My 360 Harddrive is DEAD!

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

I just found out my bro red ringed, but he unplugged his 360 right away and let it cool off for a while.  He turned it back on later and it was working o.0
What a lucky, or smart, sob.

Red rings can happen for a variety of reasons.
If I remember correctly, 2 bars means over heat, 1 and 3 are various hardware failures. Not sure about 4.
My box overheated lots during the summer. But all you got to do is let is cool, or even just restart it. Heck, over heating it is good when you get real red rings.

[G.I.R]

I don't have either a XBox 360 or PS-3.   Do either have a way of backing up their hard drives like a computer can?

I am almost certain that both do not.
Which sucks.

Teh Suxor.
Hey!  Third party developers!  are you reading this?  Y'know, USB port+ your back-up software, owner provides external storage unit?  I bet lots of console owners would buy...

actually, I know for a fact that you could transfer out memory from the ps3 out onto memory cards [for the older systems that have the memory card slots] as for using the USB slots and say using a flash drive... I havent tried it yet.

I play my systems pretty much alot, and I'm lucky [knock on wood] that I've never had any issues with my [old fat] Ps2 with hard drive [yes Ps2 did have hard drives back in the day], Ps3 and xbox 360.

most users REALLY need to put their systems in a cool ventilated and semi dust free environment.

Take care of yout systems people! :)

Yeah, but that's only a very limited amount of storage.  What if you have an 80GB system with a lot of downloads?
Also, there would probably have to be some way to insure the saved back up could only be restored to  one unit (weather it's your repaired unit, or a replacement) so you can't go around "Cloning" one console. 
As far as the "Environment", you are 100% correct on that.  You should see how many Point of Sale terminals I've had to replace due to bad environment, and housekeeping in it's general area.