networked drive instead of larger HD?

[LazyBoy1]

Modded my box and put Avalaunch and XMBC on C:.
Not a lot of room left on C:.

I'm curious about the possibilities for maximizing networked drive
use and leaving C: as untouched as possible. One reason is that
I've already got a big RAID server. Another is that it might help
with XBOX live banning issues, although that's not a priority for me.

XMBC mounts drives over the network for media, so that's one thing.
But could Avalaunch mount a network drive and run XMBC and/or
emulators from it? Could the BIOS mount a network drive and run
Avalaunch from it?

I read that the XBOX apps were like DOS apps in that they replace
the thing that started them, rather than running "on top" of an OS.
Does this make running them from a network app impossible?
Or something that would have to be implemented for each app?
Or just in the BIOS?

If the apps themselves are hard to run from the network, what
about the many files in an Avaluanch or XMBC install besides the .xbe?

Thanks,
LB

 

[jwherbold]

I can not answer your questions, but I agree this would be a wonderfull solution. At least a USB HDD should be able to work through one of the controller ports.

 

[OP{MaF}]

Only problem with the USB HDD idea is that the xbox is USB1.1, which I believe would be far too slow to load games/DVDs/etc. off of.

 

[OP{MaF}]

Hey Lazy... I'll tell you what, I'll try it tonight. 100Mbit network at the house that I use to stream media to xbmc. I'll ftp a game over to the comp and try loading across the network to see how it goes. Will report back.

 

[jwherbold]

A USB drive would come in handy when my XB is on the road and not on my network. Would be nice to just Plug in another 200 Gig drive. Even if I have to move files. Alot easier to carry a USB drive than one of my PC's.

 

[Jzor]

I don't believe there are any BIOS with SMB support. So once XBMC exits to run the game you'd lose all access to the files for the game.

 

[OP{MaF}]

Well there you go. Smart man, Jzor - I was too excited about the possibility to think through the logistics. You're right though, without the BIOS handling the network connection, there would be no way for the launched xbe to access anything across the network.

Again with the USB hard drive thing... if you have a USB1.1 external drive, go ahead and copy a few GB data to it and back to your computer. It's freggin slow. Maybe I'm lazy or impatient, but I doubt I could even stand to keep a drive around with games on it if I knew that to play one I had to wait 10, 15 minutes to copy it over to the box. could be just me...

 

[jwherbold]

I know it is going to be slow, but again, when going on the road, it is easier to carry a usb HDD, than a CPU, monitor, etc.

 

[bollocks19]

dvds are even easier to carry

 

[jwherbold]

True dat... to a point, I can fit a lot of games to my little 200 gig USB HDD. It would also be nice for XBMC.