Is there a way to copy the contents of a game image and put them in a folder on the XBOX's hard drive so that they may be loaded up without reading a disc? Burned games always worked iffy on the XBOX (sometimes took forever loading, sometimes didn't load at all) and I think the laser may be dieing. It seems to me this would be a much more efficient method (faster loading, no booting problems. Of corse if this is possible, we will be upgrading the XBOX'd hard drive so something more around 250GB. Just a small hardware question on this, do we have to REPLACE the old hard drive or can we just add a new one? System is a modded XBOX with XBMC loaded, so maybe I could just put a link to each game in the 'programs' tab? I read somewhere each game has it's own dashboard .. so it seems like this would work. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Jeremy
1. Yes, u can play games that are ripped from disc and play it from the hard drive. 2. I think the normal size of the xbox HDD is 4 GB. U can upgrade the hard drive if u want to. 3. For the XBMC, not "programs" but the GAME tab. To play games, u can download XBOX2DVD . Its an app, just download the app and put it on the APP folder of ur XBMC. Run it and rip the game disc
What kind of hard drive can it support? (IDE >140gb?) What bios should I flash to in order to do this?
Xbox has an 8gb drive standard, some early units reportedly had 12 and 15 gb drives, but this is unusual. You will not be able to utilize an 'extra' drive, and you should also know that you're going to have to use a program called XBoxHDM to set up the new drive. They are very uniquely formatted, and then locked to your individual system's Eeprom code (The same one that M$ can ban an individual system with). If the drive isn't correctly formatted, and locked to your specific eeprom, the system won't boot. This process can be painful the first time, and annoying every time thereafter, you have to softmod your system, back it up, burn said backup to a special-made disc. Connect the new drive, turn on the pc with the boot disc you've made from the xbox backup, it will format the drive, then you can lock it. Then you stick it into your xbox, and go. I've done it on both my units, and I really like the results, but it's not for everyone, and it's not for beginners at all. If you aren't comfortable screwing around under the hood of your computer, and your xbox, as well as running a backup across FTP... You really shouldn't mess with this process, it's easy to mess up the process. If you are, search for XBoxHDM. There are some GREAT tutorials on it here. This is where I learned the process. I definitely recommend XBMC as your primary dashboard, it's what I use, wouldn't want anything else, very slick and easy to use. Not to mention, it's got a bit of a whoa factor when people see it pop up on my entertainment center. Great for music, movies, games, and emus. ^_^ I personally use a 250gb IDE Seagate drive, very nice. You can replace the standard IDE cable (ATA 33 in most systems) with a higher speed cable for even better performance. I highly recommend that, I can load San Andreas gameplay in about two seconds. Not sure what you're asking on what kind of bios to flash... Just grab a copy of one of the three 'vulnerable' xbox titles and have at it.
Ok. Well as far as tinkering with the XBOX, we've already hard modded it and installed XBMC with many emulators. We also successfully pulled 1 game from the disc to the hard drive (no more will fit now though). I really appreciate your advice, but I had 1 question: I read in many places that the xbox will only support up to 140GB, yet you said you had a 250 .. what is this dependant on? The bios? Thanks, Jeremy
Well Jeremy, I just loaded a 320 gig hard drive in my xbox and didn't flash my bios and everything is running great! I am running a crystal edition 6.1
With a modern bios on a chip you can push right up to 500GB.. with all the extra on F:.. no need for a G: Older bios I wouldn't personally go over 250GB on any single partition.
What would you call "Modern Bios"? Will this Modern Bios work on any chip? I have no problem flashing my bios. Also, I have downloaded several XBOX games in ISO format. Is there a better way to get them on the XBOX hard drive than burning each one on a DVD then ripping it with DVD2XBOX on the XBOX? (Can I just FTP the ISO?) Thanks, Jeremy
As for the bios on your chip, anything in the last 2 years should be fine for at least 500gb. Sorry about the confusion, the fact that this was a chipped unit had not been mentioned(many users don't chip these systems since softmods have become so reliable, though there's absolutely nothing wrong with a chip solution), makes things much simpler. As for ISO's, they can be FTP'd over with a program called Qwix, great little utility, designed to read, convert, decrypt, and create XBox iso's with cross functionality between the system and back. Hope that helps!
Another little tool which is easy to use to rip xisos is called extractXiso (gui by huge) a little googling will find it.
Ok, so now I know what to do after I upgrade the hard drive .. now I need to know what to do before. I found some bios (Xecuter 2.6 Bios Revision 5035) which seem to be a later version. Every tutorial for flashing bios seems to be different though. Is there any specific one someone could recommend?
