So, here it is.  The HDD arrived while I was out in Reading for a meeting and came in a box big enough to hold...  well, you could have made a 'how many popes' joke out of it.  It was plain silly.

Look:

See?  Ridiculous!  And on the right, you can see Nanna LorD's slippers and some quite remarkable socks.  On the left, you can see Grandpa LorD's Blackberry, tobacco and Sky HD remote control.

Anyway, as you can see, the HDD itself comes in that packaging.  The kind that causes you multiple lacerations and to need twenty-seven stitches after a four-hour wait in A&E.  It should be made illegal or, better, out of loo-roll.

Having removed it from that packaging, I introduced the new HDD to its new home, though I did try to mediate between the new HDD and its predecessor.  They don't get on, as you can see:

Tense, eh?  Eddie Izzard boxed set there and two additional DVDs of the same man.  And the PS3, without PS2 backward compatibility!  Grr!

So, the idea of buying this was partly because I wanted the larger hard drive and also because my mum, as previously mentioned, wanted to use hers that came with her Xbox Elite and the only way you can get a data transfer kit is by writing to Microsoft using one of their forms (if you're interested, it can be found here). 

The transfer kit consists of a disc and a USB cable that attaches to the HDD interface at the other end.  Snap it onto the HDD like so...

I think it's best you spend a moment or two just holding your new 120-gig hard drive aloft with the data transfer cable attached.  It's quite beautiful, isn't it.  You can enhance the beauty of the item by juxtaposing it with a small, black female cat in the background, just as I have done.

Insert the disc, plug the USB port into the back of the console (the port adjacent to the network port; I didn't, I put it in the front, but the instructions tell you not to use those ones.  Devil-may-care, that's me!) and watch it go!


Right, so there you go, it's going to format your bigger hard drive and move everything from the smaller one onto it, though it does tell you that as with any data transfer process, some data may be lost.  There's no compensation for that, they just acknowledge that it's a possibility, so things, at this point, are starting to get a little hairy.  The highlighted option in the image above is 'format and transfer'.

Nobody said it was going to be quick...

But to be fair, that gives me time to watch the rest of The Brits on ITV1 (other commercial terrestrial and satellite TV channels are available in a similar price range) and put my feet up.

After the allotted time (and the amazing Pet Shop Boys performance) you will probably find that 'some data was corrupt and couldn't be transferred'.  I got a little worried about that, but everything seems intact, though I'll comment here if I discover otherwise. 

Turn off your console, unplug the USB cable, remove your old hard drive from its console housing and click your new one into place, being sure to remove the disc from the tray as well.

Turn your console back on and hey presto!  You're good to go!  Except that you'll probably need a new update that tells your machine how best to manage its new-found space (i.e., by filling it up with shit you don't want).

Still, it was quite a smooth process, but the fact that the Xbox 360 operates on such a closed platform did cause a few bumps in the road.  I'd say, having transferred data on both consoles, that the PS3 was the easier of the two; you can use a flash card, or a memory stick or any old USB hard drive to do it, you don't need anything else, you don't have to print, fill out or send off and PDF forms to Microsoft, you just do it.  Sure, you have to re-download your DLC, but that you can do overnight, how long does the transfer cable take to come through the post?!