Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Discussion about Modding the XBOX, including hardware and software hacks.
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NeMesiS
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Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Interested to see what combinations people have used..

I'm running a standard Seagate Barracuda 2Tb Drive
I have about 26gb free on F and bit over 40gb on G
With a compatible SATA adapter, shown on the first page at:
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... f=13&t=612
And iND-5003/04 BIOS...


I mostly ask because I've started to experience alotta console freezing over
the last couple days. Previously I've been able to run it for many hours without fail.
I've tried alternate dashboards but the same thing continues to occur, especially today.
Uploading files has never been a problem but I've been trying to backup my xbox files,
as soon as I attempt to download (FTP) from it, it freezes almost instantly...
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by Geeba »

You need to speak to xman! ;) I think the 2TB drive is his storage weapon of choice :lol:
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

what is the model of the drive ?

some of the Seagate dm series are very poor quality drive and have a very high failure rate, some have a firmware update to address issuies with the smart data causing bsy error or total lockup.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

professor_jonny wrote:what is the model of the drive ?

some of the Seagate dm series are very poor quality drive and have a very high failure rate, some have a firmware update to address issuies with the smart data causing bsy error or total lockup.
Oh no don't tell me that... I was gonna buy a ST2000DM001 tomorrow...
Pretty sure the one I currently have in the xbox is the same, just unable to check that for sure atm.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

NeMesiS wrote:
professor_jonny wrote: Oh no don't tell me that... I was gonna buy a ST2000DM001 tomorrow...
Pretty sure the one I currently have in the xbox is the same, just unable to check that for sure atm.
Yip that is amongst one of the most un reliable hdd's ever manufactured :-( not as bad as the 3tb or 1.5tb but worth staying away from.

this is a report (sort of) from a cloud service
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-har ... uld-i-buy/
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

What would you recommend?

Western Digital Caviar Blue 2TB any good?
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

NeMesiS wrote:What would you recommend?
Anything other than a Seagate but Hitachi and Toshiba drives tend to last longer than the rest, wd is not far behind them.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

I'm still having much grief with my Seagate 2Tb Sata Drives (ST2000DM001)
Last week I sent a friend of mine a XBox I made up for them,
Before posting I spent good couple hours checking all the emulators and
some random games. All seemed to work fine, once my friend received the
parcel much of the emulators and games are not working as they should.

I got another Seagate and I've been FTPing all my emulators and games to
All seems fine, especially when I have more than 40/50Gb free space on both
G & F partitions. Currently theres about 25Gb free on G and 40Gb on F...
Now when I transfer data the drive makes strange noises and transfer speeds
are almost no existent.

I'm not sure whats going on exactly but I have a feeling it's these Seagate drives.
I'm not sure if the drive is just freaking out or if my data is becoming corrupted.
It is causing me much problems and stress...

I'm going to have to takes these drives back but how do i know
I wont end up having the same probems with other brands?



EDIT: Currently I'm using iND-BIOS and
I used XBpartitioner 1.3 to format the drives at 64kb
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

some of the ide drives actually have a sata chipset and have a bridge board built on to the drives pcb that is why the 500gb wd blue drives some have mixed results with also as they were native sata with an ide bridge chip.

I do know for one thing that the Xbox version some work better with sata drives than others and some times dvd drives cause issuies, some say the use of 80 core conductor ide cables help and some setups wont work with out them.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

Thanks again for the reply Jonny...
I'm getting frustrated, I really need to find some solid answers...
I got 5x Seagate HDDs that I need to figure out what to do with,
otherwise i'll need to try and take them back asap...

professor_jonny wrote:Some say the use of 80 core conductor ide cables help and some setups wont work with out them
I read this thread http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33
So is it necessary to butcher 3 cables to make one? or are people getting by without doing so?

professor_jonny wrote:I do know for one thing that the Xbox version some work better with sata drives than others and some times dvd drives cause issuies
Is there any specific informations in regards to this?



I still have no idea whats going wrong!
I've been able to install HDs to versions 1.0 to 1.5 without use of 80 core cable.
I only really start having problems when my free space drops below 50Gb for both
F & G partitions. And I mostly have Thompson and Samsung DVD-roms...

What exactly are people running with their 2Tb drives??
(XBversion, DVDrom, BIOS, HDD brand, 80 or 40 core ide Cables, etc..)
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by RunsilenT »

Ok, i`m sorry but I have to disagree with anyone slating the Seagate ST2000DM001. I have personally supplied around 32 x 2tb modified xboxes with this drive and all remain fully functional and reliable.
My drives have been brand new and fitted with Ultra ATA ribbon cables to a sata adaptor I have found reliable for me. WD Green have always been problematic for me due to slow pickup speed which can timeout
the xbox bootup intermittently. Once I found the ST2000DM001 to be almost flawless, I never strayed from that model, once called Barracuda and now known simply as 2TB Desktop. Hybrids have caused me issues,
only with CHIMP, but as i hard mod only now I have no such issues. Like many users of 2TB drives I have a set system of creating a box from scratch, from my preferred bios to the order in which I install and partition,
down to how and even where I place emulators and saves. ThePitt has created a fantastic thread on this site that is the best place to start but with so many variables from plain human error to adaptors, condition of xbox and even
faulty new stock with regards to drives. I feel your frustration and hope you find a solution.

http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... f=14&t=649
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

Really all we can suggest is have a play with changing things until you get a working setup, that is where all the fun is :-).

Part of the problem is the xbox expects the drive to present it's self to the xbox ready to go with in an expected time the bridge chip adds delay and slow drives add delay, all drives basically have on disk firmware so the drive has to spin up to load firmware slower drive means a longer wait.

I made a bios patch adding in a wait state in the 2nd stage boot loader right at the end before it loads the kernel blob, I randomly put in a patch in it to add delay.

Basically it was a do while loop to count up to a large number then follow on but it did not allways fix the problem it only made a marginal setup better.

Psyco_Chewbacca gave me a few pointers about where to patch it but it was over my head a bit basically how I see it is that the SMC watch dog timer verifies integrity of the system with a cypher if it fails it frags the xbox and the patch needs to be added after the cypher is verified.

The cypher response is sent over the i2c bus so you patch it after the smc receives a transaction from the chipset and the bytes sent will be in a specific format that is about all I under stood :-)

I have allways had good results with the green power drives and a green adaptor I can get in nz along with one of xman's modified bios with extra boot paths in conjunction with a shortcut booting another shortcut to boot the dash
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

professor_jonny wrote:Really all we can suggest is have a play with changing things until you get a working setup, that is where all the fun is.
Trial and error takes a long time especially when it take about 5 days to transfer 2Tb of data. I wish to go over a few things...


BIOS: iND-BIOS 5003/4
SPPV wrote:Id be looking at the adapter and BIOS before the HDD especially if they are brand new.
I am currently TSOP flashing console versions 1.0 to 1.5,
I chose this BIOS because I wanted one that could support both 2Tb & RAM upgrades.
Alternatively I could use the X2-5035 BIOS on 1.0 & 1.1 version consoles,
but I'd prefer to keep things consistent...


SATA ADAPTER

Image


SATA Adaptor Compatibility thread
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... f=13&t=612
professor_jonny wrote:This is what I have always used and I have never had one that does not work with any drive with any setup I have tried so far.
I got the same SATA adapter that pro. jonny and many others have used...


HARD DRIVE: (Seagate ST2000DM001)

Image
RunsilenT wrote:Once I found the ST2000DM001 to be almost flawless, I never strayed from that model
Could I then safely assume thats its not the hard drive causing me the problems I'm having?


IDE CABLE:
professor_jonny wrote:Some say the use of 80 core conductor ide cables help and some setups wont work with out them.
Image

80 core vrs 40 core ide cable
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33

At the moment I'm still using the standard IDE cable, would 80 core really make all the difference?


THE PROBLEM:

First Attempt:
The first console I installed the 2Tb drive to was working without any problems for months
as I collected my roms and games. Once I had acquired most of the stuff I wanted I still
had about 45/50Gb free on both G & F Partitions. So I thought I'd throw a couple extra things
in there, I installed another 20Gb of games on F, leaving me about 26Gb of free space.
This is when everything started going down hill, firstly I experienced alotta console freezing
when trying to FTP to or from the console. I made the decision to buy a external drive and
backup everything I had. I'm glad I did... It seemed I got it all working again but once I posted
it to a friend, alotta the emulators and roms (on F:/) wouldn't work but the xbox games (on G:/)
would still work... (Random testing)

Second Attempt:
NeMesiS wrote:I got another Seagate and I've been FTPing all my emulators and games to
All seems fine, especially when I have more than 40/50Gb free space on both
G & F partitions. Currently theres about 25Gb free on G and 40Gb on F...
Now when I transfer data the drive makes strange noises and transfer speeds
are almost no existent.
Video of the strange noises coming from the HDD
https://vid.me/lALh
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by professor_jonny »

Any funny clunking or squealing usually means a problem with the hdd, (actuator or heads).

I would pop the drive in the pc and run serial number check tool from the seagate website and see if it is one of the drives effected by firmware faults.

Ultimately I would check the smart data from a tool like smartfan and run a self analysis or bad sector scan to rule out the hdd.

some say an adaptor wont work with out an 80 core conductor but I have never had that problem with the green adaptor you are using.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by xman »

I had it explained to me that the issue with sata adapters was the adapters need to map the connected HDD every time you boot it up. Some adapters are quick at this, some are slow. The wiring of the adapters also varies and that explains why some adapters will only work with 80 wire cables and some work fine with the original 40 wire cable. One thing I would definitely try in your case would be to a manual HDD de-Frag. No such a program for Xboxes was ever made so basically, you need to take everything off your F drive by FTPing onto a spare PC HDD on your PC. Once everything is copied, delete all the content on the Xbox F drive and now FTP all the data on the PC back back onto the F drive in one go.
What this does is load everything back onto the drive cleanly as in each game etc is all in one location rather than, "where parts of it could fit when you originally loaded it after deleting and re-loading content". Explaining quite simply, bring everything all together on the HDD so the HDD isn't constantly hunting all over the HDD for it. If you haven't been loading, deleting and reloading new stuff onto a near full HDD, this isn't going to really help but I regard it as good Xbox practice every year or two in any case.
The less "fragged" the content on an Xbox , the better and it also ensures long HDD life saving the HDD from constantly hunting for pieces of data scattered all over the 2tb. You will be surprised how much quicker your machine will run after a manual de-frag. Only do your F and G drives, the other drives are to small to make much difference. Once done, you should immediately notice how much quieter and cooler the HDD runs.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

RunsilenT wrote:Hybrids have caused me issues, only with CHIMP, but as i hard mod only now I have no such issues.
Are you referring to the Seagate 2Tb SSHD Hybrid? (ST2000DX001)
professor_jonny wrote:Any funny clunking or squealing usually means a problem with the hdd, (actuator or heads). I would pop the drive in the pc and run serial number check tool from the seagate website and see if it is one of the drives effected by firmware faults. Ultimately I would check the smart data from a tool like smartfan and run a self analysis or bad sector scan to rule out the hdd.
Unfortunately I only have a laptop at my disposal, I might just return the ones I can and get something else...
Trying to keep to a budget, I've looked at Western Digital Green, Blue, Purple and Red drives, but
they're only 5400 rpm where the Seagate drives tend to be 7200rpm which is about 33% faster...
So would the Segate SSHD Hybrid ST2000DX001 or the Seagate NAS ST2000VN000,
be a better alternative to the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001?

xman wrote:I had it explained to me that the issue with sata adapters was the adapters need to map the connected HDD every time you boot it up. Some adapters are quick at this, some are slow. The wiring of the adapters also varies and that explains why some adapters will only work with 80 wire cables and some work fine with the original 40 wire cable
professor_jonny wrote:Some say an adaptor wont work with out an 80 core conductor but I have never had that problem with the green adaptor you are using.
Thanks for clarifying that for me...

xman wrote:One thing I would definitely try in your case would be to a manual HDD de-Frag. No such a program for Xboxes was ever made so basically, you need to take everything off your F drive by FTPing onto a spare PC HDD on your PC. Once everything is copied, delete all the content on the Xbox F drive and now FTP all the data on the PC back back onto the F drive in one go.
It did a bit of deleting and reloading during my first attempt, I'm sure it would have been fragmented to a degree.
I've got everything backed up to an external 2Tb USB drive. During my second attempt I loaded everything up whilst
keeping changes to a minimum but the drive decided to freakout. Is it better to build one partition at a time or
can I build them up evenly by uploading 200Gb to F then G and repeating this process until it finished?

RunsilenT wrote:Like many users of 2TB drives I have a set system of creating a box from scratch, from my preferred bios to the order in which I install and partition, down to how and even where I place emulators and saves.
Could you elaborate your process?
RunsilenT wrote:ThePitt has created a fantastic thread on this site that is the best place to start but with so many variables from plain human error to adaptors, condition of xbox and even faulty new stock with regards to drives. I feel your frustration and hope you find a solution. http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... f=14&t=649
Yea, I've been following this tutorial as closely as I can...
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by RunsilenT »

I always use a ultra ata ribbon cable with my adaptors (cheap and will eliminate that).
I put all emulators on F in specific folders to me as I use my own adapted skin which requires this.
I put all my Xbox games on G in a folder called, you guessed it "Xbox Games" for the above reason.
Once all my custom content is FTP`d to my xbox I go into every emulator and set default directories
that the emulator requires "SAVES" MEDIA for movies and artwork etc otherwise the emulators will
default to first install status with default locations. I only use EVO X bios as recommended by Xman
for 2TB support and have no issues. This was my trial and error that also took many hours, hair pulling
and generally feeling pissed off and fed up until it all worked. All the best!
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by xman »

NeMesiS wrote:

xman wrote:One thing I would definitely try in your case would be to a manual HDD de-Frag. No such a program for Xboxes was ever made so basically, you need to take everything off your F drive by FTPing onto a spare PC HDD on your PC. Once everything is copied, delete all the content on the Xbox F drive and now FTP all the data on the PC back back onto the F drive in one go.
NeMesiS wrote: It did a bit of deleting and reloading during my first attempt, I'm sure it would have been fragmented to a degree.
I've got everything backed up to an external 2Tb USB drive. During my second attempt I loaded everything up whilst
keeping changes to a minimum but the drive decided to freakout. Is it better to build one partition at a time or
can I build them up evenly by uploading 200Gb to F then G and repeating this process until it finished?
Personally I'd be doing the whole of F drive as a full block and then do G drive as a full block. That way the drive can be completely deleted and therefore will load perfectly. Leaving some content on the drive has no assurance the drive won't reload fragmented again. Deleting the whole drive guarantees there will be no fragged content left on the drive at all and as it is all being FTPed back on in one hit, the content will be put on the drive from start to finish of each file / folder.

There is one point that you may consider. In the bios settings in EvTool, The evox bios tool used for customizing the M8 Bios, there is a setting for reset. Hard reset or soft reset I think it is worded as the choices. It is when you hit both triggers and hold two buttons to exit from a game or just to reboot the machine if not in game play. I have always left this setting as hard reset. Thinking about it I think a soft reset would be best when games are being used on the 2TB. This feature is always being used when games are being used where as just movies and video, music and XBMC features, rarely used. I see no need to do a complete reset of the machine to change games like the hard reset does when a soft reset should be sufficient and should be a lot quicker.
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

I replaced two of the Seagate Desktop ST2000DM001 I had with Seagate NAS ST2000VN000
RunsilenT wrote:I only use EVO X bios as recommended by Xman for 2TB support and have no issues.
If I continue to have problems I will definitely be trying the EvoX M8 BIOS next...
RunsilenT wrote:I always use a ultra ata ribbon cable with my adaptors (cheap and will eliminate that).
If the M8 BIOS doesnt solve the problem, I guess I will have to try the ultra ribbon...
RunsilenT wrote:Once all my custom content is FTP`d to my xbox I go into every emulator and set default directories
that the emulator requires "SAVES" MEDIA for movies and artwork etc.
I made a backup of the "SAVES" folder so I don't need to set the directories each time...
RunsilenT wrote:I put all emulators on F in specific folders to me as I use my own adapted skin which requires this.
I put all my Xbox games on G
I'll try something similar on my next attempt...

xman wrote:I have always left this setting as hard reset. Thinking about it I think a soft reset would be best when games are being used on the 2TB.
I remember reading a thread somewhere in regards to this,
they had also recommended to soft-reset.
xman wrote:Personally I'd be doing the whole of F drive as a full block and then do G drive as a full block.
Noted, thanks...
One last question in regards to fragmentation,
Does multiple FTP connections fragment your drive?
I came across this thread:

"Multiple FTP connections"
http://www.theisozone.com/forum/viewtop ... 33&t=26082
Does transferring 4 files at once make the xbox have higher file fragmentation?
Also in regards to FileZilla I read that it's better to have your transfer type set to binary? (was set to auto)
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Re: Who runs a 2Tb drive?

Post by NeMesiS »

Alright, I finally had some time to play around with this again...
I started with a v1.4 console with thompson dvd-rom

1) TSOP flashed console with iND-BIOS 5003/4.67 (F&G)
2) Installed the new 2Tb drive along with SATA adaptor
3) Used my own Auto Installer to prepare the drive.
4) I installed XBMC, evox and MSdash to the root of C
5) Next I would use XBpartioner 1.3 to reformat F&G to 64kb clusters
I noticed I had to write the table then format to 64kb for each partition
individually otherwise the format wouldn't take.
6) I did a cluster test on both partitions. Result was 65.536 bytes
7) I set FileZilla transfer type to binary and FTP'd all my emulators to F
8) I would do this again for my xbox games on G partition
9) I allowed at least 50Gb free space for each partition

So far so good, everything working as it should.
I gave the console to a friend to try out...

More information about my process can be found here:
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... =13&t=4282

Fragmentation Notes:
The HDD noise I experienced earlier in the thread was a result of fragmentation..
If this occurs because of deleting or replacing certain files just install a temp file to
the partition your trying to edit, I used a file that was about 500mb...
Once that file fills the fragmented sections you will be able to continue without fragging.
It's probably best to leave that temp file where it is...
If you need to replace files your better of renaming the old file rather than deleting it.
I found this when I was renaming some xbe's, replacing the file would frag.
It was better renaming the old xbe's and leaving them there...
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