hi all,

thanks to some terrific help from heimdall, i'm now soft modded (splinter cell exploit, NDURE 1.1.1) with XBMC installed with app and emu's! i do have just a couple of questions as i dive into this further...

1. i have a stock HD installed currently. not much available space after running the XBMC installer deluxe disc and installing all the apps/emu's but i did have enough space on my E: drive to try ripping a single game, Splashdown. i ran DVD2XBOX and successfully(?) ripped the game. when i tried launching the game, the box reset back to XBMC. anyone have any suggestions?

2. i have about 200 xbox games i'd love to store away and just rip them locally, which means, i need a HD upgrade. i have an extra 300gb seagate lying around that i'm going to try to install. from what i've read, it will be in partitions of about 137gb. so i'll split my HD questions out...

2A. i've seen lots of guides on upgrading the HD, anyone have a recommendation on ones that might be easier?

2B. with so many games to split over different partitions, is there any kind of front end launcher (cover flow style browsing maybe?) to browse games without having to go into each different partition to find a game?

2C. curious if there is some DB out there showing game sizes or if there is an average size for xbox games? just wondering if my 300gb will hold most of my games or if i should pony up and get a larger capacity drive?

2D. if i do need to buy a new drive, any recommendations?

thank you all, i'm so glad i found this site and decided to make some use out of my old box.

1. You need ~100MB spare on E. You might need to clear the cache, and the X, Y and Z partitions.

2A. Start here. Pick the method that best fits your available equipment and skill level. There's a newer version of chimp available here. The 137GB limit is really old - just use XBPartitioner 1.1 or 1.2RC to partition F / G to any size you like.

2B. XBMC. Just add your Games directories as sources.

2C. Plan on 2.5 to 3GB per game.

2D. I use 500Gb Hitachi Deskstar (HDP725050GLAT80) in all my Xboxes apart from one, but I'm not sure they're still available.

Before you do anything, make sure you have a backup of your Xbox eeprom.

heimdall, are you following me around the board and being my personal obi-wan?

1. just checked my E: drive, that game rip took up all the space, nothing left. even looking at the cache folder, doesn't look like there is enough in there to free up 100mb. got a suggestion on a game with a small footprint just so i can try out the ripping? also, tried the file manager to delete files in the cache, is that possible to do from the xbox or do i need to ftp to delete/move/rename files?

2A. thank you for the info. i'm definitely doing my studying before the HD upgrade.

2B-D. again, thanks so much for the info.

you mentioned before doing anything, make a back up of my xbox's eeprom. if i'm not mistaken, the eeprom is backed up when first running NDURE?

i'm sure you get tired with with newbies so i just want to say thanks again for walking me thru this.

Krayzie's installer takes a copy of the eeprom and puts it on your Xbox hard drive. However, a copy of the eeprom on your Xbox isn't a backup. It only becomes a backup once it's copied from your Xbox to your PC.

For clarity, whichever method you use to upgrade the disk, if either your F or G partitions is larger than 256GB then you have to use XBPartitioner 1.1 or 1.2RC - it isn't optional.

ok, after spending a day reading, i decided to try out some of the hd upgrade methods.

first up, i tried the xboxhdm2 method, booting off of a usb stick. followed all the directions, created my usb boot pen but my pc just won't boot from the pen (yes, i selected the option in my bios, just won't boot off the pen).

next up, i tried the original xboxhdm. created a boot cd but when i typed my first command, it can't find the linux cd. this has to do with my pc only having one ide channel. my cd is on a sata channel. from what i've read, this method requires that the cd and hd in my pc each be on their own ide channel, set as master. only having one ide channel, this method is out for me.

i then tried chimp. i have both chimp 2.4 and 2.6 in my xbox's apps folder but for some reason, it doesn't see 2.6 so i fired up 2.4. it seems to start but then my tv goes black. i try looking on my projector but it says "mode not supported" which tells me the signal is out of synch. i found directions on how to telnet in but no luck.

next up all try the error 5 hotswapping and xbox dumper but thought i would post my headaches so far, in case anyone has any suggestions.

thanks for reading

Could be the chosen USB pen. Some drives, such as some SanDisk drives have issues if used as a boot drive. I don't know why.

i'll do some research on my usb stick to see if thats it. btw, it's a kingston data traveler 8gb. it has a metal piece that folds over to cover the usb plug (dt101y)

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?cli...IwAg#ps-sellers

There are plenty of posts here about USB working/non-workig devices and the general conclusion is that it is a lottery whether it works. There is a Wiki list but it is unreliable as the factors governing compatibility are, apparently, very uncertain.

Generally older USB 1.0/1.1 devices are considered more likely to work but there are definitely more modern USB 2.0 which do too.

Simple way to test it is simply plug it into your Xbox with your USB adapter and try and make some games saves too and from it. Include some big files and reboot with and without the USB device attached, then test again.

If the Xbox reports a failed copy, disappears at any time or simply isn't recognised then that USB device should be considered suspect for any important file transfering tasks.

You state it is a 8GB Kingston Traveller - the fact it is 8GB could well be the problem. The Xbox won't recognise attached USB devices over 4GB according to the people who know about such things here.

hes not using it on the xbox, hes trying to boot xboxhdm2 on his PC with it

just a quick update, borrowed a friends pc and was able to create an hd for my xbox!

thank you all for the help and suggestions!