Too Many Games For 2tb Xbox Options

[reliantkcar]

hello I have a 2tb xbox. i have over 250 games on the hardrive. now whenever i put another game on the xbox it won't boot it just goes back to the dash for some reason.

I think it has to do with the file system that can't support more than 255 files per folder. and theres 255 game saves.

I tried deleting game saves now games that used to boot don't any ideas I don't want to have to re-install everything again

[Ed_209]

Did you format your hard drive with XBpartitioner? A simple format for hard drives 250gb and above will cause random data corruption, which might explain why some or all of your games won't load. Do a google search for xbpartitioner to learn more about it. Also, are you using an F and a G partition or are you trying to make everything fit into an F partition?

[GTTeancum]

hello I have a 2tb xbox. i have over 250 games on the hardrive. now whenever i put another game on the xbox it won't boot it just goes back to the dash for some reason.

I think it has to do with the file system that can't support more than 255 files per folder. and theres 255 game saves.

I tried deleting game saves now games that used to boot don't any ideas I don't want to have to re-install everything again

Each save game is in an individual folder based on the ID of that game. As Ed_209 said the F and G drive must be formatted to Xbox standards, meaning that you'll only get 137gb out of each. Truthfully you're wasting a large hard drive.

C drive = cannot be used to store games
E drive = ~5gb (leaving room for savegames, dashboard skins, etc)
F drive = 137gb
G drive = 137gb
-------------------
Max Hard drive capability = ~279gb. That's softmodded. I have never built an Xbox with a mod chip, so it might support more. But you're losing over 1700gb using a 2tb hard drive.

[Heimdall]

Both of the last two posts are wrong - and the last one is completely misleading.

A typical Xbox game is 2.5GB. With 250 games on the disk already that's 625GB - way beyond the 256GB / 16k cluster corruption limit that XBPartitioner 1.1 fixes, so it's not the cluster size problem that Ed_209 implies it might be. Worse, 625GB is way beyond the non-existent 137GB per partition limit that GTTeancum has imagined. For anyone else that reads this, softmods and chipped / flashed Xboxes can all support the same size large drives, and the current limit seems to be 2TB arranged as 2x1TB partitions (although it doesn't always work).

@reliantkcar: I suspect that you are right, and that there is a limit of 255 gamesaves on a single Xbox. When you say "I tried deleting game saves now games that used to boot don't", do you mean that if you delete the save for game A from E:\UDATA\then it won't play, or do you mean that if you delete the gamesave for game A then games B and C won't play, and neither will any new games.

Just to be clear, have you deleted the folder from E:\UDATA\ when you delete the gamesave? Also, have you tried deleting any corresponding folder from E:\TDATA\?

This post has been edited by Heimdall: Jul 23 2010, 04:52 PM

[ldotsfan]

From Xbox Linux: http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Differences..._and_MS-DOS_FAT

A directory entry is 64 bytes long, thus a cluster can contain up to 256 directory entries. Subdirectories can contain more than 256 entries, since they may consist of more than one cluster, as on FAT

I'm not sure how this helps the OP though.

There's an alternative - does this help the OP?
xman954 pioneered this for modchips : http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=617661. It came from nkpatcher so softmod users can use this too.

[cheema201]

I have a quick question... Where did you acquire the 2tb hard drive? and how much was it? I'm also guessing that it is a SATA drive and you used some kind of converter, but I may be wrong... I know that I'll be little help in helping with your problem, as the biggest hard drive that I currently have is 150gb, which can obviously fit only about 30-40 xbox games...

My guess would be that you must have partioned the data correctly, if you had 200+ games working before hand... What new games were you loading on that didn't work? It could possibly be coincidence that you have reached around 250 and then placed a couple of games on that may not be compatible with your dash. A long time ago I was going good with my games, then I tried to put on stubs the zombie and a harry potter game, and neither of them worked. I thought that I had too many games, but then I put on darkwatch, which worked like a charm. Just an idea, but I'm sure you've already ruled that out in testing. Plus if you are deleting certain saves, then it is completely likely that your games may not load. I'd suggest deleting the entire folder in your udata/tdata that pertains to individual games. Though for some reason it does not seem to me that new games would be affected by there being too many saves, unless you have used all the room on your E drive...

Another possibility, which happened to me once. Was that my cache files were becoming too large, possibly a problem with soft rebooting, but I have no real idea why. Where at times I had to manually delete the cache files that were stored for playing a certain game, before others would load. Could be a single case problem on my end. Those files were located on my Z drive, though it could be different for you...

Sorry that I couldn't really be of much help, but if you can let me know where I can acquire a lockable 2tb hard drive that works, I'd be very appreciative. Also I live in Australia so it might not ship here, but i'll cross my fingers..

Good luck fixing ur issue.

[reliantkcar]

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...97234&st=30

I just softmodded made a boot disc with xboxhdm and formated my 2tb seagate with xbpartitioner and it works great over 6 months no problem except the 255 games limit

i have 110 gigs left on g and 30 on f now i want a bigger drive

[xboxmods2977]

The method I would use to approach this problem:

You could use Media X Menu to combine multi-game series', such as the Rainbow Six games or the Halo games, so that these game "sets" would count as one game and could thus be stored in one folder. This will allow you to copy more games onto your drive because with this method, you will cut the number of folders in the root of your games directory drastically.

Regards

This post has been edited by xboxmods2977: Jan 1 2011, 11:03 PM

[reliantkcar]

actually my problem isn't the games it's the saves. I can put up to 255 folders in a folder after that it corrupts. so If I have 255 udata's thats all the saves it will take

[xboxmods2977]

Oh IC.
Well, good to know for future readers.

[1hotjob]

You can use a game save manager to get some of the game saves off the Xbox. Obviously you aren't going to play 255 games at the same time, or in a short time period. When you need a game save back on the Xbox, you can transfer it.

[lowball]

Hey Reliant,
I was wondering if you figured out a solution yet. I have a little over 4GB left on my 500GB drive with about 220 games. I am planning on purchasing a 2TB drive and I would like to avoid a similar situation.

[Kryxan]

about this 255 limit.... I am hoping that is not true. over the years I have added to my hdd, removed, replaced all the parts in my xbox even, and always backed up my save games. well the other day i deleted save games for the first time ever because i noticed that some saves had blank titles in XBMC's list, and that is why I am unsure.

I'm looking at the backup i made before deleting saves and i see 267 folders in the udata folder, 249 in tdata. my xbox is at a friends house, otherwise i would check what it is currently at, but i could have deleted maybe a dozen save games, putting me at 255. some saves that i deleted did not have this blank title, but were games i knew i would never reload onto the xbox, and according my my buddy one of the blank title saves actually went to Need for speed (which was working perfectly btw). i have no idea why xbmc listed the titles for those saves as blank. so i feel i am still without a certain answer.

so back to this

A directory entry is 64 bytes long, thus a cluster can contain up to 256 directory entries. Subdirectories can contain more than 256 entries, since they may consist of more than one cluster, as on FAT

what exactly does it mean by that? isn't the udata folder a subdirectory of the root folder, and thus able to surpass the limit?

This post has been edited by Kryxan: Jun 1 2011, 09:09 AM

[Kryxan]

been doing some more research on this and since FATX is based on FAT16 wouldn't the same rules apply.

according to microsoft technet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc940351.aspx

Disadvantages of FAT16 are:

The root folder can manage a maximum of 512 entries. The use of long file names can significantly reduce the number of available entries.

in FAT16 the limit applies to the root folder only

and more specifically
http://hackipedia.org/Disk%20formats/File%..._MS-DOS_FAT.htm
states that the limit applies to the root folder only

Number of root directory entries all Always 256 (one cluster) on FATX

so why would this be a factor on xbox saves?


This post has been edited by Kryxan: Jun 1 2011, 10:19 AM