Backing up downloaded games before live stops supporting 360?

So I purchased more games than I could play last black friday, I have only beat 2 of the actual games since friends wont play any other game, Anyway my question is backing up games WITH patches/game fixes/DLC and backing up the free games that they give
out every month. Basically I am trying to prepare for he xboxalypse when its no longer supported on live and I cannot redownload purchases, have game updates down to fix a bug in one of my brick and mortar store games and such. Hard drive is getting pretty
full now, so I have been installing 1 game I bought, while leaving the downloaded games on it, but do not know how long it will take before I run out of space.

Questions:

1). Can I backup my game installs w/ patches, free games, and DLC to an external hard drive (like a 1TB hard drive) I found out the biggest usb it will read is 16 or 32 gigs, but I am hoping maybe the transfer cable can transfer the media to my laptop which
i can then transfer to my external then reverse it when I want to play whatever game and put it back on the external when I run out of space with other games on the 360.

2. If that is not possible and I am forced to use several USBs, if I backup JUST the updates and DLC to usb and install the cd at a later time will those still work (again when live is no longer working for 360)?

TL;DR How do I keep all the free games, updates, DLC stored on another device and be able to play it when live is no longer supporting the 360?

:)

 

ACR blackouts

Not a spoiler you idiot the game is backing out and stops playing it is still continues to stop playing at one point in the game and it is not a spoiler the game is freezing up you idiot.

 

asked gamestop xbox one digital pre orders

so i have asked gamestop questions before via email(support) i used other which i have done with other xbox one questions.

so my question went something like this.

will gamestop be offering digital pre order/digital download similar to steam/xbox live. i like the not having to swap disks to play games and was wondering if this is something games stop is looking into with next gen gamming?

they have been faily good about answering emails... so we shall see what they say.. i will try and update when i get them email or if i get one back..

 

Although you can use a USB device (you're correct, it is a maximum of 32GB per device) you run the risk of the USB device not working at some point in the future (it has happened before). You cannot transfer to the PC for storage, it will corrupt the data.

My recommendation would be to get an extra hard drive for data storage. It will always be able to be read.

Now, I wouldn't worry too much about the xboxalypse. They'll be supporting the 360 for quite a few years to come yet.

 

Thank you very much. Can you confirm if I need another 500gig official xbox hardrive or can I just get a 2.5 laptop hd (the connections look like SATA) and get like a 1TB?

I am assuming xbox has some sort of profile thing that knows the games are purchased so can I just store the dlc stuff to it and transfer it over offline at some point?

 

Anything other than an official Xbox hard drive would be considered an external drive and only allow you to have 32GB.

As for the Xbox drive you have a choice now of 250, 320 or 500GB for drives on a Slim console.