Here is the deal with HDD's:
any bios will support the f: partition of the HDD to be up to 250gb maximum. After that it must be g:. The drive will be partitioned when formated.
to backup what he has on his xbox simply use FTP to the xbox and transfer the stuff to your PC. Then do the same but from PC to xbox when you are to put it onto your own xbox.
backuping games is done like this:
make sure you have Complex Tools or DVD2xbox (I would recommend dvd2xbox), insert game disc, start dvd2xbox, select backup and then where to backup it. Wait. Done. Remove disc and play the game from hdd...
