PixlBit

System swaps and Hard Drives Galore

When I did my last MyBuys blog I spoke of some “enhancements” that were done to certain game systems as of late. In truth most of them were done during the same time period as with my MyBuys blog timeline. But given the “enhancements” I figured I should leave them unspoken until their one blog is written about them. I’m sure you’re all wondering though why I call this blog “GameRig 1UPdate!” The reason for this is quite simple: it was on the gaming website 1up.com where I actually began to document my various upgrades to the GameRigs I own. From TV switches, to TV stand augmentations, to revamping their very setup, I mentioned them in one form or another on 1up.com. Though the site is going dormant I still feel a sense of loyalty to continue calling these GameRig changes as GameRig 1UPdates. Though I am no longer as active on 1up.com as I use to be, I’ll carry on the torch to help remind myself where I began in detailing, documenting and sharing my interest in my gaming hobby. So with that said let’s see what so special this time around in this version of GameRig 1UPdate!

 

Roughly two years ago, during my latest Halloween gaming event, my Xbox 360 Elite decided to die on me. I mourned briefly until I purchased myself a replacement. At the time I only had one viable option for an Xbox 360 replacement. I didn’t have the funds to buy a brand new system, not even anything used from a game store. I eventually turned to craigslist and bought a core repaired unit. It happened to be white but had the same specs as my Elite model. Though the system had served me well over the year, I kept my old system in the hopes of repairing it one day. During that down time I researched all possible venues of console repair. Most options seemed to point to either mailing in my system to Microsoft Repair or mailing it to a third party repair service. Neither seemed appealing for I did not wish to part with my system thru the mailing services, no matter how secure they claimed to be. But during my birthday I caught a break. Long story short I found a place that could not only repair my Elite but also upgrade it to have better cooling fans and reduce energy useage. Not bad for a small certified MS repair center!

 

So what did I do with my replacement 360? Why give it to my “Little One” of course! She’s had her fun playing on my system that I figured giving her my old unit would make a perfect “hand-me-down” birthday present. With the money I had left over from the repair job I was able to buy her a new AC adapter, recharge cable and battery and a 120GB Hard Drive. All she needed after that was a spare controller and TV hook ups that I already have in reserve. So now she too has her own gamerig that doesn’t consist of a PSONE unit. She’s already dived into gamer ownership by buying a Walllace & Grommit game along with Battleblock Theatre off XBLA. Plus she’s able to play her “Deathsmiles” game whenever she wishes. The only downside she’s learned by owning her own system is that she is unable to player the games I own on my system. So her gamertag is on both her new Xbox 360 and my repaired 360.

 And for a time it was good, until before she left for Connecticitia for the summer her system decided to RRoD! At least that’s what I thought at first. I didn’t think to retry to start it up to download her free copy of Defense Grid. But when I did with Assassin’s Creed II it booted up just fine! Perhaps it over heated. Either way it looks like I’ll be visiting that repair service yet again before the summer/fall is over. So with that done, and my Elite connected back onto Game Rig One, Ver. 2.0, I decided to tackle another issue that was slowly being made known with my consoles: memory.

Between both my Xbox 360 and my PS3, I only had about 20GB of free memory left over. By my calculations if I continued to download and buy games off XBLA and PSN, I’d be out of memory by the end of the year. It didn’t help that I still had some saved videos on my Xbox 360’s hard drive and that I use Playstation Home every once in a while. I was already keeping my DL habits to a minimum when it came to game demos and game purchases. I still won’t buy a digital copy of a game if I can find a physical media option for it (though excepts have been made). I still plan to delete some select titles I own that are on physical media once I buy them, the games I’m referring to are both Microsoft’s Games for Gold program and Sony’s Welcome Back program. But even with those accounted for I had to do something about my low memory options. So during this time I took care of that.

 

In late spring I was able to track down a 250GB HDD for my Xbox 360 for $80 at my usual game store I frequent, Gamers. The salesperson actually thought I was referring to the slim hard drive model and I had to point it out that I wanted the bulky model HDD instead. I had thought about buying a generic off the internet but I wanted the option to have the official product so if I wanted to play my older Original Xbox games, I would be able to with no problems. Sure the generic would be cheaper (about 50% cheaper) but I didn’t trust myself to be able to mod the HDD to let it perform that function. Plus with my dumb luck my console would get banned when Microsoft would notice it being modded, though I don’t know how they’d be able to tell. Along with the help of my trusty transfer cable I was able to move all my data onto the newer HDD with 120GB to spare.

With help from twitter I even decided to name my two HDD’s. Kazooie (the 250GB HDD) will house my usual game saves, XBLA titles, demos, saved videos and be my primary HDD for general use. Tooie (the 120GB HDD that originally came with my 360 Elite) will serve as my HDD for digital storage of whatever “Games for Gold” that Microsoft decide to give us, along with some choice 360 titles that didn’t see a physical media release . The current games on Tooie at the moment are Fable III and Crysis and Assassin’s Creed II. Perhaps I’ll even go as far in buying Deathsmiles II as well.

So with one console down it was time to tend to my PS3. I took some inspiration from some pixlbitters and decided to take the plunge one last time in upgrading my PS3’s HDD. I had done it awhile back when my system originally was a 60GB model. I replaced it quickly with a 160GB HDD back in 2007, I even did a brief blog about it on 1up.com at the time explaining all I did (and received one snide comment as a result). Though I did mention losing some game saves that go around, I decided I couldn’t run that risk again this time. Unlike my last upgrade I’ve now amassed a good number of game saves, digital game downloads for both PSN and PS3 titles, game patches and mandatory installs from various games I own.

 

I decided that this upgrade would be my last upgrade given all the trouble I was going thru just to get this done. Since 160GB lasted me six years I figured I’d try to get the most memory I could afford, along with the most memory the PS3 would be able to recognize. I eventually decided to see if I could get away with a 1TB HDD for my PS3. After reading on all the trouble from one pixlbitter, I decided I didn’t want to do this again given his documentation of the backup process itself. Luckily I was able to find a video on youtube showing how you can actually use a certain 1 TB hard drive that was confirmed to work.

 

With that knowledge in mind I actually did him one better and ordered the newer version of this 1TB HDD off amazon (the link he gave was for an older model). I knew I was taking a risk in buying the newer unit but reviews on amazon seem to suggest it worked just as well with the PS3. To my delight my order from amazon took shorter than I expected and I ended up performing the backup/ install/restore of the new 1TB HDD during my vacation weekend!  The only thing that actually delayed my action was trying to format the external HD I bought off amazon to FAT32 since it was formatted in NTFS. 8 hours later (roughly 4 hours to perform that backup and 4 hours to perform the restore) I had myself what I hoped to be the last hard drive update I’ll ever do on my PS3.

 

 Even with a little over 700GB of free space on my system I still plan to refrain from buying digital copies of physical media games. But there are some exceptions to the rule of course; I finally put my name in to see if I can score a beta access code to FFXIV. Better late than never I reckon. I’ve already received an email from Square Enix saying I’ve been chosen for the final phase of beta testing! I should see my code in the mail real soon!

Well that’s it for this GameRig 1UPdate! I fear I’ve gone on longer that were necessary. As of this writing both my HDD’s are working without any problems so here’s hoping it stays that way.

Ta-ta

“N”

P. S. Here is an embed of the youtube video on replacing the HD on a PS3 to a 1TB. It's still best to watch the video from the link if only to gain access to the web address to the exact HD he used in the video.