Add More storage to Your Gaming Console With an External Hard Drive
If you have a gaming console that came with a small hard drive or no hard drive at all, then adding an external hard drive is a reasonably quick and easy solution. Sure, you can replace the traditional hard drives that came in the ideas with a larger one, but those laptop hard drives can get quite expensive, especially in the larger capacities.
Hard Drive
An external hard drive will let you add more storage at a much lower price while at the same time allowing you to control the article yourself. On a ideas like an Xbox 360, you cannot add article to the built in drive unless it is downloaded from Xbox Live or ripped from a Cd. With an external drive, you have full control of your content, and can actually upload or download new article without much trouble.
Choosing Your External Hard Drive
Naturally, you will need a hard drive and an enclosure. Almost any Usb external hard drive will work for your purposes. The main inequity is if you are looking for portability vs. storage size. If you have some laptop hard drives lying around, then buy a 2.5" laptop hard drive enclosure.
The advantages of using a smaller laptop hard drive are that it will be much smaller and much more portable, and will most likely not wish a power supply. However, laptop drives commonly pale in capacity compared to quarterly 3.5" drives of the same price. A 3.5" external hard drive will store much more article but will probably wish an extra power port. If your gaming console is commonly located in one location and not likely to move around, this type of hard drive might be the best solution.
Formatting Your Hard Drive
Gaming consoles need an external hard drive that is formatted in the Fat32 file system. You can use virtually any hard drive currently sold on the market, as Fat32 can withhold hard drives up to 2 Terabytes in size. However, the limitation of Fat32 is that it cannot hold individual files larger then 4Gb in size. Also, Windows 2000 and Xp cannot generate or format partitions larger than 32Gb. Windows 98 users can only generate and partition drives up to 127Gb in size. So, in order to generate a Fat32 partition and format it above the 32Gb or 127Gb limitations, you will need a utility like Partition Magic or some other drive/partition utility. I very recommend CompuApps Swissknife, which can be downloaded for free at download.com for Pc users. Mac Osx users can simply open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app, select the desired drive, and click on the Erase. select 'Ms-Dos (Fat)' and then click on the 'Erase' button. You should now have a hard drive formatted in Fat32.
Once your drive is done formatting in Fat32, it's simply a matter of uploading article to your new drive and connecting it to your gaming console. simply associate your Usb cable to an available Usb port on the front of your Playstation 3, or the back of your Xbox 360. Your game console should recognize your new device automatically, and allow you to browse your new files on the external hard drive.
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