Here's my issue: I've got a 360 with a 60GB HDD on it. I've got a few games installed to the HDD that I can't re-install via the Disc because the DVD is scratched. Last time I did the upgrade (20G to 60G) I just borrowed games from friends at college, but I've since graduated and moved away. Now I'm wanting to both upgrade the HDD to a 250GB, and put it into a newer console. I've used Party Buffalo before to backup a HDD to my system, but when doing that, it'll usually do the whole backup, but when I restore the games to the xbox, it'll either not show up, or complain about it not being the same console it was installed with. Is there a workaround for either of these? I've got a transfer cable, so I could do a full image dump of the old HDD, but does "Transfer Content" on the Xbox transfer installed games too? Would this work? Sorry if this has been asked before. Can't find an answer using search.
If your placing the hard drive in a new console you have no choice but to re install them, for what ever reason the 360 will only let installed games run from the hard drive on the console you installed them on, which is rather annoying as you have found out. It's been a long time since i did this, however i don't believe the transfer content option will let you transfer installed games. From what i remember it does everything expect that. I think if your going to use the same console you could extract the installed game from the old hard drive, then inject it back in the new drive. However that would only work on the console that installed it and not the new one.