Microsoft quietly releases 250GB HDD for Xbox 360

Despite the fact that Microsoft now allows you to add 32GB of storage to an Xbox 360 via the purchase of two 16GB USB drives, a hard drive is still the way to go if you want enough space to download demos and videos, have enough space for all your save games, and install all your favorite games in order to improve load times and make the Xbox a little more quiet.

If you purchased the new slim Xbox 360 Arcade unit and found yourself lacking enough space to store all your content, you can now buy a 250 gigabyte hard drive from Microsoft to install in the new console.

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This is definitely not the most economical way to get a new Xbox 360 with a 250GB hard drive, though.  If you bought the console with the hard drive already installed, you pay $300.  The Arcade unit is $200, and the add on drive is $130, so at that point your total price is $330.  Not only that, but you've probably had your Arcade unit for less than a month, so you'd be better off returning your console and buying the console with the hard drive bundle in order to save $30.

I was actually hoping, but not expecting, that Microsoft would finally make the hard drives non-proprietary with the new version of their console.  It's pretty well known that the Xbox 360 hard drive is a standard 2.5" SATA laptop hard drive inside a proprietary enclosure.  Microsoft also adds some proprietary firmware to the hard drive so that you can't just swap out the drive inside the enclosure.  If they'd let us add our own drives into the enclosure , you could purchase a 250GB hard drive for a little less than $50. Maybe next time...

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If you want to purchase the new drive for your Xbox 360 Arcade, it appears that Gamestop is the only one currently selling it.

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