My Xbox 360 and My External Hard-Drive

Final Fantasy Online Forums > Community Discussion > The Dork Squad

01.07.2012 11:10pm

Thread Creator

OrionHardy
Otherworld

Okay, I need some help from you knowledgeable types.

My Father and stepmother brought me a 1tb USB external hard-drive for christmas. After copying all the media files from both mine and my Wife's laptops and setting up the sharing so that my wife can see the Hard Drive through my computer.
I thought I was all set till I went to play one of the my videos on the Xbox to find the Xbox can't see any of the shared folders on the Hard Drive. I tried plugging the hard-drive directly into my Xbox and it now sees the folder via my PC weirdly but not the external hard-drive has a portable device.
However, when trying to play the video files it gives me an error code and refuses to play anything, this includes videos I'd already played on the xbox via my Laptop or my music files or view pictures.

Is there anyway of correcting this, either by changing some kind of sharing on my laptop. I've already got the folders on the drive shared via windows media player as well.

Great men aren't everywhere, just where it counts.

If you ever see me online playing Halo, join me please.

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01.07.2012 11:54pm

(Edited on 01.08.2012 at 12:01am)

maximus asinus
Registered Member

could you post the error codes?

I went through a number of issues trying to setup my external drive, these are some rules I stumbled upon; the Xbox does not support the .MKV file container (which many HD movies are contained in). It does not support MP4 containers larger than 4GB. It does support WMV files over 4 GB however. Also as an external device attached to the 360, the Xbox does not support the NTFS file system. You can however format the drive to HFS+ via Mac or through third party tools on other platforms.

Oh and I think through one of the latest system updates you actually have to make your Xbox discoverable via the console itself.

Oh, the advantages to formatting to HFS+ is that the only other file system supported by the 360 is FAT32, which in itself has a 4GB file limitation.

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01.08.2012 1:44am

Thread Creator

OrionHardy
Otherworld

maximus asinus said:
could you post the error codes?

I'm getting status code 69-80072741

maximus asinus said:
Oh and I think through one of the latest system updates you actually have to make your Xbox discoverable via the console itself.

How do I do that?

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01.08.2012 4:31pm

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

Wait... Microsoft's own gaming console doesn't support Microsoft's own advanced file system, preferring instead the Apple's own advanced file system? *mind boggles*

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01.08.2012 4:38pm

Ashilyn
Career GM

That is mindboggling, what the fuck.

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01.08.2012 4:54pm

Thread Creator

OrionHardy
Otherworld

Southern Comfort said:

Wait... Microsoft's own gaming console doesn't support Microsoft's own advanced file system, preferring instead the Apple's own advanced file system? *mind boggles*

I think they did that delibrately to stop people buying an acarde console on the cheap and using their own hard drives for memory storage.

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01.08.2012 6:05pm

maximus asinus
Registered Member

HFS+ wasn't supported at launch. Microsoft jumped on the popularity of the iPod and had to support it so it could be used as an external device. I don't think they even considered people using HFS+ on external HDDs.

Orion, what file system is the HDD formatted to?

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01.08.2012 7:57pm

Thread Creator

OrionHardy
Otherworld

It is formatted to NTFS. I just find it weird that it won't see it through my Laptop until it's plugged directly into the Xbox.

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01.09.2012 12:58am

maximus asinus
Registered Member

Have you tried mounting the drive and sharing the folder that way? I am on my cell so I can't test, but I vaguely remember having to do that for my 360 to see it properly.

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01.09.2012 9:51am

Thread Creator

OrionHardy
Otherworld

What do you mean by mounting the drive? My Laptop has already assigned it a drive letter, and the drive is already shared across the network. The Xbox just refuses to see it unless it's plugged directly into it, but then it refuses to play anything.

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01.16.2012 12:45am

Thread Creator (Edited on 04.24.2012 at 12:36am)

OrionHardy
Otherworld

Okay, I've managed to get it working now. Not sure if it's because I changed the hard-drive sharing options so that everyone had full access, or If it's because I follow the instructions here - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;177078. Either way it works now.

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