Adding (external) storage to the Xbox

Throughout my travels on the web I have seen a recurring theme about expanding storage on the Xbox.

"Can I replace the DVD with a hard disk and make the Xbox think it's a CD?"
"Can you attach a drive to the controller ports? After all they're USB ports right?"
"I want to map an FTP share as a drive and run my games from there"



What all these questions have in common is that they seek to expand the capacity of the Xbox without replacing the hard drive with a larger unit. While admirable, all these ideas have some flaws (though one may be possible). I'll tackle the ideas one at a time in the order of possibility (and where impossible, usefulness will be used)

First: "Can I replace the DVD with a hard disk and make the Xbox think it's a CD?"
Reality: This, in fact, may be possible.

What it would require is a very intricate BIOS hack, which I used to think would be impossible. As I've seen BIOS hacks evolve, from PaulB's LBA48 patch up to the integrated OS's on the newest generation chips, I think that this may finally be in the realm of feasible. What it would need is a very bright person to have a very bright idea (even by their standards). This would be ranked as one of the top hacks of all time if it were pulled off and would almost certainly require a fairly sizable BIOS (I'm thinking a couple megs on the small side).

About this hack I can tell you only what I've said already, and this: It's so far beyond my skills, don't hold your breath for me to code it up for you.

"I want to map an FTP share as a drive and run my games from there"
Reality: This is currently (and likely forever) impossible.

When a game loads it runs in Kernel mode. This means it replaces the dashboard in memory and takes over the Xbox. It also takes over the NIC. once this happens, the game will stop getting data from the remote share and will do one of the following (depending on how far into the loading process it gets):

  • DDE
  • Crash and reboot
  • Crash and hang
  • Psychedelic colors as the ether throws it's net about you. (O.k. not really . . . unless you have some good .... nvrmind)

So the hard facts about this one is that it's not likely to ever happen. And for those of you that say "code it in the BIOS too" I'm not sure that it can be done for the local HDD, though I've learned not to doubt too much. In this case, however, I feel safe saying: "It ain't gonna happen"

"I want to use an external HDD on a controller port."
Reality: This is currently (and likely forever) impossible.

Everything I said about the Ethernet idea (except the last bullet) holds true here except the bit about the colors. In addition to the above reasons I'd like to point out that the ports are USB 1.1, thus they are likely to give you less than 4Mbps throughput (12Mbps half duplex, with accounting for flow control gives you 33% throughput rate)

My thought on this one: Give up.

note that you can use the drive as a really big memory stick, but not to play games from.