Xbox hard drives

deadfingers

Hey,

Im going to buy a new hard drive for my xbox, the only problem is, is that I am not up to speed on the specs. I am thinking of a 160 gig hard drive also I know that it has to be IDE compatable. What is the most suitable hard drive I should get?
Thanks in advance.
D

qBot

Well, i've used both a Western Digital Caviar and a Seagate Barracuda hard drive in xbox's. The latter is a lot quieter. Both of em are lockable, but of course if your console is modified with anything other than a softmod that's not really an issue. Most IDE Hd's work afaik.

po0k

If you've got a mod you'll need a 48-bit LBA BIOS.

lphchild

This may be of use:

Hard Drive Compatibilty List

lph

jumbo

I installed a 250GB hard-drive at the weekend that I got in LIDL (Maxtor reboxed by TARGA) a while back. No problems so far.

As I remember there was a few different formatting/partitioning options on the slayer's disk. I went for the one that gave me two extra partitions (f: and g: ). I found some applications need to have these partitions enabled to access them.

Oh yeah, it supported locking no-prob too so I can still do x-box live if I want.

While I'm at it, does anyone know if I can use the faster ATA100 capabilities of the new HDD? I saw a thread on xbox-scene that mentioned using a modified ATA100 cable in place of the X-boxes ATA33 one and they reported improvements (shorter backup times for DVDs, games loading etc). Anyone had any experiences that confirm this?

cheers - Rob.

po0k

As far as I know, yeah.

The IDE controller on the NF MCP supports ATA100, so replacing the 40-wire cable with an ATA100 80-wire one should speed things up.
Your hard drive transfer rates should improve by about 66%-100% (going from ~33MBps to 50-60MBps). DVD transfers probably won't be affected much though.

As regards 48-bit LBA, EvoX can have IGR (In-Game Reset), 48-bit LBA and the partition order/type set using EvTool.

Personally I always format the upgraded drives in the 6-partition style, with F: taking up the extra space on the drive, and no G: partition.
Bear in mind that if you are using a G: partition (for the space after the 137Gig limit), you need to enable support in whatever dashboard you use and in apps that have that option (XBMC etc.).

jumbo

Cool. I'll be settin that up then. Got the cable with the drive. Shame not to use it.

What mean LBA? I've heard it before somewhere. Something about an extra addressing byte so more space can be addressed?

And with the partitions, I was under the impression that in order to operate the x-box mod in stealth mode (ie so I can swith mod off and play XB live) I needed the G: partition ... Right/worng? .. something else?

silverlining

LBA48 support was not implemented in the early modchips as these were just modified retail/MS bios which didnt need to read past 8GB let alone the 137+ GB that you get with LBA48 support.

What is stealth mode? If it just means turning the chip off then MS will not be able to read the standard G partition as you will be using the retail BIOS which cant read past 137 GB...so it's invisible to them.

I use softmods and I dont use LIVE! so I'd reccomend you check out the Xbox Live! forum on www.xbox-scene.com for more accurate info...look at the harddrive/eeprom 'Marriage' theory in particular as I cant be arsed

po0k

and as far as i know, Xbox Live only uses the partition, and games use the X:, Y: and Z: 750Meg parititions for caching, which I assume are near the start of the drive.

jumbo

silverlining wrote:

What is stealth mode? If it just means turning the chip off then MS will not be able to read the standard G partition as you will be using the retail BIOS which cant read past 137 GB...so it's invisible to them.

Yeah, that's the idea. You can switch off the mod-chip and as far as the x-box is concerned (and as far as xb live can detect) its just a regular x-box. IIRC I think the reasoning behind using the G: partition was that your f: one wouldnt be truncated past 137GB when mod switched off. It seemed like the safest option at the time anyways ...

silverlining wrote:

I use softmods and I dont use LIVE! so I'd reccomend you check out the Xbox Live! forum on www.xbox-scene.com for more accurate info...look at the harddrive/eeprom 'Marriage' theory in particular as I cant be arsed

cheers for the advice.

axel90

i recently installed 200gig into xbox formated updated bios with lba48 and copied all games and loads of mame stuff across...hard-drive died week later....noo. Replaced with 160gig all great at the moment