Xbox 360 Memory Unit suddenly shows up as unformatted

Hello. I was always using a USB-Stick as a Memory Unit to save my savegames when going to a friend and playing together, but suddenly, after years of working normally, it shows up as unformatted. Why? I haven't done anything unusual.

I tried accessing it on PC, and I clearly see lots of files in a hidden Xbox360 folder. It seems to me that it's all there. If some little section of those files are corrupted, shouldn't most be intact? I thought about sending it to Microsoft so that they
maybe could extract the intact savegames, but I couldn't find any option for that. I could wait for over an hour for a chat with Microsoft support, but I wanted to try it here first.

I have years worth of savegames which I would really like to keep. It would be great if someone knows something. Thank you in advance.

:)

 

Error when trying to update

@Grandma - Can you tell us if you have the 360 version with the internal flash memory (4 GB), and if so, does this unit shows as "Unformatted"?

Thanks in advance!

 

Error 40A3-0000-3080-0300-D000-0185 during update Xb360 4gb S

Hi, I see you already formatted your memory unit, does the memory unit show as unformatted again after you restart the Xbox ? I have seen this error code in cases where the memory unit has simply failed in the 4GB Xbox console.

 

Sorry to hear it. Unfortunately the problem you're experiencing is a symptom of age. The USB stick is probably on it's way out and this is the result of that happening.

Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about this. The files you've had are not recoverable. Others may say to store them on a PC then move them to another USB stick but this cannot be done as the files will be immediately written to a format
that the PC can read making them useless anyway.

It seems as though you're going to have to start over on your saves. However, if you were to purchase an official Xbox hard drive or an external hard drive (up to 2 TB now) you could safely store those files on the drive or (so long as you remain a Gold
membership holder) on the Cloud.

 

I'm sorry for the very late reply.

Others may say to store them on a PC then move them to another USB stick but this cannot be done as the files will be immediately written to a format that the PC can read making them useless anyway.

What do you mean by that? I doubt that by simply copying the files from the USB stick they're suddenly changing their format. The format of the USB stick is NTFS, which the Xbox 360 and a PC can both read. And the USB stick is completely fine, really. The
files just can't be accessed by the Xbox 360 anymore, despite all of them being there. It's just like I wrote in my first post.

 

The files are not in a format that the PC can read but are in a format that the console can read. The moment they are transferred to the PC they are rewritten in a format that the PC can understand. When this happens the Xbox can no longer read them and
they are lost forever.

It does not matter what format the USB is in, what matters is what format the file is in. It's similar to PC and Apple. Apple specific files cannot be read by the PC.

 

This is simply not true--I have an external HDD that I use as my external. I move files to my desktop all the time, and move them back when needed. Simply moving a file does not change its contents. The Xbox won't be able to tell. If you attempt to modify
it (even simple things like permission settings), then your Xbox will refuse them.