Maximum Partition/HDD Size for a Modded (Original) Xbox?

Hi there,

A complete neophyte modder here looking to pick your brains!

Having recently acquired a 2TB modded Xbox, I'd like a particular rumour confirmed. I've heard through the grapevine that the Xbox's firmware cannot handle a HDD over 500GB. I've also heard of a supposed workaround: partition one's HDD into smaller, more manageable fragments. Unfortunately, my Xbox is showing a G:/ drive with 1,776,000 megs of free space (close to 2TB). Am I right to be concerned or can I just leave the drive as is?

Assuming that the former is true, I have downloaded XBPartitioner 1.3 in preparation of splitting the HDD up. The problem I have now, however, is that XBPartitioner doesn't appear all that friendly to novices like myself; I am completely perplexed by its interface. Would anyone be able to supply me some foolproof instructions as to how I would go about dividing my G:/ drive into safer-sized partitions?

Finally, I've also been alerted that problems occur if said partitions are not formatted in '32K clusters'. Putting aside the fact that I have no real idea what that means, XBpartitioner seems to have other ideas here. That is to say, the application seems to pick the cluster size to be used (e.g. 16k, 32k, 128k) automatically, based on the spatial dimensions of the drive being formatted. Have I confused myself again or is it indeed possible to do so?


Thanks in advance!

500GB partitions should be fine

It's not that the Xbox can not read drives bigger than 500GB but partitions

The bigger the cluster size the bigger the partitions can be if I remember that correctly

No idea what problems the xbox may have with cluster sizes above 32 my 750 GB drive was fine with it

You only need an E drive anything after that is just a bonus

C:\ is the original system and the 1st Partition
D:\ is the DVD drive
E:\ is the second partition of the Drive, normally the place that a softmod would be stored
F:\ is the 3rd Partition, normally where software such as games are stored
G:\ would be the 4th Partition more games or other media

Not sure if you can make any more that that

But sounds like you have all the space used for the 4th partition with only small partitions used for C, E and F

Thanks for replying, Zorlon. Yeah, from what I can tell, my F:/ drive has 120GB devoted to it (for CoinOps 8) and my G:/ drive 1.7TB. My concern now is whether I can continue installing things to the G:/ drive (formatted in 128k clusters) without fear of data becoming corrupted after a certain point? If not, do I then have to reformat both F:/ and G:/ and divide the HDD space equally between the two drives (1TB each in 64KB clusters)?

E to G is all you can have so best to resize E to G

If you are using a soft mod that may need to be reinstalled after, if so make sure your xbox has the original video settings i.e. if the xbox is PAL but you used the Enigma patch to make it NTSC, make sure you revert that otherwise you will not be able to use the original game used to mod it as it will not be bootable

C again is the original system
E could be resized to 500GB (32k clusters should be enough for 500GB)
F could be resized to 500GB
G could be resized to 500GB

E can be included but do note that does tend to store your softmod if you are using one and would need modding from scratch after, to be safe though if you are not 100% sure what you are doing only touch F and G

Also note that a 2TB drive is usually not even close to being 2TB more like 2000000000000 bytes (or possibly in bits) but 2TB is actually 2199023255552 bytes

2000000000000 bytes is more like 1.81TB 1862.64GB so you will still have redundant space that can't be used unless you have a way of expanding what the system area can use also, but to be honest best to keep C:\ clean




Note the Xbox actually has limits to the amount of Xbox programs it is able to run passing this limit makes anything new just not run (black screen on boot of new games/software) the software does not need to be on the xbox at the same time as a record is made for every software ran on the machine even if it is no longer on the xbox


I can't give much advice on how to go about this stuff though as it has been a very long time since I messed on with my xbox stuff so exacts or long forgotten

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CoffinMatt

Thanks for replying, Zorlon. Yeah, from what I can tell, my F:/ drive has 120GB devoted to it (for CoinOps 8) and my G:/ drive 1.7TB. My concern now is whether I can continue installing things to the G:/ drive (formatted in 128k clusters) without fear of data becoming corrupted after a certain point? If not, do I then have to reformat both F:/ and G:/ and divide the HDD space equally between the two drives (1TB each in 64KB clusters)?

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Hi Matt you going to need xbox partitioner xbe 1.x and 1.3 (x is for 1.0-1.2)
first use a 1.x version to make f and g just under 1TB then use 1.3 to make f and g partition 1TB. (1.x doesn't always format to 64 clusters and 1.3 has bug if partition is 1tb or greater before resize/format it will crash).

I would advise against c and e partition change if you have softmod

There's some dodgy information here or at least it is out of date.

But one thing I would agree with is don't mess with the C:\ or E:\ drive whether it is softmodded, chipped or TSOP.

Shouldn't matter if it's chipped. I mean if you don't care about losing what you have there...but you aren't going to like semi-brick your system.

Agreed but even in a chipped machine messing with C:\ can lose your dashboard and I've been on enough Xbox forums to know that when that happens they may panic, make assumptions about what's wrong and end up losing everything on the HDD and have to start all over again. Creating a bigger E:\drive (which I didn't know was even possible) just seems pointless.

Most people allocate the free space available to F:\ and G:\drives only and I think that's always been the preferred and safest choice.

Yeah, but losing your dash etc on a chipped xbox is completely different to softmod.
I've done it a few times in the early days. Just pop in Slayers disc and rebuild the HDD.
You lose everything but your console is fine :shrug: I doesn't take long to get it working again.

Losing saves etc no big deal...no achievements there or anything. The biggest thing about it is ftping all those games back...soooo slow :lol

I've never even bothered using a 1TB HDD, let alone bigger. In fact I think the largest I ever used was 320GB :thot: Probably what's in there atm but I can't remember now. Haven't used the chipped console or the virgin one I have for a long time.

Also should add that, from what some Xbox gurus have just told me and as I thought also myself, is that BobDrakke's other advice appears to be outdated/wrong:-

Quote:

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Hi Matt you going to need xbox partitioner xbe 1.x and 1.3 (x is for 1.0-1.2)
first use a 1.x version to make f and g just under 1TB then use 1.3 to make f and g partition 1TB. (1.x doesn't always format to 64 clusters and 1.3 has bug if partition is 1tb or greater before resize/format it will crash).

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The info I have is that it is XBPartitioner v1.0 and v1.1 with which it was necessary to use that technique. It's not that it won't work just that it is now unnecessary. XBPartitioner v1.3 apparently addressed the problem mentioned and so is actually all you need to use.

I'm getting confirmation of this just to be sure but other sources I've found say the same thing.