Can I use an SSD instead?

Hambrew

Well-Known Member
OP
Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2018
Messages
597
Trophies
0
Location
Yoyle City
XP
1,598
Country
United States
Can I, if I unlocked an XBOX (i don't have any XBOXs, but just wondering) to support other hard drives, could I possibly use a SSD in place of an XBOX hard drive?
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,348
Country
United Kingdom
Softmod only supports drives that can do the locking thing. While it is part of the IDE spec not all drives will. http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list has a nice list you can search.

TSOP/chip supports any drive as they don't need to lock. Recall that TSOP models of xbox are the older models and the last ones made will need a chip.

Most SSDs you will find today are going to be SSD in nature. IDE/pata SSDs did exist for a hot moment but they are rare these days, usually very small and probably quite slow as these things go.

SATA to IDE/PATA adapters do exist. I am not aware of any that support/emulate locking, and if there are any then you will have to look for very specific model numbers (no such list or anything). Someone in the future might have a look at this sort of thing similar to how we see optical drive emulation devices being made for all manner of other systems this last few years but that would be the future.
To that end you would have to couple a chip/TSOP mod with an adapter and cram it all in the case (there is some space for such things but some of the adapters I have seen might see you struggle a bit, though in this case with a 2.5 inch SSD that might offset things).

Said adapters are not typically the fastest things on earth either (it is kind of a niche thing) so I don't expect much in the way of speed boost or anything, and frankly loading things from a hard drive is already prone to considerably boosting things over what a DVD (or even worse a file by file dumped ISO) would achieve.

If you have a stock of such SSDs for some reason then yeah, otherwise a decent IDE drive should still be reasonably available, and you can probably pick up a few IDE drives of decent nature, set them up ahead of time and set up a thing to auto copy your saves and whatnot whenever it sees the xbox on the network.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DinohScene

NeMesiS

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Jul 6, 2016
Messages
47
Trophies
0
XP
332
Country
Australia
If you want to use SSD I recommend the ORICO 2.5 to 3.5 adapter as it will put the SATA and Power connections where they would be if it was a full size 3.5
I've used cheaper chinese adapters without issues but I do replace there chinese capacitors with RubiCons...
In this case I would use a Ultra IDE (80 wire) cable...

HINT: I use 80cm IDE cable and can fold it in a way where there's no rats nest and doesn't require flipping of the HDD IDE connector...
Another HINT when using an SATA to IDE adapter... It is possible to take the molex connector apart and put the wires in upside down,
so that you have nice fitting cables (cable management)...

I can post an image if anyone's interested...
 
  • Like
Reactions: DinohScene

barronwaffles

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
344
Trophies
0
XP
1,150
Country
Syria
@FAST6191

One of the more common PATA -> SATA ICs (JM20330 ? ) supports locking - I'm fairly certain it's actually still part of the standard.

Speed isn't really an issue with the adapters - the biggest problem is some of the common board designs have a pretty sluggish
power supply / filter that doesn't provide power to the conversion IC fast enough - the XBox usually ends up throwing an error
requiring you to cycle the power again.

I played around with the filter caps on some of the cheaper ones and had some success (lower value ceramics), but requiring
a power cycle wasn't a big enough issue to worry about for most users.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DinohScene

NeMesiS

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Jul 6, 2016
Messages
47
Trophies
0
XP
332
Country
Australia
TSOP/chip supports any drive as they don't need to lock. Recall that TSOP models of xbox are the older models and the last ones made will need a chip.

Only the v1.6 requires modchip all others can be TSOP flashed!
Hard modding will make things alot easier...
If you can't solder you could try and use conductive glues (for TSOP only)
Something I've been meaning to try, even though I can solder...
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,348
Country
United Kingdom
Interesting info on the adapters. While locking is part of the standard most things we have ever seen as far as caddies, adapters, end user cards... don't really support it or have seriously bugged support for it as it is so rarely used.

As for 1.6 xboxes then they always seem to be the most common whenever I go looking for things.
 

barronwaffles

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
344
Trophies
0
XP
1,150
Country
Syria
I haven't actually run across any internal adapter that has had issues with locking, but I can imagine it's pretty common issue on external caddies/adapters that don't provide their own specific device driver - it's most certainly not part of the USB external storage standard.

I think I recall a modified linux distribution targeted at this issue for xbox users - it had a modified external drive module that forced support for the required ATA commands.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ryccardo

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    NinStar @ NinStar: CRAZY HAMBURGER