Use SSD in original xbox?

CF card would make a bit more sense IMO and actually works pretty well.

Though I have no idea how quickly an XBox will wear out a CF card under light/average/heavy use. On the plus side they are a damn sight cheaper and far more ubiquitous than PATA SSDs.

 

You know I was thinking about this recently, but will an actual sata hdd work on an xbox with a ide to sata converter? Reason I ask is ide hdd are becoming very difficult to find now brand new.

 

Yes, it will, assuming that the adapter is a good one. But many of the cheap adapters on eBay will not work reliably (sometimes not detecting the HDD) or will not work at all. I use a StarTech IDE2SAT in my Xbox and PS2 and it works perfectly with a 2 TB HDD (other than the fact that I can't create partitions on it with the PS2, but that is due to a bug in uLaunchELF, not the adapter).

It has a Marvel 88SA8052 chip on it, and apparently all the high-quality adapters do too. So I would look out for one which has it.

 

Fragmentation would be almost irrelevant because of the super-fast seek times of the SSD. You would benefit most with games which use a myriad of small files, streaming would be unaffected.
It could be worth it if you really wanted to trim the box down to make it as portable as possible.

oh, and as the above posters said: Stay away from the cheap SATA->IDE adapters, I have 5 flying around that WILL detect the HD, but only as long as it is cold - when it gets warm they loose contact and nothing can be done about it, not even glueing them into place works.
Get a quality one, built an xbox for a friend with and expensive one and it's still working perfectly several years later.

 

Just to update, I recently bought two of these adapters: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/140705980749

And they both work perfectly in my PS2 and Xbox.

 

hi guys ..this is a great topic ...i've been using the sata to ide in four years now ..however the original dvd drive of my xbox died so i just replaced it with an old benq pc cd writer ..powered it using a homemade powersplitter while i totally removed the original dvd drive ..& it worked like charm ..bingo !! & no more error 11...the cd writer even boots i've burned a homebrew game on a cd & it worked ..lol..but only when i power on the xbox with the cd inside & i cannot access & explore the files on a cd in xbmc or any other xbox OS but mysteriously i can in avalaunch only..off topic but just for the info

this is the exact model i used http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827101653

 

Using standard CD/DVD drives in an XBox is extremely well known and works with a large number of drives. Only handful will allow you to boot original XBox games sadly and most require additional wiring in order to fully function (such as allowing the XBox to eject/retract the tray as opposed to using the button on the drive itself).

 

That's because of how the XBOX KERNEL is coded. It requires that a pin on the DVD power connector changes state to indicate to the system that there were a disc change. The special firmware on the original DVD drive for the XBOX takes care of that. Avalaunch somehow patches that in RAM and get around the issue.

On a normal PC, the OS pools the drive through the I/O cable to know if there were a disc change. On the XBOX that would cause a slight reduction on the performance so they changed how it works.

 

i see..can you guys tell me more about using an IDE to CF adapter on the xbox..does it really work ?..doesn't the xbox motherboard requests a locked drive with the proper ata password ? if so ...can a CF card be lockable ?

 

You will need a hacked BIOS to be able to replace the HDD with something other than a ATA security capable HDD.

 

And seeing as there is no xbox live anymore, there is no reason to keep the original bios anyways.

 

You can hotwire the yellow power cable's signal lines and replace the original DVD-drive with another HDD...

 

what's the procedures & the requirements of having a hacked bios ? & where to find it ?..one that can aloud pretty much anything else other than a locked hdd..i guess it requires a modchip or it can be done through the tsop..i'm i right !!..or it can be done on a softmodded 1.6 also for example ?..how does it work ?..

 

..how to do that ?..i mean to hotwire the yellow cable which has like 12 wires while the hdd's got only 4..is the idea of this is just to power the 2nd hdd (the dvd replacement) ? or to trick the xbox to think that the 2nd hdd is the original dvd ? or perhaps that's the hacked bios's job !! .. this works with the hacked bios only?.would it work on a softmodded xbox ?

 

It'll work on any Xbox, you cut and connect two pairs of the yellow cable together, making the Xbox think the DVD-drive is still connected.
Then you'd need a molex splitter connected to the original power supply for another HDD or whatever you want to connect...
I tried expanding the old HDD with another HDD (fourth for me) by assigning a new drive letter to it, but I didn't succeed.
It would've been great if one could just have it formatted and addressed as drive D... (tried both Linux disc and altering some other install discs and apps too without success, it just won't recognise. If it'd worked, I could have had 1 HDD as a shared D-drive, serving for my other seperate 3)

I'll see if I can find the pics I took for this mod.

EDIT:
here's the pic I followed for removal of the DVD-drive:

(Don't forget to connect the 3 V wire onto the Mobo.)

Then I followed the tut here for the DPDT switch:
http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Mods/extra_harddrive.htm

You'll also need to make some sort of mount for the second HDD with some plastic hotglued to the original DVD-drive cradle.
Make sure you got the holes and screws to fix the HDD tight onto it.
Then rrmove to front cover from the DVD-drive and align it with the Xbox cover, attempting to fill the hole left by the DVD-drive.
(I glued mine in and blackened it with a marker.)

 

Back on topic...

a) If you use a good SSD defragmented files are going to be a non issue
b) If you only install games you will play and never uninstall them then garbage collection is going to be a lot less of an issue too. Why would you need TRIM to manage deleted files if you're not deleting/uninstalling files?

As for game saves, save to memory card. Problem solved.

 

Solution: bubble memory

 

Only if it does this while warming up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEueYGq2mT4

 

thanks you're the best man..however instead of powering the second hdd from the main power supply via a molex splitter ,using your diagram i managed to power the second hdd (the dvd replacement) from the xbox yellow cable hooking its +12V /+5v/GND/GND to a male molex's +12V /+5v/GND/GND..you're a very curious modder i like how you expand your options & you just expanded mine thanks

 

Apologies for resurrecting such an old thread but I figured it was better than starting a new one. The hard drive in my first Xbox is over 10 years old and I wanted a bit of a safer bet than an IDE mechanical disk, so I gave this a shot this past weekend.

I did my first TSOP flash on my spare 1.4 as a test run, and after putting in a Samsung 850 Evo I can tell you it is fast. Obviously it will cap out at ~100/133 MB/s depending on the cable (I only have the original at the moment), but the difference between this and a mechanical drive is clear. All anecdotal for the moment as I don't have exact measurements and I don't quite feel like timing load screens or anything like that, but once my USB adapters arrive I'll run some tests in Linux using dd. Basically in any game I've tried so far, the loading screens "stall" for about a second (maybe some kind of buffer filling up; I don't know) then immediately complete and I'm in the game. Other than it being pretty damn quick, the obvious benefits are heat, noise, and weight.

I used a StarTech IDE/PATA->SATA adapter with a Marvel 88SA8052 controller. The SSD is 500GB so I formatted F and G at around 230GB each (something like that) using 16kb block size. XBPartitioner selected the block size automatically but I also found a post supporting it here.

If anyone was thinking about throwing an SSD in your original Xbox, I 100% think it's worth it and would do it again.

Your post may be where I first saw this information, so thanks for that.