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[Melodic]

Despite the terrible, terrible title, Microsoft's latest update to the 360 dashboard is pretty good. Avatars are a total, complete, and totally unabashedly stolen from the Wii, but they serve their purpose and I'd imagine this will make Achievements even more sought-after as games start incorporating clothing as a bonus.

The actual dashboard changes are interesting. It's much more concise, and there's lots of additional info to purse through. I especially like the ability to install games to the HDD, although the remaining 11 gigs on mine means I'll get to install 2 or 3 tops.

Thoughts?

[est]

My thought is that buying a 120gb sata drive and shoe-horning it into my 360 is looking more and more appealing due to the horrid noise my 360's dvdrom drive makes.

Oh wait I already have a 120gb sata drive, it's just not a laptop one.  I wonder if it matters.

[Melodic]

I'm trying to configure a WD external to work with my Xbox as dedicated game storage, but so far nothing.

[est]

I just tried reading up on it and apparently it's not as simple as plugging a SATA drive into the machine.  Apparently MS are cunts and certify each drive based on the hdd security sector and you can't use an uncertified drive on the Live service.  In order to run a 120gb hdd I need to use the security sector of another 120gb hdd, but then presumably that other one and my one can't work at the same time or something.  And if I flash a 120gb drive with the hddss of my current 20gb drive only 20gb of the 120gb will be available.

JUST LET ME PLUG IN A BIGGER HARD DRIVE YOU GODDAMN DICKMUNCHERS.

[CursedMortivore]

But then you wouldn't buy their absurdly expensive hard drives. Think man!

I personally like the NXE. Being able to watch Instant Netflix from my Xbox is damned useful. That and the hard drive loading of games keeps the system quiet.

[Johnny C]

Can someone explain to me how to transfer data from one hard drive to the other or if that's at all possible since if I upgrade I want to keep my savegames? I am a hardware chump.

[PizzaSHARK]

I just tried reading up on it and apparently it's not as simple as plugging a SATA drive into the machine.  Apparently MS are cunts and certify each drive based on the hdd security sector and you can't use an uncertified drive on the Live service.  In order to run a 120gb hdd I need to use the security sector of another 120gb hdd, but then presumably that other one and my one can't work at the same time or something.  And if I flash a 120gb drive with the hddss of my current 20gb drive only 20gb of the 120gb will be available.

JUST LET ME PLUG IN A BIGGER HARD DRIVE YOU GODDAMN DICKMUNCHERS.

Consoles are made or broken on their proprietary hardware and software.  If they actually let you buy a cheap $100 HD off NewEgg, they'd never make up all the money they lost developing it

[KvP]

Can someone explain to me how to transfer data from one hard drive to the other or if that's at all possible since if I upgrade I want to keep my savegames? I am a hardware chump.

If you upgrade to a 120 gig, I'm 98% certain it comes with a transfer kit. At least, I have no recollection of buying a separate transfer kit and I upgraded.

[dennis]

Consoles are made or broken on their proprietary hardware and software.  If they actually let you buy a cheap $100 HD off NewEgg, they'd never make up all the money they lost developing it

It's not so bad when you buy the Elite in the first place. Also, you can just drop in any old SATA drive into a PS3, of course, the PS3 price point is much higher.

[dennis]

The actual dashboard changes are interesting. It's much more concise, and there's lots of additional info to purse through. I especially like the ability to install games to the HDD, although the remaining 11 gigs on mine means I'll get to install 2 or 3 tops.

Thoughts?

What is taking up the 9 gigs of space on your current drive? If it's non proprietary media, you can offload all that onto an external USB drive or flash memory stick.

[ackblom12]

the 20 gig HD only hets 13.2 free gigs of space when you get it. If i recall correctly that was after i went through and deleted everything that came on it.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

nxe is pretty slick, if a bit confusing initially. avatars are pretty lame and i really couldn't care less but whatever. no skin off my teeth.

so far my only two complaints are the new layout of the Marketplace and the lack of a customizable guide. i miss my woodgrain, damnit!

[Dimmukane]

I have a non-Live profile on my box named named nazi scum.  Do I wait until Hitler-staches are available or do I go Aryan.  Help me out, here.

[ackblom12]

Man, the games the installs make a difference for, make a pretty damn noticeable difference. Fable II, Culdcept Saga and Dead Rising seem to have very noticeable load differences. The other benefit I've noticed with Fable II is I seem to no longer have periods of slow down. I'm gonna be testing it on Fallout 3, Banjo-Kazooie and a few others tonight.

Is there any way to set anything other than spotlight as your initial load menu?

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i don't think so. i looked around for a while last night to try to find a way to do that but i never found one.

[Dimmukane]

I read that there was, but I can't recall where.  I think it was in a Gizmodo/Kotaku article, you'll probably have to dig around.

[Melodic]

The actual dashboard changes are interesting. It's much more concise, and there's lots of additional info to purse through. I especially like the ability to install games to the HDD, although the remaining 11 gigs on mine means I'll get to install 2 or 3 tops.

Thoughts?

What is taking up the 9 gigs of space on your current drive? If it's non proprietary media, you can offload all that onto an external USB drive or flash memory stick.

It's basically the operating partition. Pretty sure everyone gets 8 gigs knocked off from system install.

[est]

I am pretty annoyed that you need the dvd in the drive to play from the hdd.  I mean, I understand why they do it, but it's still annoying.

[ArcAirbender]

For those who want to add a new external hard drive to the 360, I bought the pro version (20 gigs, 6 months ago... I think they're about to upgrade that from 20 to 40... or maybe 60) I also thought that the space was going to be a problem.

So I dug through the nets, and found out that as long as you have an external rack and a hard drive with fat32 installed, the xbox system will recognize it as an external source (like USB or the computer hard drive). I bought a $20 dll external conversion, and got an old 20gb HD from my storage, and done: I now have a 20gig access. Sure, it needs its own power source, but I can keep my videos and music files without probs.

I haven't tried to store saved games or the entire title (so the dvd can be quiet for once). I will try it and report back.

*fixed typos

[Blue Kitty]

The whole thing is kind of nice to me, but I really liked my gamer tag being a homicidal space turtle instead of being something that looks kind of like me.  Haven't tried to upload any games yet, but my friend tells me it makes a big difference with Fable 2.

[Melodic]

You can revert to a normal gamerpic whenever you like.

Also, I don't think FAT32 supports files bigger than something like 4GB, so that doesn't help at all.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i played Left 4 Dead from the HDD last night and the load times were about 10% shorter, i'd say. though that's really just a guess. but it was much quieter which is great, espescially for L4D because you gotta listen pretty carefully sometimes but i don't wanna crank up the volume and anger anyone.

haven't tried it with any other games yet, and probably won't for a while.

[ArcAirbender]

You can revert to a normal gamerpic whenever you like.

Also, I don't think FAT32 supports files bigger than something like 4GB, so that doesn't help at all.

It helped me by freeing space relocating media files to another source, so it may help other people.

I'm trying to help giving freebies. Chill.

[Spluff]

Honestly, I don't really think he was that worked up about it. It sounded quite 'chilled' to me, if you will.

[Melodic]

Absolutely chill.

[ArcAirbender]

Cool!

Sorry about that, I stand corrected. 

[Dimmukane]

Yeah, the main gripe is not media storage, it's all other things storage, like DLC, demos, game ISOs, themes, that sort of thing.  I have about 4 gigs of DLC, 2 gigs of videos, and 2 gigs of random other things, which makes it impossible for me to rip just about any game out there (I have 5.7 gb open, and I'm fairly sure all the games I have take up at least 6.4 or so).  I'm hoping to get a 60gig drive for Christmas, that would solve problems.  

[ArcAirbender]

It's really rotten M$ tries to charge you $100 dlls for a 60gb hard drive or $150 dlls for the 120gb one... I mean jesus h. christ in a cheese-stick wtf are they thinking.
I sure hope its the least selling accessory for the plataform. I don't think it is, but I still hope so.

[est]

They are thinking "cha-chinnnnng!"

[Dimmukane]

To be fair, I found one 7200rpm 60gb laptop drive on newegg for $176, and a 120gb at that speed for $190 (both OEMs).  I'm not sure what speed the Xbox HD is, though.  The 5400rpm ones are substantially cheaper (both start at $50), understandably.  Might it be that Microsoft actually loses money on each hard drive?  Nah, probably not.  But I'm guessing it costs at least 10 for the casing and another 10 for the proprietary cable and software and so forth, so they're only making $30 on each 60gb drive, at best.  

Well, I tried to play the devil's advocate...

[ArcAirbender]

Maybe I'm confused, but here are some hard-drives I found on newegg that have a lower price than those that you stated:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336 <  Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive (Bare drive) - OEM $99.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148252 <  Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ST9100821AS 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM $59.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148249 <  Seagate Momentus 7200.2 ST9160823AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM $79.99

And these are retail prices, can you imagine mass production!?



Oh, est, by "wtf are they thinking" I meant the "give away the razors, so you can sell the blades" philosophy, where MS could make netflix and other service providers that use hard drive space to finance (hint, subsidize) the hard drives so those companies have something to store their products in. No hard drive, no sale.

I really should elaborate my comments more often, is not like you live inside my head.
On the other hand I'm trying hard not to make entire novels out of my posts.

Cheers.

[est]

Yeah, that would be a good model I think, but I also think they didn't have that kind of thing in mind from the get-go with this iteration of the xbox.  Depending on how well the 360 goes as a media delivery platform the next generation will probably get larger drives that you can swap out and such. But then again from another perspective if they see that as a service consumers want then maybe they will take the stance that a hdd will be an in-demand product that people will be willing to pay for?  Not sure.

The PS3's hdd can be just pulled out and replaced, and I am pretty sure Sony will stay with that idea into the next gen, so in order to be competitive you'd think the 360 or its successor would have to include a similar kind of functionality.  Well, I'd hope for that, anyway.

[Dimmukane]

Huh...I just looked under Hard Drives->Laptop Hard Drives and then only looked at the 60s and 120s.  Looking at all of the 7200rpm ones, this isn't making any sense.  The 60gb is more than the 160gb by 30 dollars.  The 120gb is more than the 320gb by about 80...

I stand corrected, I guess.  Unless those models shown are the only laptop drives with that amount of space and Microsoft can't find any other provider, which I highly doubt.

[ArcAirbender]

I'm gonna go with the highly technical explanation that est provided a few minutes ago.

Fkn money mongers.

[PizzaSHARK]

Huh...I just looked under Hard Drives->Laptop Hard Drives and then only looked at the 60s and 120s.  Looking at all of the 7200rpm ones, this isn't making any sense.  The 60gb is more than the 160gb by 30 dollars.  The 120gb is more than the 320gb by about 80...

I stand corrected, I guess.  Unless those models shown are the only laptop drives with that amount of space and Microsoft can't find any other provider, which I highly doubt.

Capacity is only one of the things that determine the price of a drive, and in general, storage is cheap.  You also need to consider seek time, latency, and especially cache size; for example, a 120GB Seagate drive with an 8MB cache is actually about $20 cheaper than an 80GB Toshiba drive with a 16MB cache.  External drives (those designed for external use, with a protective case, I mean) also tend to be noticeably pricier than internal ones.

I don't know what the Xbox can and can't make use of, but in general, you want a big cache, low seek time, and a speed of at least 7200rpm.  That is, unless the console operates significantly different from your average PC.

[ackblom12]

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/05/behind_the_xbox_360_hard_drives_insane_price-2.html

It's a little old, but I thought the article was interesting.

[Dimmukane]

I'm not an idiot about hard drives, I kind of expected there to be some differences, but 200gb more space equating to saving 80$ just does not compute.

[ackblom12]

Well, it is propietary hardware. When you only have 1 client who orders a certain frame and build of a piece of equipment it's probably gonna get bumped to hell in price.

I still think it's idiotic and would much prefer to be able to use an external HD, but it makes at least a small amount of sense.

[ArcAirbender]

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/microsoft-plann.html
Microsoft Plans Online Xbox Live Avatar Store

Coming next Spring, the online Xbox Live avatar store will offer Xbox Live devotees the chance to purchase branded apparel for their avatar from game publishers. Microsoft is also contemplating the idea of non-game related clothing brands appearing in the store, as well as allowing players to dress their avatars as famed gaming characters.
The company also plans to reserve some of these customizations as unlockable rewards for earning certain Achievements within games.

Old news ( October 28, 2008 ), but I want to leave a link here for easier access.



The NXE has been smooth so far. The update took barely a few minutes, and after a few days testing, I've come to notice that the menus are as accessible, albeit a little messier.

Let's wait for a Left 4 Dead achievement (perhaps completition, 1000 points) to give you a zombie-avatar.
Half my list would be undead for certain.

[dennis]

You can revert to a normal gamerpic whenever you like.

Also, I don't think FAT32 supports files bigger than something like 4GB, so that doesn't help at all.

It helped me by freeing space relocating media files to another source, so it may help other people.

I'm trying to help giving freebies. Chill.

You still need to read the thread first to make sure someone didn't suggest the same thing already.

[carrotosaurus]

I have been streaming movies from netflix pretty much from the second it came out and it is totally awesome, but cutting into my Fallout 3 time. The quality of the live streams is fantastic!

[ArcAirbender]

You still need to read the thread first to make sure someone didn't suggest the same thing already.

I did read it, some people sugested external HD, but it was a bit sketchy: ntfs won't work on 360, you need to format it to fat32; but as it has been explained before by Melodic, it will do little good gaming-wise because fat32 won't allow files bigger than 4gb.

It still is pretty useful if you have movies and/or music files.
Also, for what is wort, the x360 won't allow you to save entire games into USB's nor external hard drives (was worth the shot).

In my case, I'm just going to install the game I use the most, and live with the fact that my dvd-drive has been possesed by a mating banshee.