Xbox 360 Slim HDD seems dead

HDD support is part of the general console warranty only if the HDD came with the console. Accessory HDDs only have a 90 day warranty.

If you're in-warranty, call support.

And as the alternative if you do not have warranty, you will have to buy some other storage medium for the console. If you can get hold of a transfer cable cheaply you may find that you can recover some data and that the issue lies within the partition of the hard drive which the console uses to run. So to attempt to recover data my suggestion is that you:

Get a USB flash drive (preferably if you have one at home you save all the data on it to a computer then format it for use with the Xbox)

Get a hard drive transfer cable

Plug your hard drive into the transfer cable, USB flash drive into your Xbox and the transfer cable into the Xbox and attempt to copy data over from the hard drive to the flash drive. (Do not worry about downloaded content as it can all be re-downloaded free of charge)

If your console freezes during this then you will just have to lose your data but if it doesn't freeze and you recover your game saves, go into the storage selection page, press Y on the "Transfer Cable Hard Drive" and select to format it, you will be asked for your consoles serial number which you can find on the back of the console or on a sticker inside of the consoles front USB flap. Once it is formatted, turn the console off, remove the flash drive and transfer cable and put your hard drive in normally.

Now, check if it works as hopefully the issue was due to a corrupted system file and not a physically damaged hard drive. If it works again put your data back onto it and to get your DLC back, follow these simple instructions: support.microsoft.com/.../962228

I do have a transfer cable but I used it previously to transfer the data from an old 360 HDD to the new one (a year ago so sadly the warranty is past the 90 days) purchased separately from the 360S. Is it possible to re-use an old one? I was under the impression that you could not.

[quote user="VPsych"]I was under the impression that you could not.[/quote]That's because the instruction wording isn't very clear.

There is no limit to how many times you can use the cable.

The old transfer software used to erase the source drive after the transfer was complete. That's why it was referring to when it mentioned you could only transfer once. After a successful transfer, the source drive was rendered empty so you couldn't, say, copy the source drive to three different destination drives.

Anywho, none of that applies any longer. You may elect to Move all or part of the existing drive, or you can cancel everything and manually Copy or Move whatever you want from System Settings, Memory.

Thanks. I'll try that.

It is possible to re-use an old transfer cable but it must be the Slim compatible one that looks like this:

If you have that one simply hook it up and try and recover some of your data. If you are lucky there are some corrupt system files and all/some of you data is still recoverable, if you are unlucky, you have a bad hard drive sector and it is unrecoverable.

My computer hard drive failed on me recently but after unplugging it and leaving it for a few days it ran fine and is still working today with no problems so you could maybe try that.

[quote user="TMX boxburn"]It is possible to re-use an old transfer cable but it must be the Slim compatible one that looks like this: [/quote]Eh, he only needs that if he wants to transfer from 360 S to 360 S HDD. The original HDD transfer cable works with the 360 S console, and appears to be lower power as you can cable the drive to the cable and the the cable to any one of the 360 S USB ports (even on Corona). The 360 S drive cable seems to only work if you cable it to the back of the console first, then attach the drive.

[quote user="IceStorm III"]

[quote user="TMX boxburn"]It is possible to re-use an old transfer cable but it must be the Slim compatible one that looks like this: [/quote]Eh, he only needs that if he wants to transfer from 360 S to 360 S HDD. The original HDD transfer cable works with the 360 S console, and appears to be lower power as you can cable the drive to the cable and the the cable to any one of the 360 S USB ports (even on Corona). The 360 S drive cable seems to only work if you cable it to the back of the console first, then attach the drive.

[/quote]

Well that's what I thought at first but they are saying that their Slim HDD is failing so the old transfer cable cannot connect to the Slim HDD as the older ones only connect to the Phat HDDs, not Slim, so they must have the transfer cable which can do Slim to Slim transfers. Do you see what I mean? Or am I getting confused here?

I do have the older cable and I don't see a way to connect the slim hard drive to it.

My mistake. At some point I thought it was the original HDD, despite the subject...

You will need the newer cable if you want to try this. Attach the cable to the back of the console, then attach the drive to the cable. Keep in mind that it may not work, depending on what's wrong with the existing HDD.