Datel's XSATA Review

Written by Badname
September 2006 Introduction

Welcome to Badname's review of Datel's XSATA Hard Drive modification for the recently released Microsoft Xbox 360 video gaming console. Using this well built device you can easily manipulate your saved game data on your hard drive and hopefully in the future much more! Read on to see why Badname gave it an okay review. - brakken

Features

Transfer Data Between Your Xbox 360 and Your PC
USB 2.0 Compatible
Transfer Speeds of up to 480mbps
Email Non-Locked Content to your Friends
Make Personal Backup of Your Data

Contents

XSATA Adapter
Hi-Speed USB Cable
Mini CD w/Drivers & Applications
Instructional Material

Appearance

The first thing that struck me when I took the XSATA out of the box was how light it feels. It weights practically nothing, but this gives it a kind of cheap feeling. Also the fact that the whole component is open and you can see the PCB and cables gives you a kind of strange feeling. Another thing that kind of struck me is that the box shows a blue ring of light around it, but in reality the plastic is white and the blue leds don't have enough power to light up the whole thing as blue during the day. At night it does look more like shown on the box. As you can see on -this- picture there are in total 4 led's places to give the ring its blue light, I’d say it needs 4 more to fully do that or just color the plastic blue. Modders out there who find the appearance important can probably add some more leds to it, though you would expect Datel would have done that.

The XSATA product also isn't perfect when it comes to fitting well. It's hard to press the hard disk well into it and to get the XSATA off your 360 is a nightmare. I almost broke the top grey plastic of my 360 when I tried to bull the XSATA out, because it has 2 -pins- that go under the plastic to hold it in place, just like the hard disk would do, but it doesn’t have a button like the hard disk to press them in. So make sure when you want to take the XSATA off your 360 to push it to the back while pulling it off. The best way to do this is by trying one side, for example the front left one first and then the right one.

Usage

Now on to the more important part: the use of the XSATA. Compared to other solutions it's the easiest to use I would say. You just place it on your 360 then put the hard drive into the XSATA and connect it with a USB cable to your pc. The XSATA has a mini-USB entrance in the back and the USB cable you need comes with the package. The package also comes with the needed software to browse your 360 hard disk on a small CD. Actually it comes with Xplorer360 which can be downloaded at www.360gamesaves.com, which I did instead of using the CD so I’d have the most recent version.

On 360gamesaves.com you can also find save game files for your favorite games. Make sure you check out this topic if your game allows changing saves. I found out the hard way when I was trying to use a save game that would unlock everything in doa4, since doa4 doesn't accept save games from other people. 360 save games are digitally signed so you won’t be able to edit them like on the original Xbox, but you can still use edited save games from xbox1 on the 360.

As you can see on this picture it's kind of hard to understand sometimes which folder is for which game, but this topic at 360gamesaves.com lists which numbers correspond to which game.

Conclusion

The product is a bit different than I thought, since Datel only showed pictures of this mounted on the 360 you couldn't see it was a semi open product where the PCB is hanging out, but once you put it on your 360 it doesn’t that much anymore. The product does what it is meant to do and is compared to other solutions the easiest to use and looking at the price it’s about the same, but worked out much nicer than just some connectivity PCB kit. If you want to backup files or download save games or use your Xbox 1 saves, then this is the thing for you. Hopefully in the future you can use it for putting movies, mp3's and homebrew on your hard drive.





Links

Datel's Website
Code Junkies - Buy the XSATA Online!



-=[ Review Discussion Thread ]=-

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