superior online features, but is also a media powerhouse capable of playing just about any music, photography or video file you throw at it.

This functionality is made even radder by the fact that the 360 supports external storage devices or can be used as a media extender for any computer running Windows Media Center. You can even share media stored on a Mac in iTunes using connector software called Connect 360.

Of all the options available storing media on an external hard drive seems most logical to me, but this is easier said than done given the Xbox 360′s limited support for filesystems.

You basically have two options in terms of filesystems when formatting an external drive for use with your 360: FAT or HFS+. Weirdly, the Xbox 360 does not support Microsoft’s NTFS filesystem, but does support Apple’s HFS+. This is a side-effect of the Xbox being designed to work flawlessly with the iPod.

While it is the most compatible across the board, FAT is a useless filesystem for storing media. For one, it doesn’t support the storage of files larger than four gigabytes – so storing any high definition video is pretty much out of the question. That should be enough reason for us to move on to the more competent HFS+ filesystem.

And this is where we find an interesting anomaly; the Xbox 360 will not recognise external hard drives formatted for HFS+ under Apple’s Leopard version of the OS X operating system. Which sucks for people like me, who solely use said operating system.

But there is a solution. One that involves using a Windows PC, or a Mac running Windows using Boot Camp or virtualisation software.

The steps are as follows:

Et voila – you now have an external drive rocking the superior HFS+ filesystem and fully compatible with your Xbox 360. Skop some media on it and plug it in. The drive will also be compatible with your Mac for file transfers and if you want to use it with Windows, pay for MacDrive and enjoy unlimited support for the filesystem.

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  • It works since the last major update to Leopard. However, at time of writing it did not.
  • Anon
    "You can format it using Leopard.
    In Disk Utility, select “Mac-OS Extended”. Not the Case-Sensitive or journaled ones. I just tried it and it works fine"

    Actually, journaled works fine as well (just tried it).
  • Andrew: for a flash drive don't bother using HFS - just format it using the FAT filesystem (called 'MSDOS' in the Mac Disk Utility).
  • Andrew
    I have not been able to get this to work, but I am using a 2gb usb flash drive instead of an external hard drive. Should that make any difference even if my flash drive id formatted as HFS Extended?
  • Jean-Francois
    You can format it using Leopard.
    In Disk Utility, select "Mac-OS Extended". Not the Case-Sensitive or journaled ones. I just tried it and it works fine :)
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