Xbox 360 Hard Drive switching

Drakeon

Does anyone know how safe it is to switch Hard Drives between xbox 360s? Is there any reason not to?

Raere

Perfectly safe. Just make sure the consoles are off. Not that it'll shock you or anything, but it might need to be off for it to be detected correctly.

vonPoonBurGer

There's certainly no danger in doing it as long as you don't do it while either system is powered up. There are a few gotchas that you may want to be aware of, though. If you've got downloaded content that you purchased from Live (e.g. Live Arcade games, Rock Band tracks/packs/albums, etc.), you'll need an active 'net connection in order for that stuff to work on the second console. Your right to play the stuff offline is tied to the console where you originally purchased it. You can play it off your hard drive on somebody else's 360, but you need to be signed in to Live under your account for it to work.

I figured this out the hard way, when I brought my 360 HD over to a friend's house since I had more Rock Band tracks than he does. RB doesn't even give you an error when you try to play a downloaded track in this circumstance, it just hangs forever at the loading screen that shows after you pick the song but before you actually start playing. The problem went away as soon as we connected to Live and signed in my account.