X-Box HD? (non-troll)

[Reverend Love]

Had a question concerning the X-Box hard-drive. I've already pre-ordered mine, however I do have some concerns. First who supplied the HD, and second, what exactly are they going to do for fragmentation of data, and disk failure. The 2000 kernal is probably going to cache the hell outta games, and anyone who's worked with NT knows that the pagefile can get fragmented to hell and back. Also, what's their policy towards disk failure?

Reverend Love

[RedFive]

Very good questions.

If I were you, I'd call 1-800-4MYXBOX and ask them. Call before the launch, because right now the CSRs are just sitting around with nothing to do and there is no wait time on hold. After the launch, well... ;)

=w= RedFive =w=

[mojo__31]

The hard drives are coming from two vendors, Western Digital and Seagate. I work for Western Digital, been there doing Tech Support for 5 years. Yes, hard drives will crash, I just hope Microsoft has a quick return policy setup for repairs.

[Hugh_Jass]

If they make the page file a static size it cannot get fragmented. This is true for any version of windows. I've done it for years.

They could easily have implemented a defrag utility for the other files. Another thing they could do is automatically allocate large contiguous blocks of space for each cached game rather than allow large files to be broken over multiple sectors.

I don't know how or if any of this was implemented. I'm just saying there are ways around fragmentation issues.

[Koolice98]

believe it or not the xbox comes with a sytsem restore disk for the hard drive that, if, there are any problems it can restore the hard drive to its orginal condition

[Maddash]

Originally posted by Koolice98
believe it or not the xbox comes with a sytsem restore disk for the hard drive that, if, there are any problems it can restore the hard drive to its orginal condition


Where did you hear that? I am an xbox rep and I havnt seen a unit yet that comes with this restore disk that you speak of nor have I ever heard this before.

[WynnFire]

Here's a question I know will probably be answered with a "No."

Is it possible to tell which Xbox's will have the hard drives that came from Seagate? No offense guy from Western Digital but where I worked and through my own personal experience, I don't think the Western Digital drives will last very long. I worked at an electronics store for 2 1/2 years. The last year and a half I was a Loss Prevention associate. I have also been working with computers (in and out) for over 15 years. I'm also 23 but that doesn't mean anything. Anyway, about 95% of all the Western Digital drives that sold, came back within a week because they stopped working. This is something I would not kid about.

Right now every computer that I have that I built (6) not one of them has a western digital drive. All but one of them has IBM hard drives. 1 of them has a Seagate drive. No problems with any of them. Of course, that's just me.

[Reverend Love]

Here's the basis of my concern:

Let's say I receive my X-Box and have a good and grand time playing games without a problem for 2 or 3 years. Then my hard drive crashes. Of course I've got to return it to MS for a swap out BUT what about all my data? This is a couple years of my gaming going down the drain. Will they recover the data or just do a quick swap (Most likely). I admit I hate Memory Cards, BUT they are stable. It would really stink for 2 years of save games to disappear.

Reverend Love
:eek:

[Hugh_Jass]

I doubt there would be any data recovery done. That can cost thousands of dollars. That does lead to an interesting idea, however. Will there be a backup device for your XBox data? It would be cool to save your data to CD-RW or some other removable media.

[scarecrow kfj]

hey now all this talk of crashing is really bringing me dow. lol

[mattcoxonline]

Originally posted by Maddash

Where did you hear that? I am an xbox rep and I havnt seen a unit yet that comes with this restore disk that you speak of nor have I ever heard this before.

THE MAJORITY OF THIS IS QUOTED FROM SEAMUS BLACKLEY, DIRECTOR OF THE XBOX ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY TEAM.

Because of the hard drive in the Xbox, developers have a very large, contiguous scratch area available to them which is reformatted everytime the console is reset or the power turned off.

In the sad and unlikely event that the Xbox crashes and everything goes to hell and the hard drive gets roached, you can pop in the recovery DVD that comes with the system, and it will first try to find and then fix whatever is wrong, ultimately replaceing the entire contents of the hard drive if there is no way of fixing it. Which sucks because you lose your saved games, but on the other hand is great because your Xbox works again.

But since we treat the persistent part of the hard drive simply as a large memory card (not some crazy PC-like installation system), the chances that your Xbox will get ****ed up in the first place are very very very low...

But personally I'd keep the reciept - just in case......

PS: If all does go to hell and you do have the reciept, you can take it back to where you purchased and replace it, some shops before now have told me to contact the manufacturer, but the store ARE responsible as they sold it to you......

[mojo__31]

95% failures? A company wouldn't stay in business. I have been at WD for 5 years, we have won the Channel Champion Award for 8 years straight, it is an award based on ratings in many categories by all our direct customers. We don't win awards for nothing, and wouldn't be in business still if our drives weren't as good as anyone elses. There is a reason we are the number #1 drive sold at retail stores. Its hard to say if WD or Seagate drives are more reliable, its a toss up, all HD companies have failure rates very close to the others, most use parts from the same vendors. Yes drives will fail as I have said, but whether its a Seagate or Wd drive, the overall failure rates will end up about the same. Don't you think there is a reason why WD was chosen by Microsoft as a vendor? Also, today in a WD press release, it was stated WD and Seagate are about equal providers of drives, both supplying about 50% of the drives.

[pamcur]

Originally posted by Hugh_Jass
Will there be a backup device for your XBox data?

You can save up to 8 megs of game data to the Memory Card

[WynnFire]

I tested all of the Hard Drives that came back on two different computer setups. Neither worked. Of course, I'm not saying that the people who bought them weren't complete idiots. Plus that was just one store and I didn't mention how many we sold. Plus they were all super cheap. I forgot to add those things.