I'm looking for a little advice on which HD I should choose. I have version 1.1 Softmod Only and was using the guide found here to find a HD;

http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list

However, I want to get some "Real Life" feedback. Anyone have any good/bad experiences with HD?

For a softmodded Xbox, it's only necessary to choose a hard drive that supports locking, and is in one the following formats ('SATA' and 'SCSI' drives, however, are not compatible with Xbox):

• IDE
• EIDE
• ATA
• UATA
• PATA

For size, simply decide how much information you'd like to save to your hard drive. Note that a standard Xbox game requires, on average, about 3 GB of free space to back up, and an uncompressed DVD movie usually requires more than 4 GB.

For features, most will be beyond what your Xbox can actually take advantage of. As an example, a 7,200 RPM drive will perform only slightly faster than a 5,200 RPM drive. A drive with a 16 MB buffer will also only run slightly faster than a drive with an 8 MB buffer.

For brand, most hard drives will perform similar to each other. Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital are the three largest drive manufacturers, and produce the highest-quality products. When you are looking at a specific drive model as a potential purchase, research it to discover if others have encountered any problems with it.

Great information thank you very much.

You mentioned 16MB to 8MB. What about 2MB compared to 8MB. I'm sure anything will have better load times than playing a game/movie from its DVD.

What does everyone else have? 7200/5400 and 2/8/16MB Have there been any benchmarchs for xbox's?

When playing a game from the hard drive, you may lose, at most, a few seconds of load time when a hard drive with a large buffer size is used.

Yes, you're assumption is correct.

Most people will always decide on a faster hard drive over a slower one, especially if they are similar in price.

As I've already stated, though, differences between drive speeds is not drastic, and shouldn't be a large problem in your buying decision.

Yes, there have been some that have played a certain game on an Xbox with a different-speed hard drive installed for each trial run of the game.

The verdict: you may lose 3 to 4 seconds of load time when using a 7,200 RPM drive versus a 5,200 RPM drive, as an example.