Using your PC Hard Drive for a Console

[expletive]

MS has seemed overly reticent to admit or discuss larger capacity Hard Drives for the 360. This got me thinking if they have something else planned for additional storage. What are the technical capabilities of using a PC's HD over 100Mb ethernet? I would imagine a lot of people have a lot of free space on their Hard Drives going to waste that could be used for things like this.

I know that HD videos are an absolute no brainer, clearly MS could use windows connect to have the 360 see your computer as storage device and save all music and video to it. The bandwidth and latency is plenty to later stream this content back to the 360.

How about game Demos? How about installing final versions of games to the HD? For example, Genji will install 4G of data onto the HD to increase performance. Could a 360 game install several gigs of data onto your PC HD and then use it as a storage device later?

Given that the current 360 HD is a lower end spec'd unit, how would throughput and seek times compare with a 'good' PC drive over wired ethernet? How would the PC HD performance compare to the optical drive in the box?

I think once we discuss this, we can see how effective wireless could be as well...

 

[Sankari]

I wouldn't be surprised if you could use PC hard drive for Xbox360 on certain things later on. It would be nice feature. I'm simply struggling to have enough free space even with 160GB Hard Drive so I need a bigger HD.

 

[AlNom]

What are the technical capabilities of using a PC's HD over 100Mb ethernet? I would imagine a lot of people have a lot of free space on their Hard Drives going to waste that could be used for things like this.

Well, at best you're getting 12MB/s (probably more around 8-10MB/s on average) transfer rate. It doesn't matter how fast the drive could be because it's ultimately limited by the ethernet connection.

Seek times may be better, but there might be more latencies introduced anyway due to being on a network/router.

Given that the current 360 HD is a lower end spec'd unit, how would throughput and seek times compare with a 'good' PC drive over wired ethernet? How would the PC HD performance compare to the optical drive in the box?

I think once we discuss this, we can see how effective wireless could be as well...

Compared to a dvd @ 12x (16MB/s), ethernet is only slightly slower, but the average is also lower.


As for wireless.... I wouldn't trust it for a game. It'd be like using the Xbox drive in the Xbox 360 (besides possible interference).

 

[expletive]

Compared to a dvd @ 12x (16MB/s), ethernet is only slightly slower, but the average is also lower.

Do you think developers target the max transfer rate, the min transfer rate or the average?

 

[PeterT]

Doesn't the 360 support gigabit ethernet?

[edit]According to the wiki it does, so this whole bandwidth limitation discussion is moot.

 

[kyleb]

I think Wiki is wrong there, at least my hub doesn't recognize my 360 as a gigabit connection.

 

[expletive]

Doesn't the 360 support gigabit ethernet?

[edit]According to the wiki it does, so this whole bandwidth limitation discussion is moot.

I would agree but given the propagation of gigabit at this time, i can't see MS building a strategy like this around gigabit ethernet...

 

[patsu]

I think Wiki is wrong there, at least my hub doesn't recognize my 360 as a gigabit connection.

You're correct. Xbox 360 does not come with gigabit ethernet. It has a 100Mb ethernet port.

 

[AlNom]

Do you think developers target the max transfer rate, the min transfer rate or the average?

*I think* they profile the transfer rates across the disc spectrum and arrange data optimally on the disc.

edit: as opposed to just dumping the entire game onto the disc ala straight-up dvd burning.