What was the Hard Drive in the Original Xbox actually used for?

The Original Xbox launched in 2001 and it brought a few innovations never seen before to the video game console industry. The first would be a built-in hard drive that was not an optional add-on, rather it was a core component of the Xbox hardware. But did the hard drive provide any benefit other than large storage capacity for save games and custom soundtracks? In today's episode we take a closer look at the Xbox hard drive feature and how developers took advantage of it in different ways. Was it really necessary in the end? You decide and let me know in the comments.

Sources/Credits:

► Xbox Photo Credit: Evan Amos

Timestamps:

00:00 - 01:40 - Introduction
01:41 - 03:47 - The Xbox Hard Drive and its purpose.
03:48 - 05:23 - Save Games / Custom Soundtracks
05:24 - 07:21 - Developer benefits - Fast Loading
07:22 - 09:23 - Halo 2 caching and Doom 3 Texture Steaming
09:24 - 10:11 - Morrowind and the Hard Drive
10:48 - 12:28 - How the homebrew community adopted the Hard Drive
12:29 - 14:13 - The Xbox 360 took a step back
14:14 - 15:19 - Conclusion/Outro

Social Media Links :

#Xbox #HDD

[pennywisethedancingclown]

Copy all my CDs to the HDD when I was a kid

[Jimmithi]

I will NEVER forget booting up San Andreas on that original Xbox, and wondering why one of the radio stations in game had SO much Weird Al. That’s when it clicked in my 11 year old head that all my saved songs could be played in game. Blew my mind.

[CorporalDanLives]

I worked on a launch window game for the original Xbox. We had a gigantic file with all of the game data and our plan was to dump it into the utility region of the hard drive, interleaving the install with a FMV tutorial that we would force the player to watch. Microsoft caught wind of this and I remember being in a call where Ed Fries bitched us out and said, I remember this as clear as day, "have you ever played a console game WITH AN INSTALL SCREEN!?"

We wound up decreasing the size of the install file, killing the tutorial video, and then hiding the install during a string of countless, unbearably long licensing screens, which we claimed were required by the licensors, in order to make Microsoft stop complaining about how long the initial ioad was.

[SourVodka]

The Hard drive was meant for Roms Microsoft was so thoughtful .

[deanchur]

10:07 "The hard drive, was crucial"

I always thought XBOX hard drives were Seagate

[YarugumaSou]

2001: Too much storage space I don't know what to do with them
2024: Barely enough to fit a CoD game

[alexmurphy]

Here's an interesting anecdote. Back in the day I worked in QA on Project Snowblind. In those days it was common procedure to record to a VHS everything that the tester was doing in case there was a crash caused by some random event or some other hard to reproduce bug (that way the tester could just play back the video and see exactly what was happening). Well, on the Xbox version of Snowblind the developers added a debug feature that perfectly recorded the user and game actions to the hard drive and could play it back just like a video recording that would result in 100% reproducible crashes every time. One of the coolest debug features I've ever seen implemented in my QA career.

[vhfgamer]

I actually really liked the xbox 360's ability to install games to the hard drive.
When Skyrim came out, my brother bought it right away as he usually did with new games. I didn't have any money, so I didn't have any ability to buy it. One day his girlfriend's kid knocked over his Xbox and caused a circular scratch to form on the disk. It no longer could play, but the system still recognized it as Skyrim. I asked him to give it to me, and he did. He wandered off and bought himself a new copy.

I went down to a red box kiosk, and rented a copy of Skyrim for a couple bucks. I used it to install the game onto the hard drive, and then I returned the rented copy. Then I could put the scratched disk into the Xbox, it recognized it as Skyrim, and I could play the game. It still works to this day. So effectively I got a copy of skyrim within a month of release date for 2 dollars.

[besc]

Morrowwind rebooting itself to solve a memory leak is wild. I wonder if anyone ever found the memory leak.

[blakegriplingph]

Surprising you did not mention _Blinx: The Time Sweeper_ whose rewind mechanic made extensive use of the Xbox's hard drive.

[JordanRNolan]

If you still have an OG Xbox with the original drive, please check out the DLC Archive project and see if your content is needed.

[nathanddrews]

OG Xbox ruled my world for a solid 5 years. Halo CE, Ninja Gaiden, Fable, Burnout 3 and Burnout Takedown, then it got new life with XBMC.

[AthanImmortal]

Original Xbox remains one of my favourite consoles ever. I modded mine, put an 80gb drive in there and just ripped everything to the drive. I could start Midtown Madness 3 loading, keep mashing the button to just get into a quick race and be in the game in 8 seconds. EIGHT SECONDS! This was like having an SSD before they were a thing. The speed of the hard drive compared to a dvd drive given how much data it needed to load was just unbeatable.

[ACatCalledSnow]

The custom soundtrack feature is why I bought an OG Xbox on launch.

Being able to burn CDRW's at 1x speed full of downloaded MP3s and copying them to the hard drive for custom soundtracks, good times.

But having to manually rename songs using the controller was a pain.

Great video, MVG.

[FrothingFanboy]

The video keeps talking about Halo 2, but the loading was just as impressive for Halo 1. One big load at the start of a gigantic level, then just tiny stutters when playing through it.

[AdamGs]

The OG XBox was my first experience with emulation and console modding. I installed an Xecuter 3 mod chip and a 200gb hard drive. I absolutely loved that thing. Being able to rip discs straight to the hard drive and play them off of it blew my mind back in the day. I also had it loaded with emulators. I even had my entire music collection on it. About 30gb at the time. I had it hooked up to my badass late 90s stereo system. You know the ones. The stereos that took up as much space as a small refrigerator. I would have parties and play music with the visualizer going on my 36 inch Toshiba CRT. People were amazed I was playing that much music without a disc changer. I still have it and it still works.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[JonnyWaldes]

The HDD was absolutely necessary after modding the console. You replace the 18gb HDD with a 250gb loaded up with custom roms, backups, media players and movies. It was da bomb!

[random_n]

360's DVD drive was such a jet engine. Even with slower load times, installing to the HDD was worth the peace and quiet. Wasn't worth losing the blade UI though - that was something special.

[KarlRock]

Man I loved that console 😍 The experience felt next-gen with the HD.

[emmettturner]

DMCA was in effect when XBOX launched and you absolutely can legally rip music for custom soundtracks today. The reason consoles don’t offer it today probably has more to do with consumers no longer buying CDs and the disc drive itself being optional.