What flash drives would you recommend for use with the Xbox 360 now that they can use normal USB flash drives? A quick search makes it seem like the Patriot Xporter XT Boost would be a good option. Is that about as speedy as USB 2.0 flash drives get? Is there a good site that maintains a performance table of different flash drives?

The Sandisk Extreme Contour is what I use day-to-day, it's blazing fast.

Don't know anything about the one you mentioned though. Looks like their Xporter Magnum is faster. I just don't trust anyone who lists their read-speed in CD-ROM rates (210x?) Tell me megabits per second, thanks. And write-speed too, because that's where flash can really suffer.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll keep them in mind. I guess I' not getting one right this instant, but my dad was asking me about 16 gig flash drives this morning, so I wanted to know what was up for his sake, too.

Good to know about the 360 using flash drives as my son is about to get an arcade version for his birthday next week and I have been looking for a cheap HDD for it.

If you didn't already read about it, just note that they can be a maximum of 16 GB and you can only use up to two, for a total of 32 GB.

Price per GB, you still can't beat the hard drive though. This guy has them (120 GB hard drive, new) on Ebay for $66 shipped:

http://cgi.ebay.com/120GB-120G-HDD-Hard-...=item2eabe9efa5

That's only about $10 more than the 16 GB Flash.

Wow, I never knew this and am using an xbox 360 with only a 20 gb HD

Me too, but since my main pc in the house has all my audio and video files, I really have no need to upgrade the hard drive. The XBox-360 can get the files from my main PC (either by sharing them on the main PC, or using Windows Media Center). End of thread crapping.

Does flash speed really matter for Xbox 360 usage in this case? I'm curious if it would matter.

I have a Wii that I Soft Modded with a USB Loader. You can google it. It allows you to use a USB HDD w/ your Wii and store all your games on the HDD. It doesn't require any mod-chip and as long as you only store/rip games you actually own, it should be 'legal'. No piracy required. Using a USB 2.0, I can play my Wii games w/ no lag. So USB 2.0 seems fast enough to handle HDD speeds, which has a slower read speed than flash.

I cant even download game demos or arcade games without having to delete something else... so Yah, i think flash memory will be helpful. Can you store demo's or arcade games on it? if not then I agree its pretty useless!

You can do everything on them that you can do with the official memory units, as far as I know.

Just wanted to say thanks again for this heads up. Finally gave my son his Bday present (a few days early) and my spare 4GB flash drive has worked perfectly. We are off to get him MW2 in the morning.

Awesome. Great gifts!

I had it all set up for him when he got home from school, he went upstairs to hide his Mother's day presents he made at school and when he passed in front of the TV he stopped in his tracks and started Yelling OH YAAAA! and jumping up and down for a few minutes then broke down and cried. He didn't stop saying thank you all night. To see this was well worth the money spent on it

Priceless, isn't it?

That is so sweet! I am so happy for the both of you!