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[niwi7]

This week in my local bestbuy circular there is a Western Digital 7200 RPM 120 gig HD for 180 with 50 dollar mail in rebate. I was wondering if having a 7200 RPM HDD cuases heat problems in XBOX. If it does I can go with the Samsung 120 GB 5400 HDD for about the same price (w/o hassle of rebates) however I like the name Western Digital instead of Samsung...r Samsung HD reliable? Thanks

[SoulMaster]

[krazyK]

It all depends on what you want. I went for the 5400rpm for the simple fact that you won't see any performance difference while it's in your Xbox. 5400rpm runs a little cooler which would help when you start to do more hacks or upgrades to your box. On the other hand if you ever want to use your HDD on your PC you will notice the difference between the 7200 and 5400rpm. The main thing to remember is find the biggest HDD that you can buy because that space is going to go fast.

[MURDERER]

There is definetly a heat issue using a 7200RPM drive. The XBOX gets hot enough as it is! Check out these temperatures measured by nonamer66 on the xboxhacker forums.
http://www.xboxhacke...ST&f=12&t=8958
The XBOX HDD was specifically selected because it runs cool. The XBOX runs hot enough in its stock state. The newer v1.1 XBOXs run even hotter because it does not include an extra fan for the GPU.

iMURDERER

[niwi7]

aight i think im gunna go wtiht he samsung 5400 n e other issues?> btw krazyk isnt like the biggest HD u can put in xbox like 137 gb or sompin? so 120 gig is the bigest u can get w/o "wasting" space

rigt?

[krazyK]

I talked to a guy who is way into PC so this is coming from him. He said that 5% of your HDD is never used so even though you may have a 120gb HDD your not using 120gb. He went for a larger HDD I think it was 150gb so that he could use the full 137gb that the Xbox can recognize. I really don't care either way looking back at it though if I could start all over again I would have dropped a larger HDD in my box so I could get that extra 17gb thats 3-4 games right there.

[Nakor]

QUOTE

Many of the newer 7200 drives run cooler than cheep 5200 (sic)

True.

With most current generation 7200RPM drives there is little or no heat increase above that generated by a 5400RPM drive.

[krazyK]

Power consumption is another issue depending on the amount of mods you do to your box.

[POTF]

QUOTE (krazyK @ Jan 5 2003, 08:46 PM)

He said that 5% of your HDD is never used so even though you may have a 120gb HDD your not using 120gb.

Um.. I know you didn't say it, but I checked this shit myself on 2 boxes. You should have 108gigs on the F drive, and like 6-7 I think on the E drive. So you are losing 5 gigs at max I think. I could be wrong in these calculations, but I know I had over 106+ on the F, and 5+ gigs on the E, so It is 111gigs you are getting minimum. For more money I don't think 9 gigs is worth it.

Back on topic though.. I ran NexGen's System Info.. it has 2 temps in it, neither one has ever broke 95 degrees when I have had the Xbox on for 8+hrs. (It was like 96.3 or something after 10hrs.) My drive is a 7200rpm WD 120gig.

I saw someone else posted a link to another guy's results. I wonder which version (1.0 or 1.1) he used when he was measuring his results. Another thing is he is measuring from the hottest place in the box.

He wasn't using good equipment either I think, "I used a temperature sensor from my pc that monitors hard drives or graphics cards."  Ok, so it is probably decent, but how accurate is it? Doesn't he have anything else to use to confirm the results?

Like I said before he was measuring the hottest place in the box (next to the power source it seems from the pictures). So how does this really effect what HD you should get? Your overall temp in the Xbox might rise some, but if you have it exposed to an open space, and have the back open so it can vent properly, I don't see any problems. Now, if you shove it in to a TV cabinet and leave it running for a good while, that could be bad.

[Jsmith]

I've been running that Western Digial 120 gb 2mb cache 7200 rpm drive for months now, and have gone on without a hitch.  I haven't noticed any extra heat, nor any extra noise.
Go for it.  You'll be happy you did when you throw it into your PC in a few years.

[Exobex]

You don't waste 5% of space, it's simply not there!

There is a SMALL amount of space reserved by the drive for remapping known bad sectors (for example Maxtor provide an utility to "fix" bad sectors - once completed you have a drive with no bad sectors, just a "rattle" when it gets to the remapped ones as it jumps to the end of the drive to fetch them from the reserved area).

When calculating memory sizes (e.g. RAM):-
1 KiloByte = 1024 Bytes
1 MegaByte = 1024 KiloBytes = 1,048,576 Bytes
1 GigaByte = 1024 MegaBytes = 1,073,741,824 Bytes

Hard drive manufacturers don't do this, though, and it works in their favour:-
1 KiloByte = 1000 Bytes
1 MegaByte = 1000 KiloBytes = 1,000,000 Bytes
1 GigaByte = 1000 MegaBytes = 1,000,000,000 Bytes

This means that the true capacity of a drive is only approx 93% of the capacity on the box.

Here's how to convert between the two:-
RAM MB -> HDD MB = multiply by 1.048576 (or multiply by 1.024 twice)
HDD MB -> RAM MB = divide by 1.048576 (or divide by 1.024 twice)

RAM GB -> HDD GB = multiply by 1.073741824 (or multiply by 1.024 three times)
HDD GB -> RAM GB = divide by 1.073741824 (or divide by 1.024 three times)

For a rough HDD GB -> RAM GB conversion, divide by 1.07

I read about this years ago, but just to confirm it I've just found much the same info at:-
http://www.maximumpc...2001-08-10.html

[Jobe]

[Jobe]

Will I have to change anything in the BIOS for the 7200 to get the speed?

[Knuck3ls]

QUOTE (Jobe @ Jan 18 2003, 03:58 AM)

Will I have to change anything in the BIOS for the 7200 to get the speed?

No

[KazuyaWaruasobi]

If you don't plan to use it in a PC later, just get a 5400. The IDE cable is a bottleneck anyway, so you won't lose any speed, and it's cooler and cheaper.