Hey everybody. Gonna try to make a long story short here.

Had 20gb Xbox 360 (white), for years, so it has a lot of game data.
This white Xbox had the GPU soldering issue, so it lost video.
Bought new Xbox 360S (black)
Used a friend's working original console to transfer game data off the 20gb hard drive onto a new 8gb flash drive which I formatted on the Xbox.

Plugged the flash drive into the 360S and everything was there. Boom. Perfect.

Take flash drive out of 360S, move 360S, plug flash drive back in.
Game data no longer showing up. Shows drive and shows memory as taken, but no game data (yes, I selected the correct device).

Thinking everything was still on the original 20gb HDD, I reformatted the flash drive.
Go to transfer stuff to the flash drive again and game data is gone from HDD.
Plug flash drive (remember, I xbox formatted it a second time) into 360S to check, and it shows 7gb free space (drive is 8gb).
Plug flash drive into laptop, shows a hidden folder called "Xbox 360" with nine files totaling 7.5gb (IS THIS MY GAME DATA???).

So I backed this folder "Xbox 360" up on my laptop, then went to folder options on the flash drive and unchecked the "hidden" and "read-only" boxes. Plugged back into 360S, still nothing shows up and it says the drive has 7gb free.

Any ideas on how to get my game data back? Any help would be MUCH appreciated. Let me know if I can clarify anything from above.
Plug flash drive

6/7/2011 11:24:17 PM

Your problem was here:

Quote :

"Plugged the flash drive into the 360S and everything was there. Boom. Perfect"

Unless you explicitly transfer your profile AND save data from the flash drive to the 360, it stays on the flash drive and just runs everything from the flash drive.

You can buy a 10 dollar cable that connects your old 20gb drive to a USB port on the new xbox. Get that, plug it in and transfer everything from the old hdd to the new hdd. This will work.

6/7/2011 11:36:07 PM

Please guys, I have a match

6/7/2011 11:42:02 PM

Haha. I actually only use the Xbox to play Forza, but believe what you will.

Noen, I figured you would be the expert here, but the problem is, it is reading as if nothing is on the flash drive. I never tried to transfer anything OFF of the flash drive, but when I plugged it back in after moving the console, it was like I never put any data on the flash drive after I formatted it. But again, the laptop is showing 7.5gb of data on the drive.

???

[Edited on June 7, 2011 at 11:50 PM. Reason : .]

6/7/2011 11:47:54 PM

Lol, there will never be an Xbox thread without that post. Standard fare

6/7/2011 11:57:09 PM

Anyway, this is the closest thing I can find by googling the problem, but I don't really understand this guy's solution. It seems like he is saying to format the drive using the console, then transfer the data onto the console, but that doesn't make any sense, since after a format, there is presumably no data to transfer.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/lofiversion/index.php/t731404.html

6/8/2011 12:00:53 AM

You never needed the flash drive in the first place dude.

Get the HARD DRIVE TRANSFER cable. Transfer your data directly from the old 20gb drive to your new hard drive in the 360S.

Problem solved.

6/8/2011 4:16:54 AM

I used the flash drive to avoid having to spend $20 on a transfer cable to transfer <8gb of data. The problem is now, the data does not exist on the HDD anymore, and supposedly it doesn't exist on the flash drive anymore either (according to the Xbox), but again, when I plug that flash drive into my laptop, I see 7.5gb of data, which I am assuming is my "lost" game data.

This is as much a question of data recovery as anything else. I tried "unhiding" the 7.5gb Xbox 360 folder on the flash drive with my laptop, but the Xbox still recognizes it as empty.

6/8/2011 7:49:36 AM

Sounds like your data is corrupt on the thumb drive. In all honesty you are very unlikely to get your game data back.

6/8/2011 2:06:06 PM

Why would the data be gone from the original had? If all you did was a transfer it should still be there.

Buy the data cable, it works and its the recommended way to transfer from old to new. That 20 bucks doesn't seem like much after thinking about all the data you just lost

6/9/2011 12:26:41 PM