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Can You Put an External Hard Drive on the Xbox 360 Slim?

The Xbox 360 Slim model has a 4GB internal hard drive. That space can fill up fast when you store games, movies and your Xbox gamertag information. Though you can save these types of data files to the cloud for use on any Web-connected Xbox system, you can also install an external hard or flash drive via one of the console's USB ports.

How It Works
- Downloading content from the Xbox Marketplace -- and even playing some game discs -- typically requires a minimum amount of available memory. When your console is full, you must either clear out some of the stored data, or use a properly formatted USB flash or external hard drive, onto which the Xbox allows up to 32GB of additional console data storage. You can implement this with one of the Xbox-specific pre-formatted flash drives sold by Sandisk, or you can format your own USB storage device for your needs.
Storage Device Requirements
- There are a few minimum requirements for using a USB flash or external hard drive with your console. First, the device must have a minimum of 1GB of storage capacity. There is no maximum -- and you are not required to reformat the entire hard drive, so you can store and access your personal, non-Xbox collection of movie, music or photo files using the remainder of the space. You must format at least a partition in the Windows FAT32 format, as Mac and Linux formats are incompatible with the Xbox system.
Format the Device
- Plug your storage device into one of the USB ports on the front of your console. Press the "Guide" button on your controller -- the big circle in the middle with the Xbox logo -- select "Settings," and then "System Settings." Select "Storage" or "Memory," and then select "USB Storage Device." If your device is 32GB or less, select "Configure Now," but if it is larger than the allowable 32GB, select "Customize" and move the slider to select the amount of the memory you would like to allocate to the Xbox data. Confirm with "Configure," and then approve the Xbox's request to erase and reformat.
What You Can Store
- You can store several different types of data on the Xbox portion of a properly formatted external hard or flash USB drive. This includes games -- both Arcade titles downloaded from the Marketplace as well as full installations from Xbox 360 game discs -- plus game data, like scores and accomplishments. In addition, you can store gamertag-specific information like themes, icons and avatars, plus any movies, trailers and demos you have downloaded.

Xbox 360