How do I get a portable 500gb harddrive to work with my xbox 360?

Question

I was told by a salesman at a Bestbuy that I could buy a portable harddrive unit that wasn't "xbox" and it would be compatible with my xbox360. He went so far as to find one that would work. I have had zero luck with it even registering with my system, any helps, tips or suggestions on what to do? I need the extra memory not this headache

Answer 1

Xbox 360's only use Microsoft's Proprietary Hard Drives to save any content, you can how ever use any usb device or drive to play music, view pictures or watch videos from, how ever it needs to be formatted to Fat 32 in order to work. You can not use the external drive to save content at all, you can not transfer content from the external drive to the console at all even if you have a hard drive on your 360.

If you intended on using the external drive to save Xbox Live content then return it for a refund and tell that sales men he was and is wrong. If you bought it to simply stream all your media simply connect it to your computer and reformat it to Fat32.  

Answer 2

And why do you listen to a Best Buy employee?  They're idiots.  They just pick some random guy who has very little knowledge about video games and then have him work in the video game section.

The guy told you a lie just to get you to buy the portable hard drive.  A portable hard drive is not anything like the 360's external hard drive.  With the portable hard drive, you can't use it to save games, download demos, etc.  All you can do with it is basically upload music and pictures.