All depending on how flexible the Xbox 360 is with taking random hard drives of course. From what I know, changing the hard drive in an xbox 360 is a pain.

That said, I would say that a good quality SSD is the best option, least likely to fail.

I'm confused too some say all 2.5" HDDs can be used in it max.500GB.
But people only seem to use WD Scorpio(Blue) or Seagate Momentus. Usually 320GB size.
- Toshiba seems to be unrecognized.

I ordered from China ebay some ready made 35$usd 500GB Xbox 360 S HDD enclosures.
Also ordered empty plastic Xbox 360 S enclosures for DIY HDDs

Format guide online:
https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/inst … -money-0132294/

From what I understand, the XBOX software is stamped to the serial code of the hard drive it is installed on, thus you can't just buy a hard drive off the shelf and drop it in like you can with a playstation 3.

user33331 wrote:

... Seems 5400.6 is as bad as Hitachi "Deathstar" HDDs from early 2000s.

Yeah, no. There has since been nothing comparable to the Hitachi IBM Deskstar 75GXP fiasco of ~2001.

That said, it is possible for HDD magnetic media to slowly degrade and develop bad sectors while a drive is in storage, only manifesting when powering the drive up and trying to read/write affected areas of the disk(s) (which could also include the "service area" that the drive requires to fully initialize). Possibly this is what happened to your HDD.

Xbox 360 as of the latest dashboard updates can use external usb 2.0 hard drives of up to 500gb as system drives so just hook up an external hard drive and enjoy.