3tb Xbox Info

[captainn]

I've seen quite a few people posting online about 3tb drives in xbox's so I figured I would post my findings if anybody plans on trying it, and save them some time and money.

There is a 2.2tb limit, so you can't use the full 3tb's until xbpartitioner gets updated. I did a little cheat and got XBMC to show the extra 848gb, I don't know exactly if that is the remainder of the free space, it's just a number I threw together while tinkering with it

What I did was use XBPartitioner 1.2, or 1.3, because I changed the version # and fixed the freezing issue like Bomb Bloke suggested on xboxscene, I can provide the link to the discussion.

I can upload the source code if that is all right, I don't know if I can upload the executable or not.

I did the normal setup like doing a 2tb, but added the extra partition.
--------------Start Hex--------Size Hex
6-----F-----00 ee 8a b0-----73 b8 ff 00-----925.78 GB
7-----G-----74 e7 89 b0-----73 b8 ff 00-----925.78 GB
8-----R-----e8 a0 88 b0-----17 5f 77 4f -----186.98 GB


After I formatted the drive I took it out of the xbox and hooked it up to a PC with Windows 7 and used HxDen to view and edit the drive




Changed offset 128-12b to 66 66 16 6a
I saved and exited

And booted XBMC4Xbox 3.2




As you can see it shows 848.4GB free, but since it technically didn't format it, it still had the 16kb cluster size at 186gb, so after copying data over it corrupted and started overwriting everything

I can copy and paste all the info I found of people talking about it, if anybody wants me to.

Hope this info helps

[whufclee]

Nice work, I'm sure xman would be interested in this as he loves his large HDD's (especially if someone could work out how to format to the correct cluster size).

[professor_jonny]

it will never work in bios it uses 16bit number for sector size and with the constraints of the rest of the hdd parameters has a limit of 2tb with out rewriting the bios.
rewriting the bios is not going to happen and in doing so it would break all existing apps ability to work just like xmuggen which wont work on a big f partition it would also require patching the xdk librarys to support it.

I have looked in the machine code as i managed to aquire some of the original ida projects from oz_paulb and others if any one is up on x86 machine code i could pass on the project files.

[xman]

Interesting, As far as I was concerned H and I drives were already enabled. R definitely won't work because it is a controller port. Pretty sure all the drive allocations were shifted up two drives to allow for the 4 large drives and that this was done near 2 years ago. IdotsFan would be the one to tell you for sure as it was his fine work while modding XbPt 1.1 that this was discussed and the idea 2Tb would be inadequate in the future so it was increase to 4TB. From my talks all that time ago, I seem to remember IdotsFan supplied the patch for the code to enable the larger big arsed HDDs to work. Also involved in this work was the ability to write the 2 existing large drives at 128k. It was through the discussions of how much wasted HDD space would be used to do this, the thoughts went to creating the extra two large drive locations but I'm pretty sure that ability is still there. I for one was quite happy to keep it at 2 large drives simply for simplicity and the increase in directory size was not an issue really when considering you are using 3 or 4Tb HDDs.

[captainn]

I thought the bios was 32bits, and that they made the hacked bios's with lba48 support.
I don't ever flash the tsop with a lba48 bios, I've installed a lot of 2tb's and haven't had any problems.

I would like to check out the ida projects from oz_paulb, if you wouldn't mind sending them.


I didn't assign it to R, I think xbp did. You can change that in the hex editor as well, it's right above the partition start.
The only thing it can be used for is videos and media.

I've read all those posts about xbp1.1

He posted the source code on this site in "XBPartitioner 1.2 alpha source code"
I downloaded it and compiled it and it still froze on me when cycling through partitions.
So I changed the compare variable like Bomb Bloke suggested on xbox-scene and it fixed the freezing so I changed the name to XBPartitioner 1.3. I never tried 128kb clusters, 2x 900+gb partitions always work just fine for me

Idotsfan's changes still didn't let it see the full 3tb

If anybody is wanting I can upload the source to XBP 1.3, I don't think the executable is allowed is it?

[professor_jonny]

I have sent you a link via pm.

yes you are correct sorry 32 bit's
to add 2tb and beyond you would have to set aside another 32bit data segment for the upper segment of the sector number to add it up to a full 64bit to go beyone 2tb, the file system would support it but it would be a work of art to acomplish it and it will some what slow down access speed by poping and pushing between upper and lower segments of the sector count as we only have a 32bit processor so no 64bit contiguious segment is available for it with out a workaround.

yes the bios will work in theory support a hdd up to 144,115 TB or 144 PB via the lba48k but Throughout the kernel, a 32bit sector number is used for low-level access limiting it to 2 tb

[bengalih]

I hate to necro such an old thread - but it seems that the people who contributed above have a lot of insight/experience compared to a lot of the conjecture I've seen out there.

I haven't seen any proof that anything beyond 2TB is supported. However I have seen one or two references scattered on forums by people claiming 3 or 4 TB. These may have been typos but at least in one instance someone defended it (with no data).

I have also seen 3 and 4TB original modded systems for sale on ebay and the like, but whether or not they claim that is actual usable space I have not been able to ascertain.

With the development that has happened since this thread ended, is it possible to get more than the 2TB (~1.8) of usable space between the multiple xbox partitions?

thanks.

[captainn]

I hate to necro such an old thread - but it seems that the people who contributed above have a lot of insight/experience compared to a lot of the conjecture I've seen out there.

I haven't seen any proof that anything beyond 2TB is supported. However I have seen one or two references scattered on forums by people claiming 3 or 4 TB. These may have been typos but at least in one instance someone defended it (with no data).

I have also seen 3 and 4TB original modded systems for sale on ebay and the like, but whether or not they claim that is actual usable space I have not been able to ascertain.

With the development that has happened since this thread ended, is it possible to get more than the 2TB (~1.8) of usable space between the multiple xbox partitions?

thanks.

As far as I know nobody has broke the 2tb barrier as of yet, at least not released it publicly.

The xbox is a 32bit system and can only access 2.2tb total, so the biggest drive you can use is a 3tb which would give you 185gb extra free space but you can't use the full 3tb

You can use a 4tb or even a 6 or 8, but you would still only get the extra 185gb free space, just because somebody threw in a 4tb and it "works" and boots doesn't mean it automatically bypassed the 2.2tb limit

I have seen that guy offering 3 and 4tb's for sale, and even had somebody come to me after dealing with him and sent me one of his xbox's to fix, that guy just seems to be full of hot air thinking he stumbled across a secret or something, lol

The only way he could is if by rewriting his own BIOS and rewriting XBPartitioner, if he did then kudos to him, but I highly doubt he did. There's enough smart people out there that could do it, even team xecuter probably could, but not many people are working on the original xbox BIOS coding anymore, and nobody really released any usable source code either


Do you have links to where they are talking about it on whatever forums?

[bengalih]

Hey thanks for the response.

I don't have the links on hand (apart from that seller's links). These are just scattered things I read over the past few months while upgrading my own system and trying to learn. I probably will end my investigations after your statements, but if I continue and come across them again I will be sure to link them here.

So these xbox you got to fix from this seller, what was the deal with them? They had 4TB drives in them but only the 2.2TB available space - the rest was left un-partitioned?

Also - I want to make sure I understand what you are saying about the limit. The maths you give I've seen before, but the way you just phrased it kicked a light off. So...if you use a 2TB drive you only get something like 1.8TB usable space, right?
But - what you are saying is that if you use a 3TB you can actually squeeze another 200GB or so of usable space due to the extra space you can partition on the larger disk?

So, in reality - if you want the maximum amount of space you should technically put in a 3TB, but cost-wise it doesn't make much sense to go beyond 2TB because you only get like 20% off the usage of the 3rd TB. Is that correct?

thanks

[hawsey]

I have never seen the 3Tb thing discussed before , it is a waste but will totally max out your box , good idea

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

[captainn]

So these xbox you got to fix from this seller, what was the deal with them? They had 4TB drives in them but only the 2.2TB available space - the rest was left un-partitioned?

I just got a 2tb one, not a 3 or 4tb, no matter what his would just show the same amount of extra free space as a 3tb, you can't even see the unpartitioned space

Also - I want to make sure I understand what you are saying about the limit. The maths you give I've seen before, but the way you just phrased it kicked a light off. So...if you use a 2TB drive you only get something like 1.8TB usable space, right?
But - what you are saying is that if you use a 3TB you can actually squeeze another 200GB or so of usable space due to the extra space you can partition on the larger disk?

So, in reality - if you want the maximum amount of space you should technically put in a 3TB, but cost-wise it doesn't make much sense to go beyond 2TB because you only get like 20% off the usage of the 3rd TB. Is that correct?

thanks

Yeah pretty much only around 185gb, the way xbpartitioner shows the difference per partition is
1,044,695.50 MB (3tb) - 949,989.88 MB (2tb) = 94705.62 MB / 1024 = 92.5 GB *2 = 185 GB

3tb's are getting cheaper so it wouldn't be a bad idea to throw one in and get the extra free space anyway because sometime in the future there may be support past 2tb in the xbox

[bengalih]

3tb's are getting cheaper so it wouldn't be a bad idea to throw one in and get the extra free space anyway because sometime in the future there may be support past 2tb in the xbox

Yeah...maybe - except how many people are still actively developing BIOS' etc that would make this possible.
I'll stick with my 2TB that I recently threw in.
I suspect if they do ever figure this out there is at least a 50% chance you might need to re-partition the whole disk anyway if you've done it with a 3TB.
If and when such time comes I'll look to throw in a 3TB...they will only be cheaper

[professor_jonny]

If any one is interested I have the original ida project files with comments on the code also the flirt signatures that list and name a lot of the direct x functions etc that in obscure code in xbox bios images...

lots of it is from OZ_paul dan and a few others from the xbox Linux that wish to be not named if someone were to attempt this it would be the best resource to be able to accomplish this.

but I'm not just handing them out to any one as these files were created with licenced versions of ida and it is part of their terms of their software to not distribute projects and the original owners could get their licences revoked.

If someone has tools available to strip the metadata I'd be then happy to distribute them.

it is easy to decrypt the kernel and pack it back up as there are tools available, but you need to know a lot to be able to accomplish 2tb and beyond hdd support.

There is the xbox bios source code around and it has been built but as of yet I have not seen any one seriously get into it and start preforming mods of note this is the source for a v 1.0 xbox and is possibly useless as there is a new protection measures and mcpx rom code in the 1.1 that may mean this wont work on all consoles, I'm guessing one would have to extract the xcodes interpreter from a newer bios and patch it some how?
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32045 (please remove this if it breaks the rules )

[bengalih]

So I just posted a new thread here about E drive size:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7353

And then I remembered this thread and thought that someone here might be able to help answer that question.

I see in the OP the E drive size is only ~3GB, whereas mine is close to 5.

What dictates the default limits of this?

If you can create an E drive as large as F or G, what was the point/hassle of trying to make another letter (like R)?

I'm not really looking to have an E drive as large as 20GB, I'm just considering making it say 20 GB or so.

Has anyone tried this? Will it cause problems with any known apps/games, etc?

[Tom M.]

So you all still use Xbox as media center even when the CPU cannot handle new video codecs and FATX system is so limiting regarding media files generally, or what is the purpose of asking for such a large capacity? Games? They hardly go over 200 GB once I start filtering only those that make sence / are worth playing. In fact, I have 120 GB HDD and still over 40 GB free.

[bengalih]

So you all still use Xbox as media center even when the CPU cannot handle new video codecs and FATX system is so limiting regarding media files generally, or what is the purpose of asking for such a large capacity? Games? They hardly go over 200 GB once I start filtering only those that make sence / are worth playing. In fact, I have 120 GB HDD and still over 40 GB free.

This is just for XBOX games and emulators - no video.
And while OT - if you can only find 80 GB worth of XBOX games worth playing then you probably aren't looking hard enough.
True that while the ~2TB of games that exist contain a lot of junk, there is definitely more than 80GB worth keeping.

I did get some answers in my other thread about the E: drive for any interested.

[bengalih]

Oh...some other questions I'm just curious about regarding the drive structure at a technical level.

I guess I'm wondering if there was a good reason E: was partition one instead of C: ?

And, why/how does the Extended partitions (6 & 7) start at the offset immediately following E: (Partition 1).
I would think those would then be numerically sequential and if not then they should have started after all the other partitions (offset wise)?

I was always a bit mystified by the down and dirty of partition tables even though I've worked with (around them) quite a bit.

Thanks.

[scroeffie]

i need 3TB

[Dawscaus]

Wouldn't that be great