Playing movies off a USB hardrive

[Genius.]

Is it possible to connect my 500GB HD to my Xbox and let it play the movies off it?

I heard it is possible? Anybody with more info?

Thx!

 

[Dohc-WP]

Must be formatted to fat 32 ! the 360 doesnt read ntfs partitions

 

[Genius.]

How do i do that?

 

[Dohc-WP]

Use partition magic to format it or any other format utility with large disk support that can format drives to Fat32

 

[Genius.]

Thx!

 

[ToxicBunny]

Just a warning,

FAT32 does have one limitation that you can't get around and thats a 2GB filesize limit.

 

[assagai]

swissknife i a great utility for formatting large fat32 partitions, and it's free.

http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm

 

[RazedInBlack]

Is that the only thing you need to do in order to stream movies through xbox?

 

[matewis]

You also need a connection to live, as it will download an update it needs to download when you try and play a divx movie

 

[eye_suc]

the file size limit is apparently 4GB for fat32
http://www.genie-soft.com/asp/community/KnowledgeArticle.asp?KBID=113

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/38803/understanding-file-size-limits-on-ntfs-and-fat.html

With that 4GB figure stuck in my head, I went to my accustomed research tools and found plenty of references to the FAT32 4GB limit. To back up that number, I searched the Microsoft Web site and found numerous articles confirming that the file-size limit on FAT32 is (2^32)-1 bytes, or one byte less than a full 4GB.

yeah, the update needs to be done once off. should be fine afterwards, although some people do recommend that you create a profile seperate from your main profile to download this update. mine works fine though (on my main profile)

 

[Genius.]

So what are the disadvantages of formatting my 500GB external to Fat32?

 

[ToxicBunny]

Ahh ok, yes.. 4gb sorry.. my mistake...
but still its a bit of a limitation if you want to use the ext drive to bring HD movies home.. most of mine are in the 15-30Gb range...