Back in the “old days” of the first Xbox it was pretty simple to be able to use your Live gamertag on a friend’s console. All you had to do was throw it on a memory card and copy it to their hard drive. It could then live on both consoles without the need to swap it back and forth. I had my old Xbox Live account on three different consoles so I could play Return To Castle Wolfenstein or Halo 2 without a hitch. Now in these DRM-fueled times your gamertag is tied to a specific console and must be “recovered” when you want to play over Live (and not as a “guest) at a friend’s house or to make sure that you get points for the achievements you might unlock. This long process involves downloading from some magical server that can take upwards of 20 minutes to complete. I’ve often wondered why this takes so damn long when it seems like this should be a quick download. What’s in this file that takes up so much space? Is the server extremely slow or overrun with activity? My frustration with the process reached such a pitch that I actually decided to start looking into it to try finding an explanation or alternative methods.

Like any internet savvy user I decided that I should start with Xbox.com’s support page for gamertag recovery. For the most part the page simply outlined the steps required to actually go through the ordeal but I did find this interesting little nugget:

Important

We do not recommend that you recover your gamertag to a friend’s console as a convenience when roaming you could lose your saved games. Instead, use an Xbox 360 Memory Unit to take your profile with you when you play on someone else’s system.

I wasn’t entirely sure if this is simply a ploy to sell more memory cards or if this save game threat was legit. With the amount of time that I spend bouncing back and forth between my console and a friend’s I’ve never encountered a problem like that. Likewise I’ve never heard word of this actually happening to someone (my brother-in-law recovers his account probably three times more frequently than I do). Admittedly the thought of a solution being as simple as a memory unit is very intriguing so I decided to pick one up and test this out.

Knowing how expensive those little bastards are I first checked into getting a used one. I found a 64MB memory unit for $20 at GameStop then went home and plugged it in, hoping for the best. Copying my gamer profile to the memory unit was very simple following these steps (starting at the Dashboard):

• Go to the System tab
• Select Memory - All Devices
• Then Gamer Profiles
• Next Select The Profile You Want To Transfer
• Choose Move Or Delete
• Confirm your selection
• Finally Select Memory Unit (A or B depending on where your unit is plugged in)

Now my profile is operating off of the memory unit I’m still signed in to Xbox Live with everything functioning as normal. I shut down my system, took out the memory unit and went over to my brother-in-law’s Xbox to try it out there. With the memory unit plugged in I let the system boot and then signed into my profile (that was marked as being on a memory unit) and it signed in to Live perfectly. Needless to say, I was pleased. I now had a reason to own a 360 Memory Unit and the complicated, time-consuming issue was now solved.

Though the memory unit solution was simple and relatively cheap it still didn’t answer the questions I had about why it takes so long for a profile to be “recovered” to another console. After some simple investigation I found out that my profile was 7MB. Not a big file by today’s standards. Keep in mind that that size includes having 117 games played, 486 achievements and a GamerScore of 10582. By comparison my wife’s profile is 588KB, with 12 games, 21 achievements and a GamerScore of 290. The files aren’t all that big, especially in these broadband times, so it’s still a mystery as to why it takes so long to download. I tried shooting off an email to a Microsoft rep with some questions but evidently we’re not yet a big enough blog to get a reply. If I ever find out some answers I’ll be sure to update you all. For now, I’m happy enough just to have a simple and relatively cheap solution to the issue.