XBox HD Upgrade Question

[ukplumber]

Hi,
I'm looking to upgrade my XBox HD to 80gb. My friend has told me that 7200 rpm drives overheat and cause problems, is this true? I've tried to find info about this but ii can't find anything. Also finding a big 5400 rpm drive is proving a nightmare.

Cheers.

[Papercut]

Generally 7200 rpm drives run hotter than 5400 drives, and non standard hdisks in an Xbox have a tendancy to overheat. Getting a cooler/slower drive is recommended.

[VR46]

couldn't you fit one of the heatsinks that take the heat away from HD's ? is there room ? guess there's no way to power an extra internal fan

[Papercut]

Not really, there isn't much room and no good place to fit a heat sink.

The main problem is the plastic housing which does a really bad job of dissipating heat. I guess you could try cutting some of that away.

Might be worth checking out http://www.xbox-scene.com/ they have some nice articles on hardware mods.

[VR46]

how about (not going to look as good admittedly) a external HD (to replace or could it be connected as well as the original one ?), they are quite cheap on ebuyer.co.uk

EDIT: forget that, they all connect to the USB port

[MiG]

I do a lot of PC work and I have found that the latest 7200rpm drives run very cool (Maxtor are good).

If you can find a Samsung drive, a lot of those (under 160gb) run at 5400 and are very reliable.

I just got a modded xbox from G-funk with a 120gb drive and it runs like a pure bred Ninja..

[VR46]

so is the original Xbox drive just 5400rpm ?

[ukplumber]

All,

Thanks for your replies. I can pick up a maxtor drive off ebay for about ?40 (7200) but i'll try and find a samsung drive. Any ideas on where i can get one?

[nips]

Can I suggest you get a bigger HDD than 80gig. I've got an 80 in mine and it's starting to get full (about 25 games atm). I'm going to have to delete games soon.

120g would be better... or you could go all out and get a 250g!!!!

[ukplumber]

Can I suggest you get a bigger HDD than 80gig. I've got an 80 in mine and it's starting to get full (about 25 games atm). I'm going to have to delete games soon.

120g would be better... or you could go all out and get a 250g!!!!

Thanks for that but i think 25 game capacity should be enough. But if the price is right i may just get the extra space

[MiG]

From what I understand the largest HD that an Xbox will support is 137gb anything over that would be a waste as it would just be formatted down to 137gb.

SAMSUNG SV8004H 100/5400 80GB this is the model that I have seen, and I think it is available from dabs.com

The samsung drives are also very quiet, I think there was a review you can check online at PC Pro.

[ukplumber]

From what I understand the largest HD that an Xbox will support is 137gb anything over that would be a waste as it would just be formatted down to 137gb.

SAMSUNG SV8004H 100/5400 80GB this is the model that I have seen, and I think it is available from dabs.com

The samsung drives are also very quiet, I think there was a review you can check online at PC Pro.

You my man are a star. I'll be on to it straight away.

[Papercut]

I think there is a way around that hdisk size limit with newer mod chip bioses, you'd have to check out xbox-scene or similar for more info.

[Yod@]

I think there is a way around that hdisk size limit with newer mod chip bioses, you'd have to check out xbox-scene or similar for more info.

Correct - the 137Gb (LBA48) limit was bypassed a while ago. The latest BIOSes can correctly identify and use the larger drives.

FWIW, I always use the 7200rpm drives now and as far as I know there haven't been any overheating problems with them at all. The original 7200rpm drives DID run fairly hot, but the modern ones run much cooler.

[Sarkster]

Ditto what Yoda says.

Ive been running a 7200PRM 120gb Maxtor in mine for a year now, never had any heating problems