Party Buffalo Xbox 360 Drive Explorer

If you're looking for a way to access files on your Xbox 360 hard drive (whether it's internal or external), you can try Party Buffalo Xbox 360 Drive Explorer.

It's lightweight utility wrapped in a clean and intuitive interface that makes it accessible even for users who aren't familiarized with HDD managers. At the same time, it comprises some advanced features for skilled users interested in more control over the entire matter.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that Party Buffalo is now a discontinued project. As specified by the developer, it hasn't been updated since 2011 and contains many bugs. Nevertheless, our tests have demonstrated that it's still perfectly functional on Windows 10 since it successfully (and quickly) carried out all tasks we threw at it.

Another advantage of the fact that it's an old software product is that it should run without error on older Windows versions. No installation is required so you can unzip the downloaded file from Softpedia and double-click the .exe to reach the main app window. However, make sure that .NET Framework is installed on your computer or it won't work. Also, we've noticed that it has a considerable delay when loading up the main window.

Xbox 360 hard drives connected to your PC via a USB cable are not autodetected by Party Buffalo (as is the practice of most current applications linked to peripheral devices), so you shouldn't feel discouraged when facing a blank window. Instead, you can use the "File" menu to open your hard drive using the device selection (useful when connecting multiple Xbox 360 drives to the computer), file browser, USB path or custom backup directory (useful after already making a drive backup).

Next, you should be able to easily explore the contents of your hard drive in a tree view, similar to Windows Explorer. Game icons are supported so you can spot favorites in a glimpse. It's possible to extract one or more selected files to copy them to your PC, rename files on the drive or add new ones, delete items, and create new folders. Party Buffalo Xbox 360 Drive Explorer basically has all the standard feature of a typical file navigator.

Custom backups can be put together by choosing the preferred titles from a list and telling the app where you want to create the backup (the progress bar has the Nyan cat design). What's more, you can back up the entire drive to a BIN image and restore it later.

Advanced users might also be interested in extracting the SS.bin file or Josh partition, setting loading options (e.g. file recovery mode, auto-cache content icons), viewing the caches icons in Windows Explorer, or adding bookmarks. A search function is put at your disposal too.

All aspects considered, Party Buffalo Xbox 360 Drive Explorer might not receive updates anymore but the last released version comes packed with easy-to-use and practical tools to help you manage your Xbox 360 hard drives.