The 1.5TB-Box

[adolescent]

I'm starting a small project to upgrade my modded Xbox (original) to have ample disk space for games, emulators, media, etc. I figured I'd post pics and commentary for anyone that cares.

THE PLAN:
Add 1.5TB HD to Xbox.
Install XBMC.
Install as many games, emulators, etc. that will fit.

THE PARTS:
Modded Xbox = already owned (probably $30-40 for a nice system)
Western Digital Green Power 1.5TB Hard Drive = $123 shipped from Dell (currently ~$130)
SATA to IDE Adapter = $4.45 shipped from DealExtreme

THE WHY?:
Because... Actually the original Xbox is a decent gaming and emulator platform. With XBMC it is also an good media player. I'm sure I'll get comments about how you can stream most of the content to the Xbox (media, emulators, etc.) but I want this to be a simple single box entertainment system. Also, the price isn't too bad.

Please keep this thread civil. I realize that Microsoft is not everyone's favorite company. This thread has little to do with them, other than they are the creators of the core piece of hardware involved.

[StrategyGamer]

Why not put that drive into a brand new XBOX 360?

[adolescent]

DAY1:
Finally got all of the parts in. The HD was purchased last month but I waiting a while to order the SATA to IDE adapter since I was taking a 6 week summer class. DX took 7 working days to deliver it from HK to USA so that's not so bad for free.

THE PARTS:
SATA to IDE adapter on left, WD GP 1.5TB HD on right.
Note: This is the only SATA to IDE adapter that is known to work 100%. I have tried 2 eBay adapters and an Addonics (sp?) adapter and they are buggy. Use others at your own risk.

THE VICTIM:
Xbox v1.1 w/PC-BIOXX modchip (OLD SCHOOL!). Picture shows the old HD resting on top. I was testing a borrowed Neoya X2VGA box with my Dell S2409W LCD. Final system will be using component to my TV. Although, if anyone has a X2VGA for sale let me know.

[adolescent]

Originally Posted by StrategyGamer

Why not put that drive into a brand new XBOX 360?

Because the 360 can not use a drive that large (phyical and capacity wise), and the homebrew doesn't exist.

[Jerry]

I just wish there was a xbox revision without fans. The noise is killing it for me. As soon as I get the time I will try to get that thing silent. But keep the info coming. I'm currently thinking about getting a 2.5 inch hd to keep heat down. That might open up some options in keeping lower parts cool and put some slower fans in there...

[Bloodwych]

Is your XBOX noisy?

Mine seems really quiet - I think it has fan control in XBMC?

It's quiet anyway. Was playing on my modded XBOX tonight with my brother - in fact I play on the modded Xbox more than my PS3 because it has copious amounts of split screen multiplayer games on the hard drive. I'd love 1.5TB of storage!

The PS3 is all online only plus I currently only have two games for it.

[alexh]

It is very easy to make X-Boxes v1.2+ almost totally silent for only £18

A 70mm, 7v, Acoustifan is a perfect replacement, plugs into the standard XBOX fan. It is almost silent at 7v and when combined with the acoustifan rubber gasket it is imperceptible at 10% speed in XBMC and only just audible at 100% speed in games.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=57&subcat=818

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=CM-012-AF

If you have a 1.0 or a 1.1 XBOX with a GPU fan then you should sell or ditch it and get a v1.2!

Not quite sure why you'd want that much storage. Only XBOX native games need to be on the XBOX hard drive, everything else can be on the network.

Not to mention that 1.5TB hard drives are still stoopid money at the moment. You can get a 750GB for less than 1/4 the price.

[adolescent]

Originally Posted by alexh

Not quite sure why you'd want that much storage. Only XBOX native games need to be on the XBOX hard drive, everything else can be on the network.

Hmm.. I guess saying this in the original post didn't deter you from commenting. Streaming works, but I did not want the dependence on a computer (or NAS) just to run emulators. With your logic I guess I could have just left the original drive in and run everything from DVD.

Not to mention that 1.5TB hard drives are still stoopid money at the moment. You can get a 750GB for less than 1/4 the price.

They're getting cheaper. 2TB HDs have been seen as low as $179 on special locally, 1TB are under $100 regularly. I paid a bit more for the 5200RPM HD because of noise and heat concerns. Either way I think I'll be happy to have ~600 full games and just about every emulator set I have online in a single box.

[jmmijo]

Nice little mod, anybody know if you there are known issues with the onboard NIC going out ???

I know there are problems with the DVD reader but I've not heard of any problems with the nic.

I'm probably going to do something with my Xbox but if the nic is truly faulty then why bother....

[adolescent]

Originally Posted by jmmijo

Nice little mod, anybody know if you there are known issues with the onboard NIC going out ???

I noticed just last night that my rev. 1.4 Xbox can not get a link with my newer Linksys router (w/GbE) - not even a light on the Xbox side. I even tried a couple of cables. But works fine on the ol' WRT54GS or with a crossover to my computer.

[adolescent]

DAY TWO:
Today I got the drive partitioned, formatted, XBMC and a couple of other tools installed. I used the excellent Auto-Installer Deluxe 4.5 DVD and the included XBpartitioner 1.1.

I ended up creating the following partitions:

6 = 500.87GB, 32KB clusters
7 = 888.94GB, 64KB clusters

Note: It's best to keep the cluster sizes as low as possible because of wasted space. The last version of XBpartitioner enforces the correct cluster sizes so you don't have any data corruption issues.

TOMORROW:
Transferring data.

[lost_loven]

Gonna be nice to have that set up.. Is this just a overkill thang? for the past 6 years i have had a modded xbox with a 80 gig hd and it is loaded with every emu out there for it and have our regular played games on it and still have 1/4 of the space left. Xbmc we use everyday if not every couple days is our main multimedia center and have turned the fan down thur it and really if it was at normal or at a higher rate we down hear anyhow cause the surround 7.1 is cranked! movies is streamed and deleted form the pc (where it is downloaded and stored anyhow for a week or two). anyhow my 2 cents, xbox is my perfect emu (MAME) machine that streams movies from the pc and playes the odd dvd.. oh and the samsung is the best dvd rom to have in it.. reads everything by far than the thompson or the phllips dvd rom!!!!

LOST

[alexh]

The fastest way to copy things to the hard drive is to put it in the PC and use a FATX capable tool (albeit made for the 360) such as xboxplorer or the Datel one.

If you are going to use FTP to transfer native games then you can get a slight speed boost by using the AVALAUNCH dasboard's ftp server and QWIX. (You get about 9.5MB/s depending on your hard drive) plus it will batch process lots of ISO images at once.

While you probably don't care with 1.5TB of storage, but I find it good to delete all the "dashboard_update.xbe" files which are about 50MB / game.

I use a wired network on my main XBOX, but I had reasonable results with the official X-Box wireless G adapter, the MN-740, on the one in the bedroom.

[adolescent]

Never heard of xboxplorer. If you mean xplorer360 then I'll just say that it is useless. Never heard of the Datel tool. But, I'll assume that it is a paid application so I probably won't go that route.

FTP between Avalaunch and Avalaunch is working well enough. I'm getting 9.6MB/s average so far. No need for QWIX since I don't keep XISOs around on my computer. (Now THAT is a waste of space... ).

Edit: Added pic. I'm through the B's now and onto the C's. Funny thing though, Avalaunch gets Malloc errors when in HD mode, so I'm back to good ol' 480p for this transfer. Not sure what the problem is. When I get a break I'll recopy the install and see if it gets the same error.

[jmmijo]

Originally Posted by adolescent

I noticed just last night that my rev. 1.4 Xbox can not get a link with my newer Linksys router (w/GbE) - not even a light on the Xbox side. I even tried a couple of cables. But works fine on the ol' WRT54GS or with a crossover to my computer.

Thanks, I now have a Gigabit switch and I'm not going back to just support the Xbox, do you know any mod to fix this or is it due to the onboard nice not supporting a Gigabit switch properly ???

[adolescent]

@jmmijo

Not sure. My rev. 1.1 Xbox seems to work fine on the GbE (of course, at 100Mb). I'm not sure what was changed in the chipset that could cause this. Somebody on xbox-scene should know though. I'm going to double check all my cables and see if I can find one that works, or if I can find a pattern (ie. use new/old CAT cable to see if something in the wiring changed that causes it).

[adolescent]

DAY3:
Finished copying the first 500GB of data from my other Xbox. This took ~10 hours but I stopped it a couple times during the process and lost track of the actual elapsed times. Transfers were still ~9.6MB/sec which is acceptable. When I get back into town on Wednesday I'll fire it up and finish the copy overnight.

BTW, As mentioned above I am copying from another Xbox using FTP. The other Xbox has a 1TB drive that will be moved to my PC when I'm done transferring everything.

[kipper2k]

It is a lot easier to clone an Xbox hard drive using ghost 7.5 -ir from a DOS boot disk, this will copy byte for byte and do a raw image and you can still get back the space. I use the FTP function in Total commander for general file copying, its simple to use on a home network). To use Ghost for cloning, you just need to hook up the source to primary and destination to secondary on your PC, make sure you use 80 wire cables or you will notice a very slow cloning speed and run Ghost with the -ir switch. You can also use the -ir switch for cloning Satellite receiver hard drives too, very handy to do a clone in case of HD failure you should also use the -fni switch if there are no ide devices attached to your computer, It doesnt hurt just to add the switch regardless. I also use it at work to make a weekly clone of my Mitel voicemail HD, if that goes down the entire programming for mail boxes is lost... that would not be a fun couple of days redoing mailboxes. and special features.

A lot of forensic places use ghost before they start messing around with the hard drive cos it preserves the data and allows them to use a clone for data retrieval purposes

edit: you can also clone 2.5" notebook drives, CF cards, and obviously Amiga 2.5" HD's using the same switches. The CF card cloning can persuade problem CF cards to behave most of the time, as long as your computer can recognise it as a drive then you should be set. All this is done from a DOS boot disk (or bootable USB stick)

[alexh]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

It is a lot easier to clone an Xbox hard drive using ghost 7.5 -ir from a DOS boot disk, this will copy byte for byte and do a raw image

Not sure you can do that if the two drives require different FATX cluster size.

[Darkseid]

The timing of this thread is very spooky, doing almost the exact same, my son as decided his Xbox is surplus to requirements and I have moved the thing down into the living room and am using it for the same process (i.e emulatin and a media box).

What i would be interested in is the version of the emulators you are using and also the audio/video setup you are using to get 480P and Dolby above out of the old black box (bit of an xbox noob however i was able to get XBMC on the unit no problems and a bunch of emulators)