I've recently began working with using bigger hdd. I've managed to install a Seagate 750GB HDD ultra ata 100 into my Xbox. I used EvTool 1.4 to modify my m8 bios so that it supports the bigger hard drive addressing mode. By using this tool I set up the partitions for the F:/ drive to receive all the remaining space. I flashed this new bios to the chip. Then I used the slayers installer disc to format the drive. This created the usual partitions and after it got done, I had roughly 741 GB available on the F:/ Drive. Impressive I thought. However, after I loaded up the dashboard, I noticed that the reaction time to load up the dashboards took a little bit longer to process. This includes going from evoX to xbmc or vice versa. I also had to increase the fan speed to prevent overheating to the drive itself. Normally on my 160 gb hdd, the temp is around 90 degrees F. On the 750, it was more or less around 115 degrees F. Anyways, I'm wondering if there is a way to speed up the processing for booting time on the dashboards so that it is closer to instantaneous time, rather than a 20 sec delay. Maybe it could just be found in the bios itslef that I have modified.
the bigger the HDD the Slower the box will be and um to help i surgest that u have c,d,e,f,g,etc C drive for avaluanch D Drive as The dvd Drive E Drive For The game Save And Ur Normal Mode ETC F For Movies and Games Xbmc G Drive For the Rest Of The Drive To G For Moviesyer That Will Help The Drive Less to Wtch in F
Hmm.... I don't know how much partitioning like that will help, really. It's a huge drive to try running in that thing... The part about this that makes me sad; is knowing I would FILL that drive... Eew.
first what the the hell would u be putting in there and partition like that does help it start up and stuff it just goes straight to c there then u can direct it from there ive seen it help a bit also kepping ur software up to date on it helps aswell my box only has a 200 gig HDD in it i cant be bothered to open and put a bigger HDD in it it shouldn't be working it that old i fear a change like that might stuff it up
@Fordsrule: Ummm... I'm gathering you either shouldn't be typing this late at night; or you don't understand what you're typing... First off 'Keeping the software up to date'? Geez, a major dash update is almost an epic event these days; whether you run Evox, UnleashX, XBMC or Avaluanch; they've pretty much been at their final stage for nearly a year now(Or has it been longer?). If you're noticing performance boosts with these 'updates'; it truthfully has nothing to do with the 'updated' software; it's because you are unwittingly clearing the cache folders. This is because you are replacing full ones with empty ones in your 'update' process. A fine example is XBMC which sees frequent 'T3ch releases'; no new development whatsoever; just extra skins, scripts, etc; but it's still the exact same, unupdated dash. Not that that's a bad thing; it's just the same thing. When you specially partition these drives, the 'c' partition isn't where the majority of space goes... Barely ANY space goes there; it's reserved for the system's stock OS and files. It's a seperate partition in order to prevent accidental access/damage to important files. The E, F, and (depending on your setup) sometimes G drive partitions are where the space is usually available. As for what you would put on it... Well, there are a number of things. As an xbox gamer since before the launch of Live; I've acumulated a LOT of games; it would be cool to have ALL of them on one drive, along with all my music(around 50gb now), and a few other things. I could honestly fill that thing up in about a month(Takes time to load the drive). As for now; I run a 200gb, and keep it brimming most of the time; but I have higher priorities than purchasing a larger drive for it at the moment. As for GryphB's problem; I would like to suggest an 'uncut' ata 100 cable replacement, the system comes with an ata 33/66 cable(depending on your model, I've seen them stock equipped with either or; but you can get a speed increase from an ata 100 cable; which would really help those seek times. It may also have something to do with the buffer. Do you know how much cache your 750gb drive has? If it's not a HUGE cache; that may be a large part of the problem too. Anyways, I hope this information is SOMEHOW useful; I think it came out more as an 'I need to sleep now' ramble... @fordsrule: I see you're newbie status; welcome to ADForums. If you stick around, you'll enjoy yourself. There's a lot of information to be obtained, and a lot of people who love to discuss all aspects of tech. Whatever you do, don't let arrogant a**holes like me keep you from enjoying the site; we're all over, but there are a lot of cool, friendlier people here too. Best of luck to you!
Thanks alot handsom for the advice. My drive has 16MB cache,and comes with the ata/100 interface. As for what kind of cable otherwise, I'm not too familiar with these things. I've been thinking, as from reading other peoples problems with the bigger hard drive. The problem is data corruption after som many GB, and I'm thinking about reformating and repatching the bios file. From what I hear, I can patch the bios file to support 64k file clusters to avoid the corruption of data. I'm not a hard video gamer these days, since I lack a lot of the coordination involved with the newer games, but I do have a passion for foreign movies, and backing them up to my xbox is ideal, since I can store and watch them without having to replace them if they get scratched. I know I've been spending my money like crazy, but I also don't like having to replace things I've already purchased, because the movie industry doesn't approve of these kind of things. But anyways, I'm gonna reformat the drive and use the G partition too. I'm gonna put all the movies on that and leave my F: drive for other applications. Thanks for the suggestions and advice. Also, I have an external seagate 750GB HDD that I share to my xbox, and up until now I've been using that to back up my movies and what not and usng xbmc to watch them view music or picture files. I know not everyone has this kind of money or they have better ways to spend it, but I look upon this as an investment. At least this option, allows you to access and store files for when u need them, and you don't have to do anything to your xbox to use it.
That sounds like a really good way to go, honestly.. If you check 'llamas xbox repair guide', which is a shop, they sell the cable you need, and if you can swap the drive, you can swap the cable no problem, lol. It'll help you a lot, methinks. As an example of access time improvements, many people have reported between a 20 and 40% speed increase in load times, even for long load games like Halo and GTA. So this would probably work wonders for your startup access times. And it's perfectly stable, people even do this on their otherwise unmodded xbox's to improve save times on some later games, as well as slight improvements on dvd access time. The part runs you less than twenty bucks, even if you get ripped off with shipping, and IMO may be very worth your while. Also, 16mb cache isn't a low amount, but I'm surprised it doesn't have much more. My 250gb has 16mb cache, so I suppose I would've expected such a large drive to have 32 or more. But then again, I'm unfamiliar with drives of that size, lol. Anywho, best of luck with that!
Things have changed a little in the last year or so, but the maximum recommended drive size is still 350GB for freedom from the possibility of data corruption. It's unpleasant when it happens, and is due to the size of the file table causing a buffer overrun. Remember the xbox is a low memory device, just trying to load a large list of roms in a file manager can take some minutes. This is a bottom end pc even by the standards of 2002 especially in the memory field. It's a good toy when modded sensibly, but not so great when you push the boundaries beyond any reasonable expectations. I use one for gaming, one for a media player (with myth tv setup) and 2 more as a parallel NAS. Personally I would spend the cost of a 750GB drive on a hot pc graphics card, and back up games to good quality dvd disks. Llammas cables are on the expensive side, you can get ata 100 cables from any good pc store for just a few $$$. there are faster cables, your speed limit is more down to the speed of the FSB on the xbox. http://www.cables2u.co.uk/round-cable-fast-48cm-p-153.html If you do visit llamma shop site give my regards to Scot ;-)
There you go again, janrocks, proving that I'm retarded for thinking you were an amateur. lol. The only problem I've experienced with getting the ata 100 cables elsewhere, is that there is a high tendency to get 'cut' cables; which won't work in an xbox... I did this with four brick and mortar retailers, including Fry's Electronics.
Thanks for reminding me of the cut cables.. I always forget those stupid things. hehehe.. I was site admin on llammas forums all last summer.
LOL you guys are great. Anyways, this ide cable that came with the has 3 inputs like the xbox cable does, but it's not designed exactly the same. It's a little bit shorter and not very likable in terms of trying to make it fit into the xbox. Yeah, I think I'll just go ahead and put my 250GB back into the xbox and put the 750 into my computer.
You'll honestly get better performance by doing it that way. And yeah, the length is another frequent problem with replacing the ide cables....
Hey Gryph, I just got a seagate 750gb drive, st3750640a.(internal) I have already ftp'd my evox softmodded xbox's c and e drives to my pc. got my eeprom.bin and made my disc using xboxhdm 1.9. I did all of the build from scratch things, did the option 6 generate password etc. option 7 create floppy backup.... then go to try to lock it, when i put in lockhd it gives me 3 commands I am to use, -a -p -f....when I enter any of them, it says not a valid command!!! I have spent like 10 hours a day for 2 days with this nonsense!! lol I know it is lockeable, I researched it for 2 weeks before I bought it. Others are using this EXACT drive in their xbox. Can somebody help me please? This has to be a bios or a dash problem or something. I know its something small that is causing this problem...I'm 99% positive I am doing everything right. xbox is modded with 007 gamesave softmod. my kernel is 5713, dash is 5659. I have given up...I think my softmod is too outdated possibly. I'd feel alot better if everything was up to date anyway. Would it be wise to just order an executer3 modchip and redo EVERYTHING??? I paid almost $300 for this drive, another $60 or so for a chip would be well worth it to get this thing going. Sorry for the long post but I am extremely desperate!!!!!!! Thanks for any help and advice!! Please, no flamers, I have read and read and read and ftp'd several times and burned several xboxhdm discs. still nothing...only "not a valid command" when i try to lock the drive. Thanks again!!!
Hey Kevenator, Sorry, but I never done a soft mod for the xbox. However, if you do choose to go the route of a modchip, I'd go with the 24k gold modchip from Xenium. That's the one I use and it costs about $50 total for the chip and shipping. You can get this from divineo.com, or just google xboxscene, and they can direct you there. But at least with the modchips, they have an option to lock and unlock the drive with a click of the button. Also, I'm thinking there are other sites or pages out there that can help you find out how to lock your hdd, but I think from the ones I've seen, it involves having to hook up your hdd to a computer or something like that. About the 750 GB hdd, I'm not sure if you'll be satisfied with the performance though. With mine, I've noticed that the heat temperature rise quite a bit higher than the smaller drives, and lags a bit in time when loading from one dashboard/application to another. But as far as data corruption, I'm not sure since I've decided to go back to my smaller drive. But if you decide to stick with this big drive, you'll probably want to turn up your fan speed to cool things off. You can adjust this in your xbmc settings, under fan override. I think it's set for like 20%, so maybe like 30 or 40% might be feasible. Ok, I was also looking at another post, and here's what I've found. I think your command line should be this minus the quotes. "lockhd -a" Try that. I know you've probably already tried this, but I really don't know what you've really done.
