So when my third 360 died, after the new slims came out, I figured my saves were gone for good.  I didn't really mind that much, but my Oblivion save was on there, and one day I want to go back and do the side missions, so that gave me motivation to get the saves off the hard drive.



First I had to get the hard drive out of the enclosure shell.  Given that the 360 was dead and I was not going to be able to use any part of it again I did not have to demonstrate a great deal of care, and using the instructions on these pages, along with a regular power drill I was able to get the hard drive out in no time.

So then you have to hook it up to your computer. I did this using one of these:

It lets you hook up most kinds of hard drives to a USB connection. They cost about $8.

So hook it up as a USB storage device and copy the saves from the hard drive to a USB memory stick right? Yeah, nope. Not that simple.  The XBOX hard drives use a special file format that Windows doesn't recognize.  So your computer will acknowledge that you have connected a USB device but you won't be able to browse to it. Bastards.

After some looking around I found an application that is basically a File Explorer for XFAT formatted drives. Search the internet for a file called usbxtafgui_v44, and you'll be set.  There is no support for this application, and not much written about it, so you'll have to figure out how to use it.


Microsoft doesn't make it very easy either, since instead of naming everything in a human they name all the folders and files in numbers.


To make it easier on yourself, first thing to do is to backup your hard drive.  This will take a while, but once a .bin file has been created you won't have to have your hard drive hooked up any more, and the data transfer will go easier.

Next take a big enough USB stick, go to your new 360 and format the stick. You do this under Settings, Storage Devices (at least this month, next month when they change the GUI again it will be in some other hard to find place). When it is done formatting, save a single game save to the USB stick.

Take the USB back to your computer and shove it in. Using usbxtafgui_v44 you can open the Device Selector and see the file format of the USB stick. If you click  around enough, in one of the nested folders you will see the gave save you made on the 360.

Now close the USB and open the back-up of your hard drive.  You will note a similar structure.  And now as you click around you will start to see your saves come up on the right hand side.  Open up notepad and type in the number of the folder, the subfolder.  You will have to re-create those folders in the same place on your USB.

Re-open the USB, go to where you found the save and then right-click on the master folder to create the numbered folder for your new save. This is a number unique to each game.  Then create the subfolder.  This is usually a seven character name of all zeroes.

Go back to the device selector, and copy the save you want (right click) from the USB.  These are in English on the right hand panel, so you should be able to find the save you need.

Then re-open the USB, open the two folders you made, right-click and select "Inject".  Your save will copy from your clipboard.


Take out the USB and put it in your 360. Check to see if your save is there.  At this point I copied the saves from the USB to another USB, just to be safe.  If you don't see your save, it is most likely because you failed to copy the folder names exactly.  You have no one to blame but yourself.  So sad, and you made it this far too.

I'm pretty sure I'm the first guy to have used this tool for legal purposes. I guess in the old days people used these to boost their cheevos or share downloaded games, but I'm pretty sure MS put an end to all that, or there would be more support for this application on the web.

Of interest, my 360 had a 12GB HDD (at least that is what the box said) of which only 7GB was available due to "system files".  Funny thing is, when I actually took it out, it was a 20GB drive.  So MS was throttling all those years.  Of course they were -- Where TF do you find 12GB lap top drives?