So I got the Three Red Rings of Death on my xbox and freezes instantly when I power it on. I called Best Buy and they can swap it for a new one or I can pickup an Elite and just pay the difference.

Question #1 - I don't much care about the difference in hard drive space, but is there any other reasons to pickup the Elite over the Premium console? Better firmware? fans? etc... (and yes black is better:)

Question #2 - I have quite a few games and I'm in the middle of most of them. How can I backup my saved games and get them transferred onto the new Xbox? I can sometimes get the Xbox up and working so I'd definately have time to get the saved games off.

If you get the Elite, you can get a free data migration kit from Microsoft that will transfer your data from your old 20gb HD to your new 120gb HD... http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/console/datamigration.htm

You could alternatively buy a cheap memory card and put the game saves on there.

The transfer kit won't exactly work as it'll be a swap by Best Buy in the store - I doubt they would let me take home both machines with a promise to bring one back :)

What kind of memory card would I need?

Get the Elite!!!

Well I'd love too but I'm kind of waiting on responses from you guys!

#1 I'm in the middle of like 10 different games, losing all my saved games would crush hours and hours worth of work. How can I get this transferred to the new console (whether it be another premium or an elite)

#2 Why should I get the elite? What's the advantage except for more HD space I'll never use?

You know, here we are all with Xbox gamertags, Live Id's, which is basically tied into MSN if you want it to be, meaning Hotmail or Live mail with a good amount of storage in it, the 360 already internet ready. Why can't we just upload or save our gamesaves via our hotmail accounts into some sort of temp online storage? Can't be that hard for MS to implement.

Wihtout a memory card or an HD transfer kit from Datel (et al) where you can access the drive through your computer, you're SOL on going to the Elite with your gamesaves. Depending on how many you have, it might require 2 memory cards (no idea how big gamesave files are on average).

If you just swap it out for a regular unit, open it up and swap hard drives. Put the brand new one with the one you're returning and keep yours that you currently have.

I agree - I was thinking about that this morning.

Buy the 120GB hard drive, ask for the transfer cable, when all of your files are transferred, purchase the Elite and return it's harddrive as an open box.

Buy the 120GB hard drive, ask for the transfer cable, when all of your files are transferred, purchase the Elite and return it's harddrive as an open box.

How would he transfer it? Lot bigger risk here of rrod during transfer causing loss of everything.

How would he transfer it? Lot bigger risk here of rrod during transfer causing loss of everything.

The data transfer cable is included in the package with the standalone 120 GB hard drive. Why MS didn't do the same when people bought Elites, I have no idea. He would have to buy both an Elite and a 120 GB hard drive in order to do this. Make sure to buy them at separate locations, however. Get the Elite at Best Buy and the hard drive at Circuit City or something.

eh screw it - I traded it in for the Elite. I lost some saved games but no big deal, if I decide to pick those games up again I'll just play through them again.

eh screw it - I traded it in for the Elite. I lost some saved games but no big deal, if I decide to pick those games up again I'll just play through them again.

Could have saved $30 waiting a week when the price drops. Or, if they did a straight refund and then sale of an elite, keep your receipt and take it back when the price drops.

Would a micro sd card work?

Would a micro sd card work?
No, from what I've been told the only external memory that works are the MS USB
Memory cards.
I had the same problem and lost all my save games when my Premium died and I replaced it with an Elite. I wish I had a backup strategy - it's going to cost me another $25 or $40 something to buy the 256 or 512Mb Microsoft cards. If any other cards or backup strategies work. I'd love to know.

You just need to get a memory card.

Wihtout a memory card or an HD transfer kit from Datel (et al) where you can access the drive through your computer, you're SOL on going to the Elite with your gamesaves. Depending on how many you have, it might require 2 memory cards (no idea how big gamesave files are on average).

If you just swap it out for a regular unit, open it up and swap hard drives. Put the brand new one with the one you're returning and keep yours that you currently have.

Thats exactly what happened when I traded my premium in on the Elite. I actually FORMATTED the harddrive on the 20gig Premium in the store before I left with the Elite brand new in the box.

I then went home, thinking I'd have to restart every game over due to not having any saved game data.

After about 5 minutes of going through the dashboard setup, I then logged into my Gamertag. It asked me for my hotmail account and password associated with my account. And the screen paused for about 3-4 minutes.

When the screen became active again, all of my information was there. Everygame I had played, the progress level, the achievement points, every saved point.. Everything. The only thing I noticed missing were the demos and XBLA games I had download, and the picture I had used as my wallpaper.

I then proceeded to download those again, and the ones I had a played sure enough the saved points were stored with my Gamertag.

For those that dont believe me, try it. Go to a friends house with a 360, login with your gamertag, and play a game you've played before. All of your saved game data information will appear.

No memory card or Harddrive needed.

Thats exactly what happened when I traded my premium in on the Elite. I actually FORMATTED the harddrive on the 20gig Premium in the store before I left with the Elite brand new in the box.

I then went home, thinking I'd have to restart every game over due to not having any saved game data.

After about 5 minutes of going through the dashboard setup, I then logged into my Gamertag. It asked me for my hotmail account and password associated with my account. And the screen paused for about 3-4 minutes.

When the screen became active again, all of my information was there. Everygame I had played, the progress level, the achievement points, every saved point.. Everything. The only thing I noticed missing were the demos and XBLA games I had download, and the picture I had used as my wallpaper.

I then proceeded to download those again, and the ones I had a played sure enough the saved points were stored with my Gamertag.

For those that dont believe me, try it. Go to a friends house with a 360, login with your gamertag, and play a game you've played before. All of your saved game data information will appear.

No memory card or Harddrive needed.


No way. Are you serious? That is awesome.

Yeah some stuff is linked to your gametag.

Saved games aren't. If you want to pick up where you left off in something like Oblivion, you will have to start over. However, things like your Oblivion achievements will remain.

buddy of mine plugged a memory stick into the usb port in the back and was able to transfer the save data before he bought his elite. (and he is computer illietrate) try it.

Yeah some stuff is linked to your gametag.

Saved games aren't. If you want to pick up where you left off in something like Oblivion, you will have to start over. However, things like your Oblivion achievements will remain.


As long as it keeps my gamerscore and achievements I'm happy...can anyone else confirm?

As long as it keeps my gamerscore and achievements I'm happy...can anyone else confirm?

Confirmed, that stuff is stored on the live servers.

Yeah some stuff is linked to your gametag.

Saved games aren't. If you want to pick up where you left off in something like Oblivion, you will have to start over. However, things like your Oblivion achievements will remain.

Maybe you didnt read what I wrote.

EVERY game save was there.. every single one..

Maybe you didnt read what I wrote.

EVERY game save was there.. every single one..

Do you have a Gold or Silver live membership?
I have a Silver, and although all my achievements and gamerscore was saved, none of the game saves were.
This is interesting.

Yeah that didn't work when I bought my Elite. I wanted a way to transfer my saves from my Premium to my Elite as that's where I do most of my gaming.

Originally I just swapped out the hard drives (connected the premium HDD to the Elite, connected the Elite HDD to the Premium) while trying to find a solution here on AVS. Suggestion came to utilize a memory card.

So I forked out the cash to get a 512 memory card. Come to find out, one of my game saves is larger than 512MB! So the next option was to try the transfer kit. Got it and read through the whole manual. Of course it states that once you transfer everything to the 2nd HDD, you will always have to access your XBLA stuff by being logged in. So I said screw it and have had to rebuild all my game saves on the Elite 120GB HDD. I'm just glad it wasn't something like an H3 gamesave or something. Or I would have been upset.

All I have to do is log in to XBL account with any 360 then my info is there right? Then there is no need to transfer anything over ,save for Live arcade games, right? No need to transfer accounts over to new 360?

Do you have a Gold or Silver live membership?
I have a Silver, and although all my achievements and gamerscore was saved, none of the game saves were.
This is interesting.

Gold membership..

There is no doubt some type of game save profile that goes on with the Gamertag.. It took me about 3-4 mins to login after I entered my hotmail account and password.. I actually thought the new Elite had frozen up on me.. but it was frozen because it was downloading the gamertag profile..

There has to be some type of documentation on this.. I know Im not crazy.. check a few www.xbox.com FAQ's or something..

If you have a friend with a Gold membership.. have him try his profile on your 360 and see if all of his game saves show up..

All I have to do is log in to XBL account with any 360 then my info is there right? Then there is no need to transfer anything over ,save for Live arcade games, right? No need to transfer accounts over to new 360?

Try it and report back what happens.. it definitely worked for me..

I was actually pissed as I looked forward to playing some games over from the start.. instead every save point from every game was re-established..

Try it and report back what happens.. it definitely worked for me..

I was actually pissed as I looked forward to playing some games over from the start.. instead every save point from every game was re-established..

it should be putting those points on the hard drive you should be able to delte the saves out of the new 360

I am pretty sure game saves are not saved to your gamertag. I recently got my refurb back and had to copy my saves back to the hard drive from a memory stick. Your gamertag saves your achievements and remembers your downloads etc, but not the actual save points. Some game saves are just too large. I believe Forza is over 34mb for one save.

Maybe you didnt read what I wrote.

EVERY game save was there.. every single one..

Well I did...and I just got finished switching out my Launch 360 Premium for an Elite. I had previously read your post so I tried to do nothing but setup my gamertag on the new Elite. While the download did take longer than I would have expected...I was missing save games. How many I'll never know...but I do know that the first disc I went to check was NCAA 08. None of my stuff was there--not even my favorite team setting not to mention my Dynasty. Fortunately, I had backed up save games with a 64mb memory card beforehand, so a quick copy to the hard drive fixed it all.

So just to confirm, yes...maybe some of the save games will transfer with your gamertag...but NOT all of them.

Just buy a 64mb memory card to be safe--most save game files are under 100kb anyways.

could it be that it just only saves the LIVE Arcade game saves? I went to look for save files for those types of games before and didn't see any.

Maybe you didnt read what I wrote.

EVERY game save was there.. every single one..

I did, but it's not true. Perhaps XBLA saves are, but otherwise they won't be there unless you use the same hd or a memory card.