Storing Media with your Xbox 360 Hard Drive
One of the main benefits of the Xbox 360 for gamers is the inclusion of an internal hard drive in most models (the basic model only includes a very limited amount of hard drive space). This allows gamers to store movies, music, and other types of media and documents on their Xbox 360, giving it a functionality almost like a personal computer, which generally costs a lot more than an Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 hard drive allows gamers to store their most important media on their Xbox without having to carry around a USB drive or external hard drive, although these are also possibilities.
Internal Hard Drive
Many people use their Xbox 360 hard drives (20 Gb for the Premium and 120 Gb for the Elite models) to store music, movies, and other media that they don't want to lose. In fact, many gamers have found out that they can enjoy their very own selection of music while playing their favorite games. By having a comprehensive music player and mixer included on the Xbox 360, gamers can play their own music in the background on the Xbox 360 while playing games, negating the need for an external music player to listen to their own music while playing. This is made possible by including a hard drive in the Xbox 360, something consoles without hard drives cannot claim to support.
However, gamers have other possibilities for storing media via their Xbox 360. Two of these more portable options include external Xbox 360 hard drives and USB drives. External hard drives support much greater capacity (and portability) with hard drives going up to 500 Gb and more. Once you're done transferring files to and from your Xbox 360, you can simply unplug your external hard drive from your console and take it with you. Another alternative for the Xbox 360 hard drive is a USB drive. This utilizes flash memory which is more stable than a traditional hard drive and uses less power. However, the capacity of USB drives is much lower than that of traditional hard drives, at least until further advancements are made (it should also be stated that flash memory has only become mainstream in the past year or so while traditional hard drives have been used for decades).
To store all of your media on your Xbox 360, you can use the internal Xbox 360 hard drive, or you can use your own USB drive or external hard drive. The internal hard drive is included in the Premium and Elite Xbox 360 models, but you'll need to supply your own portable memory if you want to use them. To double your Xbox 360 as a storage device, decide which Xbox 360 hard drive is right for you.
