Transferring all DLC to new Xbox 360 -- "download all"?

Question

I just had to replace a RROD'ed Xbox 360.

This means

• I have no access to any of the content on the other machine since it won't boot!
• I would just pop the old hard drive into the new console, but the new Xbox 360 slim is not compatible with the old Xbox 360 style hard drives.

I used the once per year DRM transfer tool to successfully associate my 593 DRM licenses with the Console ID of the new console. But, I still need to get the actual content on the box. There is an option to "download all" at the end of the online content license transfer tool, but it just produced an error for me, nothing happened when I clicked it.

(yes, I buy a LOT of Rock Band songs...)

Other than a painstaking, manual process of going through my download history and re-downloading 593 entries one by one -- is there any way to issue a "download all" command, either from xbox.com or from the console itself?

Answer 1

Answering my own question, as it combines a few elements from Omar's answer and James Sutherland's comment and a few others. Thanks for everyone's help!

As I said in the question, I already transferred all DRM rights to the new console in advance using the online content license transfer tool.

I concluded that re-downloading over the internet 593 items in full (over 60gb) takes absurdly long. I'm cheap, but I ain't that cheap. I went ahead and picked up the $20 Xbox Data Transfer cable from a local EBGames (they stock them).

• This pulled across ALL data on the older Xbox hard drive to the new Xbox hard drive in about an hour, though I was getting some intermittent read errors and had to retry a bit
• it also pulled across my old savegames and settings, which I wouldn't get from a straight download, so that is a nice perk

Once you've done that, as James Sutherland correctly pointed out, you STILL won't be able to play this content unless you are logged in to your Xbox Live account. To get the content playable for anyone on that Xbox -- regardless of whether they are logged into Xbox Live as you or not -- you must re-download each and every bit of your DLC.

There is something magical about this re-downlad where it "tags" the DLC that was copied from your Old Xbox as belonging to the New Xbox. Once you do this, you can play the DLC without being logged into Xbox Live. I personally confirmed this!

Now, to re-download everything is a pain in the butt, but there is some good news --

• since the content is already there, copied across via the Xbox Data Transfer Cable earlier, the downloads are very fast, basically just verification of the downloaded file and writing the "magic DLC bits" to the disk
• your Xbox Live Download History makes it fairly fast to do this; just go down the list and click the entries, but don't go too fast, as there is a maximum of 25 entries in your download queue.

The Xbox picks this queue up dynamically, and it is MUCH MUCH faster to do it through the web UI than it is with the controller. Watch near the top of the page as it will update dynamically after you click to confirm that the item was added to the queue. This takes a few seconds, so don't go too fast.

Anyway, once I've walked the list of 30 pages, everything will be "as it was" on my old Xbox. Finally. :P

Answer 2

I don't know about the new xbox slim, but you can buy a transfer cable to get everything off one hard drive onto another.

There are also back up tools such as Xplorer360 that let you transfer everything to a PC.

Answer 3

MS makes a data transfer cable to perform a one time copy of data from old HDs to new HDs. They used to give them away but now I think you have to buy it.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=xbox+data+transfer+kit

Answer 4

I believe you can purchase a transfer cable allowing you to transfer content from an older 360 hard drive to the new one. Since xbox.com is being transferred over, can't seem to find a good page on their site talking about it. Apparently it retails for $20, so not sure if you would want to spend money to do it, but it sounds better than downloading 593 things one at a time :|

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/14/xbox-360-slim-hdd-data-transfer-cable-to-retail-for-19-99/

Answer 5

I had my console brick on me last weekend! (It was a launch console though, so it lasted a long while). I ran into this same issue exact but I am at work so these steps will be from memory...

1. Make sure that your downloads show up as pending on marketplace.xbox.com.
2. In the My Xbox panel of the dashboard, open your user profile (second one in?)
3. Select the Downloads link under your profile in the dashboard.
4. The downloads should show up as pending for your xbox.
5. Select the Download All link and wait.

These steps were for a refurbished Xbox 360 Elite but since they all run the same dashboard it should work. It'll download everything to your internal hdd for you.

Answer 6

You can use any USB mass storage device since a recent dashboard update to transfer content and savegames. The xbox will create some sort of disk image on a FAT32 partition. Just make sure to move instead of copy as some games require you to move stuff to prevent cheating/duping/whatever. It has been made even easier with a really nicely made "transfer content" tool available through the Y button once you're browsing a storage device.

The Xbox 360 will claim up to 32GB on a FAT32 formatted partition (via proprietary disk images), so you may have a few round trips ahead, but it saves you from buying a one-shot transfer accessory.

Then comes the license issue, where:

• the xbox is actually smart and downloads only the license key when the content is already there but has a 30ish download queue limit
• the site is absolute crap, as although it proposes a "Download all" option at the end of the license transfer operation, it failed to detect 90% of my previously bought content, and doubly failed by marking the queue content as "assigned to another system", thus requiring manual operation for those licenses too. Duh.