Add more storage to your game console with an external hard drive
If you have a game console that came with a small hard drive or no hard drive, adding an external hard drive is a reasonably quick and simple solution. Sure, you can replace the original hard drives that came with the system with a larger one, but those laptop hard drives can be quite expensive, especially at the larger capacities.
An external hard drive will allow you to add more storage at a much lower price while allowing you to control the content yourself. On a system like Xbox 360, you can’t add content to the built-in drive unless it’s downloaded from Xbox Live or ripped from a CD. With an external drive, you have full control of your content and can easily upload or download new content without much hassle.
Choose your external hard drive
Naturally, you’ll need a hard drive and a case. Almost any USB external hard drive will work for your purposes. The main difference is if you are looking for portability vs. storage size. If you have some laptop hard drives lying around, buy a 2.5″ laptop hard drive enclosure.
The advantages of using a smaller laptop hard drive are that it will be much smaller and much more portable, and most likely won’t require a power supply. However, the capacity of portable drives is often poor compared to regular 3.5″ drives of the same price. A 3.5″ external hard drive will store much more content, but will likely require a power port. additional. If your game console is usually in one place and not likely to be moved, this type of hard drive might be the best solution.
Formatting your hard drive
Game consoles require an external hard drive formatted in the FAT32 file system. You can use virtually any hard drive currently on the market, as FAT32 can support hard drives up to 2 Terabytes in size. However, the limitation of FAT32 is that it cannot contain individual files larger than 4 GB in size. Also, Windows 2000 and XP cannot create or format partitions larger than 32 GB. Windows 98 users can only create and partition drives up to 127 GB in size. Therefore, to create a FAT32 partition and format it above the 32GB or 127GB limitations, you will need a utility like Partition Magic or some other drive/partition utility. I highly recommend CompuApps Swissknife, which is free to download at download.com for PC users. Mac OSX users can simply open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app, choose the desired drive and click Erase. Choose ‘MS-DOS (FAT)’ and then click the ‘Erase’ button. You should now have a FAT32 formatted hard drive.
Once your drive has finished formatting to FAT32, it’s simply a matter of loading content onto your new drive and connecting it to your game console. Simply plug your USB cable into an available USB port on the front of your PlayStation 3 or the back of your Xbox 360. Your game console should automatically recognize your new device and allow you to browse your external hard drive for your new files.
