Hello. I have a couple questions regarding an Xbox 360 hard drive. I found one relatively cheap on ebay and it says it was made in Hong Kong. Apparently there was an update where unauthorized Xbox 360 hard drives are locked from use. I was curious if maybe this HDD is a fake and it too will be locked, because I don't really feel like shelling out $90 and not being able to use it. If anyone has bought a HDD off ebay, please explain me your expierences with it. Does it work fine after the update? Did it break? etc. Thanks.

People found a way to clone a real 360 drive onto a very similar desktop drive, but it requires a valid serial number to be accepted by the 360. Since nobody wants to give out their serial number to be cloned, they're pretty much all running off the one original leaked serial number.

Microsoft would definitely be able to detect it's a cloned drive from the serial number, but whether they'll ban the drive in the update is uncertain. Many people would have bought these cheap "official" drives not knowing any better, so it would be pretty harsh to ban them all.

Chances are it'll be ok, but can you risk loosing access to your gamesaves?

The update hasn't hit yet, it's still in the testing phase, so nobody can really answer if it'll be ok yet.

I bought a HDD off eBay. It arrived in Asian packaging, but said Microsoft on the actual unit, and I think it shipped from Hong Kong. It works fine for most tasks, but not for games which use the HDD for storing game information such as maps. Most newer games do not do this, but some (including Halo 3, and, correct me if I'm wrong, Oblivion). These games will not play properly (i.e. will load menu but not game), if the hard drive is attached, so I have to remove it and plug in a MU to play those games (meaning all the system updates also have to be on the MU, so I download everything twice.

As you can probably imagine, this is a great annoyance and I would not recommend buying a HDD off eBay unless you're sure it is a true Microsoft product. Luckily, mine was only £15, and as yours is more expensive it may be a true Microsoft one - however, it's probably safer to get one of a more trusted site like Amazon, because I hope to replace mine with an official one soon...

quote Ren of Heavens

Microsoft would definitely be able to detect it's a cloned drive from the serial number, but whether they'll ban the drive in the update is uncertain. Many people would have bought these cheap "official" drives not knowing any better, so it would be pretty harsh to ban them all.

Chances are it'll be ok, but can you risk loosing access to your gamesaves?

The update hasn't hit yet, it's still in the testing phase, so nobody can really answer if it'll be ok yet.

S*** really!?! I better back up all my game saves then! I'm not sure if mine it official or not; the hard drive looks it but the packaging didn't look like Microsoft's normal design (It was brightly coloured, red, and covered in Chinese writing!)...