Last week, after a year and a half of almost constant Call of Duty and Halo gameplay, my Xbox 360 finally bit the dust. For a few weeks leading up to the 3 RRoD incident, when I would go to start a new Call of Duty: World at War Nazi Zombies match, it would freeze up and the screen would turn into a checkerboard. It took only about 4-5 matches of checkers before it had enough.
Luckily I was fooled into getting the Best Buy 2-year Product Replacement Plan (PRP) when I purchased the unit. This entitled me to an immediate full refund of the purchase price in the event of a failure rather than sending it off to Microsoft for a month.
Over 30 minutes after walking through my local Best Buy’s doors I had received my $350 refund and used it purchase a new Xbox 360 Pro at $250. I received the remaining $100 on a gift card.
The only issue was that I did not want to loose all of my data from my old Xbox so I hired the Geek Squad to work their Xbox 360 Data Transfer magic. (5 minutes of work for 1/2 hour in Geek Squad bucks, which equates to $29.99)
Today I am home playing my new Xbox 360 with all of the saved games and downloaded content (maps) in tact.
Alex Nichols' Blog 
I’ve been looking for some xbox insight on the net for a couple days as mine has stopped functioning. Have not had the red r-o-d but it seems to freeze at all-important moments. I do not know whether I have a problem other people have or if I have a limited issue all of my own, I hope not. At any rate thanks for the information.
It is not magic at all. The hard drive is a sata drive.
Xbox or PS3 they all have problems Xbox 360 with the ring of death and the PS3 with it’s blu Ray drive problem. What I dont get is why the company’s take so long to admit that there is a problem with the console.