Javamancy

The Setup

Everyday, whenever I log into Xbox LIVE and start browsing the What’s New section, there’s always something that strikes my fancy. Sometimes it’s a HD-streamed review or preview or game tip or what-not. But frequently, it’s downloadable content… Being the paranoid type, I pop out of the What’s New section, flip a few panes to the right to check the Memory section for the console to see how much disk space is left. Then, if I have enough, I navigate back to the What’s New section, flip back to the content I was interested in, and then initiate the download. If I’m lucky enough, there’s no mad rush on the download servers, so the content begins its slow, inexorable downloading progress to my lil’ ol’ console.

Has this ever happened to you?

The Premise

In a case of déjà vu, when the Xbox 360 first launched, a 20 GB hard disk seemed “so extravagantly large” and “difficult-to-fill”. But, in typical fashion, marketing, demos, saves, and patches began to rapidly fill those “extravagantly large” drives. Couple the typical downloading with the behavior of folks who routinely rent games or borrow games from others, and you’ll see people frequently hitting the limit of their hard disk.

Sure, you can get the 120 GB hard disk extra component, but then you run into the other spectre haunting Xbox 360 owners: how to easily and safely transfer their licensed content from the current hard disk to the newly acquired one?

The Action

There have been various “ways” to transfer the content from one Xbox 360 hard disk to another, but there have been plenty of complaints about these “ways” by hapless individuals who have tried them. Even the transfer kit that comes with the 120 GB hard disk add-on has problems, like issues with transferring licensed materials from the console to itself.

Now, Microsoft has provided a new service that supposedly manages the DRM tied to the license materials to FINALLY allow the presumably correct transfer of the affected content from one hard disk to another by utilizing the Xbox LIVE site’s DRM transfer service (oh, here’s a more explicit link, if you need it) created to provide this function.

Okay, sounds great…

… But how about providing the correct, error-proof (and idiot-proof) workflow to incorporate the upgrade of the 20 GB hard disk to the 120 GB hard disk, the raw data transfer, and the licensing transfer?