So you’re a owner of the newer 360 Slim system and opted to grab the 4GB version because it was cheaper, smaller and removable storage is cheap these days. So far you’ve rarely run into any issues with it, other then having to do some moving around of data from time to time; but for some people who picked up Battlefield 3 this week they had a nasty surprise for them: A 1.5 GB HD texture pack that absolutely requires a XBOX 360 hard drive to work. No removable storage will work on this one. Now normally, this wouldn’t cause any harm to me, as my main 360 unit is a slim with a large hard drive and my unit I review games on has a 60GB. However, I just upgraded to a 4GB slim due to the smaller size and the built in wireless N and now I was running into the same situation as a few other people. That meant that if I wanted to show off  those textures. I was going to have to shell out some money for a hard drive.

The good news is I only had to shell out 20 bucks!

After doing some research online, it seems that you can take the hard drives from the large form factor XBOX 360’s, crack it open and put it in your XBOX 360 slim. You just need a few torque screw drivers and at the very least a 20 GB XBOX 360 hard drive. The torque screw drivers may be something you already have, but if you don’t you can get them fairly cheap from a Home Depot or any hardware store.

The XBOX 360 hard drive is even easier to get if there is a GameStop in the area. For 20 bucks I was able to pick up a used 20 GB hard drive, though if I wanted to go bigger I could get a 60 GB for 40 bucks. I didn’t need that much space, so I elected to go with the 20.

After removing a few screws and pulling out the serial ATA hard drive for its shell, I carefully inspected the HD port on the side of the slim and plugged it in. After turning on the 360 and checking the storage menu on the 360, I was happy that the 20GB was showing up without issue.

I next installed BF3 directly on the HD to see if there were any issues, none were encountered.

I then fired up the game and was prompted to install the HD pack. I was able to select the drive without any issue and it installed!

So there you go! A 20 GB hard drive for 20 bucks and working on a XBOX360 slim. Now you don’t have a to drop a hundred bucks for a “SLIM” hard drive or trade in your system for one with one! For a video on how this is done, check out the video below. It was by far the best tutorial video on how to do the whole process.