XB360 not seeing hard drive - how do I check it for errors on my PC?

Hello,

Yesterday I installed FIFA 13 to my XBOX 360 (slim, 250GB) hard drive as the FIFA 13 DVD is getting temperamental with read errors. The installation worked fine. I played the game for a bit then shut down my 360.

Later in the evening, I fired up the console again - it did something that happened around this time last year - stays on the XBOX 360 logo boot screen much longer than usual, then tells me there is a system update. From my experience of last year, I knew
there was no system update - I knew that the hard drive was not being recognised. Sure enough, there were no gamer profiles to log into and the hard disk shows as "unformatted" in the storage settings.

This is the same thing that happened a year ago, but after a few restarts, it seemed to be fixed and I hadn't had the problem since. However, I have tried again and again and nothing is changing. I have hooked the hard drive up to my PC. It spins up but
obviously can't be read in Windows due to the file system it uses. But what I need to know is: is there a tool similar to CHKDSK I can run on it? I really cannot lose my data.

Thanks for any advice,

Alex

:)

 

Has anyone had this problem?

MW3 has disc read errors a lot. I have my copy saved to my hard drive, and I still get disc read errors. Not sure how to fix it.

 

Slow profile use + can not finish update

You should check the link for your specific problem

support.xbox.com/.../software-update-errors

A storage device (memory unit or hard drive) was not found during the software update. Follow these steps:

Turn off your console.

Remove all console storage devices, including any USB flash drives, external hard drives, or the internal hard drive on the Xbox 360 S console.

Learn how to remove the hard drive.

Add your primary storage device, for example, the hard drive.

Turn on the console

Try updating the console again.

 

Sorry to hear it. Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about this as it sounds as though the hard drive is dying. Also, hooking it to the PC to look at its contents would have corrupted the data on the drive anyway. This is because the data
on the drive is in a format that is unreadable by the computer and it would have to change it in order to read the drive.

You've got 3 options here:

1. Try the drive in a friends console to ensure the issue does not lie with your console.

2. Format the drive on the console.

3. Purchase a new drive.

Good luck

 

Thanks for your response.

The disk is now working again, although I am well aware it is likely to fail sooner rather than later. Just to confirm that connecting it to my PC did not mean I lost all my data - this would only have happened had I set up the drive under "Disk Management"
with a new partition. Although I couldn't read the drive under Windows Explorer, I was able to use some various disk utilities that work on a physical level to do their scans rather than at file system level. HDTune for example found various bad blocks (scan
only) - after running it on my PC for a bit I backed up many of the files using Xplorer360, although I am unaware how I would ever put these files back on to a new drive should I replace it!

After all this, I put it back in the 360 and it is working again. Time will tell how long it lasts.

In the meantime, is it easy to transfer all my save game datas to Cloud storage?

Thanks

 

Yes it is quite easy. Just set up the Cloud storage if you haven't already by going to Settings>System>Storage and then clicking on the Cloud option. From there you can simply move or copy your save games to the Cloud.

 

Thanks for your very quick reply

I have started copying some of my saves for my most played games across to the Cloud storage but I had one more question about this:

When I start a game and it comes up with the storage option to use (Hard drive or Cloud) if I select Hard Drive, will my saves automatically be updated on the Cloud storage too?

Thank you.

 

They won't be automatically updated as they are both different storage devices. If you want the Cloud updated you should choose to use the Cloud.

 

Ok thank you. I just wondered because sometimes when I start a game a box pops up for a short while saying "syncing your cloud storage..." and I assumed it was copying my saved games to the cloud from my hard drive to make sure that they are up to date.

 

Do not follow the advice posted above. If you connect your device to the pc and attempt to format it there you will lost the programming that allows the device to be read by the Xbox 360 as an official hard drive. At that point it will only be able to
be read as a usb device and give you a maximum storage space of 32GB.