Play legit Xbox 360 games from hard drive without the disk??

[NoSmokingBandit]

Halo 3 caches stuff to the hdd, but if one isnt present it just doesnt cache anything. It only helps load times, the game doesnt rely on the hdd being present.

I read once where a guy tested Halo 3's loading times on different 360 hdds and found that the larger drives cut loading time almost in half because of the larger cache on the drive itself and faster transfer rate. One would have to assume that no hdd only increases load times even more.

 

[RBRat3]

Well cache is cache no matter how you look at it, if the feature is there its gonna use it wether on cd or hdd. Even pc games will cache to the hdd when its installed to the hdd especially with low ram but it will still do it with a large amount. Is it a performence decrease yes and no, I can see how it can slow down loading times a wee bit from being accessed at the same time. But you also need to see that games do utilize compression and is a good reason cache exists. consider loading, the hdd will unpack the required files into cache and files the that need to be loaded into memory and readily accessable files will be thrown into ram. This does improve game performence in a way have you ever noticed while your playing a game on the 360 useing a cd that textures seem to get replaced at the last second that in comes into view and you get to see the switch between the low res and high res texture. on the hdd since the game to cache and ram is constant the anomaly should be non-existant tho useing the cd does the same order but due to a reading bottleneck it happens every now and then, nothing is ever perfect. Where the claim that games were optimized to be ran off the cd is true, but running a game off the hdd is not a perfomence decrease but a slight improvement. The games are designed and optimized around the fact that reading off the cd is slower than ****.

 

[xenocide100588]

The disc looks for the data on the disc first, so it goes to read the disc for the data first, and when it doesn't find it there, it goes to the hard drive. The slower speeds come from it looking for the data on the disc first, instead of going directly to the hard drive.

Actually, this is incorrect... the disc is only read to verify the security code at the beginning... basically saying "Yes... this is <insert game name here>". Once that is done, the optical drive stops and the game loads from the HD. I've noticed significant performance INCREASE when loading from the drive instead of the dvd. Of course, I'm using the new 360 Slim model... although I doubt that has anything to do with it... The only difference I can see is that the internal xbox360 hard drive on the slim is straight SATA II instead of running a modded USB/SATA combo like the old HD was in the series 1-3.

The older xbox360 games... such as Halo 3 and such are not optimized for harddrive install.. and therefor will naturally be a little slower... however, I recently installed TES IV: Oblivion to the harddrive and noticed RIDICULOUSLY fast loading times... as with both L4D games and both Modern Warfare games....

Hope that helps..

... just a thought.... why doesn't bungie release a patch once in a while instead of not updating HALO 3 in months!!

 

[chesterb]

My suggestion (and i did this myself today), is to get the discs buffed (i hate doing this) and then install them. The 360 seems to use the disc as an identifier only, and then runs from hdd (as someone has stated). My Borderland disc had a deep scratch right around the outside of the disc, making the game unplayable, then i made it a whole lot worse by trying the "toothpaste trick" to buff the discs (note to everyone, don't try the toothpaste trick). The end result was me taking a very scratched borderlands disc to block buster, they buffed it & got all the small scratches out, but the deep one was still there, however it managed to install and now, i can play the game with no issues, it reads the disc one to start, then it's all HDD.

 

[viper73]

The one that said that games run slower on the hard drive than on the optical drive, you are an idiot!!! Most optical drives today run at about 10mbps read speed. If you haven't noticed yet, the hard drives on the xbox 360 are SATA. They run at between 100 and 300mbps. And when you said it looks on the optical drive first and then the hard drive, all wrong. Ever notice the button on the screen saying "Play from HDD"? There is a reason why it is there. To play the game from the hard drive obviously. The only reason the disk is in the optical drive is for verification that the game is not illegal and that you actually own it. I happen to know a lot about computers and electronics. I also know that the xbox 360 is a computer in itself. So I can tell you right now, you don't even know what you are talking about. Unless you absolutely know what you're talking about and have facts to back it up, don't fill other people's brains with your BS theories.

 

[lewis82]

Chill out, man... this thread is two years old

 

[jmc548]

Was hoping you wouldn't say that.

Hey I was wondering: If the Xbox requires the original disc as a key to launch the copy that's stored in the hard drive, couldn't a copy be made of the original disc? The xbox isn't going to be playing what's on the disc, it only needs to match the title on the disc to the version that's on the xbox. That's just my theory. Do you or anyone else know if this is a possible option?

 

[Nermal]

A copied disk will fail the verification.

 

[Jon Surrey]

If you have Syphon Filter and a usb->xbox adapter you can mod your box and copy the games right over. I have a modded box witha 200gb drive in it with movies, games, and all sort of goodies on it. Google "xbox softmod" and there will be tons of resources to help you out.

Only comes up with the original Xbox (splinter cell) soft mod - could you chuck me a link??

 

[b_scott]

it doesn't matter if your disc is scratched, it should verify it easily. Seems like the original poster is more looking to go diskless completely and/or is asking a shady question.