Xbox Memory Unit

In my case I am reluctant to lug around my X-box and risk damaging it, especially considering that the components inside are built a lot like a PC and therefore more fragile than a traditional console (at least in my PC experience), which is why I was happy to buy a memory card to take my character preferences with me when playing at a friend's house.

In conclusion, don't buy it unless you truly need it. This is a completely unnecessary item at this time. Maybe in the future Microsoft or some third party developer will have a better use for it than just transporting game saves and preferences from one box to another. It does have one last redeeming quality: BACKUP! for when your X-box hard drive crashes (my PC experience going at it again).

Enjoy!


Small, inexpensive, reliable and decent storage space   April 8, 2002
AMM (New England, United States)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

The official XBOX Memory Unit isn't really a must-have item if you don't plan on trading games or playing games with other people. The internal hard drive is pretty sufficient for saving your games and settings, but I would recommend getting a memory unit so that you can keep saved games "backed up" or if you want to prove to your friends that you did indeed beat that game or unlock that special car.

As a rule, I only buy memory cards from the console's manufacturer (ie: MICROSOFT). Doing this, you get 100% compatibility and generally better data intergrity and reliability than some 3rd party cards.

This thing is TINY! You won't even notice it in your controller. Saving, transferring files is easy...usually you just designate in the game that you want to save to the card, or you can copy and transfer directly from the XBOX dashboard when you boot up the XBOX without a game. 8MB, while tiny compared to the capacious hard drive, is still a pretty sizeable amount of storage space and mine has been 100% reliable; no corrupt or lost data whatsoever!

My recommendation: get the memory card. Even though you may not immediately need it, it's still a good idea to have it in your controller!


Too much to pay for only 8MB   February 6, 2005
C. Johnson (Lawrenceville, GA)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

$21.95 for 8MB of memory??!! This is unacceptable. 8MB equates to around 500 blocks of space for the XBOX. 500 blocks would only hold one Splinter Cell save, there are some games (KOTOR) that you can't even save because the file is too big. Sure the XBOX has a massive hard drive, but what about those of us who want to back up our hours of game play in case the XBOX has problems and require service? You hard drive will more than likely lose all of your data after it returns from service. What if your hard drive just quits on you one day?

If you want to back up your XBOX data in case a catastrophe occurs, you have two options 1). Purchase anywhere from 50 - 100 of these little Memory Units at $22 a pop 2). Purchase a bigger memory card, like MegaXKey, or Max Drive for XBOX, that hold 4 times the space for only $10 more. On top of both of these cards also allow you to moves your XBOX saves to your PC's hard drive and even burn them to a CD. Because of the included USB to XBOX adapter you can connect these to both your PC and XBOX; this means you can back up all of your savable game files to your PC by only having to buy one memory card. Better yet, use of these items do not require your XBOX to be modded in anyway. After backing up all of my data to my PC, I restored them to my XBOX and had no problems with the files although the Max Drive is a little more user friendly and also can go up to 64MB!

XBOX's are composed of man-made mechanical items that will eventually fail or have problems. No one wants to lose all of their data just because they are unable to back up their stuff. It is too bad Microsoft forces their customer to depend on the hard drive only since they do not offer a cost-effective, efficient method of back up. To add insult to injury, they don't even offer bigger memory cards! 8MB is the largest and ONLY memory card option they have!

I love my XBOX, but Microsoft really needs to get with the program here and offer bigger memory cards and also an option to back up saved game files. If other companies can do it, why can't they? Unless you want to carry around a pocketful of these tiny memory cards, your best option for back up is something like MegaXKey or MaxDrive.

Unless you are just using the memory card for saving small game files like rosters or settings, then I don't think Microsoft's memory cards are worth the money.