Yet another 360 HDD/Gamertag thread!

[Super Monkey Balls]

Yeah, I know these sort of questions get asked all the time but I'm still a tad confused. My situation is this:

I have a JPN arcade unit with 120GB HDD. I just bought a JPN 120GB Elite as I need a black one to match my new AV setup and the plan is to have the Elite as my main unit and set the other 360 up in another room.

In an ideal world I'd slap my existing full HDD on the Elite but I'm guessing that won't work? Is there a way to tie it to the new console or do I need the HDD transfer kit?

As for the reserve console, whats the best way to deal with gamertags and such? Download stuff again and keep my profile on a memory card or is it less fiddly to log in with a second silver account and forget the achievements? Does the gamertag that owns the XBLA content need to be logged in to access it?

Cheers

[fuse]

You will be able to shunt the hard drive over no problem, but the problem is that your DLC is tied to your console as well as the gamertag you bought it on - it will function with one or the other, but obviously not neither. Meaning that on your old console you can play DLC stuff offline as you bought it on that machine, whereas on the new one you will need to be signed in and online with the profile that bought it. The way around this is to use the License Transfer tool on xbox.com to shunt things from old console to new - not a great inconvenience but you can only do this once every 12 months.

HDD transfer kit is only really necessary when you're moving from one hard drive to a brand new one - yes it will move the licenses too, but you might as well just keep the same hard drive and move the licenses to the new console via the online transfer tool.

Personal recommendation for profiles is to get a memory card and just keep them all stored on that. It's what I do between my PAL and JPN units and works just fine. Only issue is that if you're storing DLC and suchforth on the second machine, you will need to make sure it's online when you want to play on it.

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

For the profile, I'd suggest a Memory unit, it's what I use to swap between my PAL and JP units and the one in the living room. I don't think the profile has to be signed in to use the dlc, just on the console.

As for the HDD, I think you can go on the Xbox site and do a license transfer. Not sure if you'd just be able to swap HDD's though.

Plus depending on the amount of stuff you have on it, you could probably just download it quicker than waiting for a transfer cable. Only thing would be game saves but you could do that if you go a memory unit.

Edit: Fuse got there before me.

[fuse]

[Super Monkey Balls]

Thanks guys. So basically, do the transfer thing here..
http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/support/drm/..
Slap the old HDD on the Elite.
Slap the new HDD on the vanilla.
Slap my gamertag on the memory card.

Sounds simple enough. So to re-download and use XBLA games on the vanilla box I would need to be online?

[fuse]

Pretty much it in a nutshell, yes