How to Format a Hard Drive for Use With Xbox 360

Co-authored by Yaffet Meshesha

Last Updated: June 10, 2025

This article will tell you how to format a hard drive so that you can use it with your Xbox 360 for extra space for your photos and music etc. Only Western Digital hard drives work, and there are specific storage spaces that are compatible: 80GB and 250GB work so far.

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In this process your hard drive will be formatted, so back up all files to another hard drive, laptop, or be prepared to lose everything on your hard drive.^{[1]
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Yaffet Meshesha
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If an option called "USB Storage Device" appears, please skip to step 8.

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Open up your Start menu, right click on 'My PC' and select 'Manage'
This shows that the formatting was successful.
Disconnect your hard drive, then connect it to your laptop, load on some media (makes sure the file types are compatible), then reconnect it to your Xbox 360.

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Are you sure that only Western Digital will work?

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No. Other platforms will work, too.

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Is there any way to use a old hard drive with a new Xbox?

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Yes. You must open the hard-drive case, remove the hard drive, and put it in the new case. Or you can use the Xbox 360 transfer cable.

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I have an external hard drive, but I am having trouble using a seagate backup. Is there anything else I can do?

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You could copy all the files on the drive to a folder on your computer. This can be faster in some cases.

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Tips

For Windows 8 and 8.1, right-click the bottom left corner of your desktop to bring up a context menu. Select 'Disk Management'. From there, the procedure is the same as for Windows 7.

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Warnings

Formatting your hard drive will delete all data. Back everything up first!

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This method uses up 16 GB of your hard drive. If you don't want to lose that amount of space, this guide is not for you.

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This guide was first created using a laptop running Windows 7 and an Xbox 360 using the latest firmware and dashboard as of 20.12.2010.

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