very new. Day 1 with xbox. May I ask for services?

[reapur]

Hi,
I'll admit I'm a PC gamer. Last week I came across a posting somewhere about XMBC and I fell in love, no really, I did. It's perfect for geeky malcontents like myself.
The problem is I don't have the xbox yet. Gamestop is getting them in tomorrow. So I don't know the first thing about the different BIOS's and all the trick and I really don't want to know, I know it's bad to say.

so my request: is there anyone on this board who offers services where I ship the xbox+big HDD to him/her and I pay for an XBMC conversion?
Does anyone know anyone who does this who is not on this board?

I'm really excited to have this but just reading the HDD upgrade tutorial got my head spinning.

Best Regards

[jmarshall]

You'll have better luck on xbox-scene.

Also, I'd advise against not upgrading the harddisk in preference to streaming media unless you have to have lots of games on there.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[agathorn]

You'll have better luck on xbox-scene.

Also, I'd advise against not upgrading the harddisk in preference to streaming media unless you have to have lots of games on there.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Well if you use XBMC's library system an upgraded HDD helps a lot due to drive speed. It sounds trivial but I notice it a lot in the difference between my XBMC with upgraded HDD and my Mom's which has the original Xbox HDD. Mine just runs XBMC much more smoothly. And when it comes to scanning the library for new content.. hers is painful. Takes about 4 times as long as mine does.

[C-Quel]

Folders are the main slowdown when it comes to scanning media and i assume you probably extract them on xbox where as take the more laid back approach on server and leave them intact.

[reapur]

Thanks Guys for the help. I'll head over to the scene and try there.

cheers

[reapur]

I'm back. I'm wondering if someone can point me in the right direction on this little issue.
I found someone in my town who did the softmod and installed my 750GB disk. Everything seems to be working fine but the disk drive size seems to be very much smaller than it should be.
Looking the system info
Drive C 299MB
Drive E 4,8881 MB
Drive F 123,408 (this is the drive that XBMC is looking for videos on)
Not sure if the xbox suffers from the old PC BIOS limitation of 137, but this looks like it.

I know this is probably not the right place but I'm really hoping someone can point me in the right direction, like a FAQ, or even a fix :) I'll call the installer tomorrow but I just wanted to be a little more prepared.

Regards

[reapur]

oh, just one more thing (can't edit post)
System info does show other drives:
Drive X 749,89MB
Drive Y 749.89
Dirve Z 749,89
but xbmc can't see these.

cheers

[ewaterke]

You should try to format partition F and G using Xboxpartitioner and using 32K clusters.
Search the forum for more infos.

[Loto_Bak]

The softmodder that did your work is an idiot. If you continue to add information to your G drive you will get data corruption.
ewaterke is right investigate formatting your F and G drive with 32k clusters. It is the only solution to using a HDD of that size

[reapur]

OK, now this is scaring me. I did manage to go into evox and I formatted G:. seemed to go OK, and I've been copying stuff to it and using it.
So now I'm how wondering how I can figure out what cluster size he formatted the drive with?

[ewaterke]

I think (not sure) that by default the formatting will be with clusters of 16K.
2 solutions for you:
1. Fill up G with more than 300giga and check if you lose your data .
2. Backup your actual data and reformat correctly your F and G partitions using Xbpartitioner and 32K clusters.

I think that solution 2 is the best one.

PS: even with 32K cluster, your partition can not be greater than 500Gigs. So you will need one partition F and one partition G.

[reapur]

OK, so I got xboxpartitioner from ***** and copied it to e:\apps on the xbox.
I launched it and on the top screen it had what looked like the c: e: and the swap partitions.
On the bottom screen it showed partitions that correspond to my F: (129434.82MB) and G: (612717.42MB) drives.
If I highlight the F: partitions and press the white button, I only get an option of formatting with 16 clusters. From the very brief readme that came with it, this seems to be OK. when I do the same for the G: drive I get the option to format with 32k clusters.
So I formatted G: only with 32k clusters. looks like the rest of the FS's are formatted with 16k clusters.
Does this sound right? is there something else I need to do or worry about?

Best Regards

[ewaterke]

The only problem is that I've read somewhere that even with 32K cluster, your partition can not be greater than +/-500G.=> You may be in trouble with your partition G. You should increase F and decrease G. If F is greater than 256G, you should also use 32K for F. (please check for the exat limit values)

[matt_cyr]

Yeah, I would increase the size of your F: partition so that your G is less then 500GB total.
and as ewaterke said, if your F goes above 256 then format it with 32K as well (the option for 32k should only be available if needed)

[reapur]

I can do that.
But I'm wondering if I change the size of the partitions, will xboxpartitioner kill c: and E: or will it only modify F: and G:?
The reason I ask is for planning. I don't have the tools to redo the softmod so I'd have to get all that stuff before I started repartitioning and formatting.

Cheers

[matt_cyr]

You will lose data on F: and G: but thats it, your c: will remain intact.

[reapur]

Thanks guys. I think I'm all set. It took me a while to get xbp to just do what I wanted, ie a bit less than 500 on G and the rest on F. but all that starting offset and the awkward buttons, heh heh. Finally got it done. Excellent program.

Best Regards

[SleepyP]

FWIW 512 GB is the maximum partition size for something formatted with 32k clusters, which means you can do the "big huge F:" option on a 500GB disk and you're fine as long as you use XBPartitioner to prep the disk. I have one box I set up in this manner so I can verify this is true.