Xbox 360 - Install Game to Flash Drive?

With the recent update to the Xbox, an arcade + using flash drives for storage is looking pretty attractive to me. I rarely play more than 1 game at a time, so I don't need too much space, but wanted to know if installation performance is ok using the flash drives..

Has there been any benchmarks between running from the disc, installing to a flashdrive, and installing to the HD?

I tried searching for some hard numbers, but couldn't find much. Do you guys think it's worth it? Thanks in advance!

Depends on your flash drive. With most of them the XBOX will tell you there are "performance issues" but will let you use the stick anyways. I think it's a ploy to get gamers to buy the official (and way overpriced) usb flash drive.

In theory, it should provide a huge boost to loading times to load a game from a flash drive.

Unless there are some shenanigans going on by Microsoft by somehow limiting the transfer rate of USB devices that are not the "official" ones I would have to say most of them will be faster than the DVD drive, and also be a hell of a lot quieter as well.

I also am liking the idea of a 16 Gb flash drive to go with my Arcade. I'm still rocking the original 20Gb HD that came with my original Pro, which sadly lost a battle with a forklift. I have never played a game off of the hard drive so the decrease in noise alone would make it worth it for me, but I did find this article: Xbox 360 USB Drive Performance

Doesn't appear to be much faster than a hard drive install when loading, although install is slower. It would've been nice to see them do some throughput benchmarks with that same flash drive on a PC, just to have a reference for how fast (or slow) that particular flash drive is.

-Cuzoe

So the difference between the arcade and pro is the pro has a large hard drive? I have a feeling there are more differences, can someone enlighten me? I'm a total noob to 360s but the arcade+flash drive sounds like an interesting deal..

weirdsauce said:

So the difference between the arcade and pro is the pro has a large hard drive? I have a feeling there are more differences, can someone enlighten me? I'm a total noob to 360s but the arcade+flash drive sounds like an interesting deal..

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You're right. The arcade version does not come with a hard drive while the other versions do.

The arcade ver used to be neutered with only a component connection, no memory, and a wired controller, but those have been upgraded on recent releases for HDMI, 512mb of internal memory and wireless. It's attractive now because every few weeks there will be a deal on amazon or dell for the arcade version (really cheap price, extra controller, etc). The only downside was having to pay a premium for an xbox HD. But now with the USB option, the Flash drives are looking like an OK HD replacement.

You would have to have a real fucking high quality flash drive to run a game off it with better performance. In the PS3 going from the internal HDD to a SSD (which is the best of the best of flash technologies) shows marginal performance.

I highly doubt a USB flash drive of any type will offer a playable experience, let alone even work. The 360 features probably only installs to hard drives.

bigdogchris said:

You would have to have a real fucking high quality flash drive to run a game off it with better performance. In the PS3 going from the internal HDD to a SSD (which is the best of the best of flash technologies) shows marginal performance.

I highly doubt a USB flash drive of any type will offer a playable experience, let alone even work. The 360 features probably only installs to hard drives.

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I think you missed the point. It's not to get better performance, it's to get a cheaper one.

360 Elite is at the $300 pricepoint. An arcade w/extra controller was $170 at amazon last week. Throw in a $30 16gb flash drive for game installs, and you're saving $100 but + 1 controller.

Thanks for the links above. I've run some more searches - it seems that the USB can be as fast as an internal HD for loading or as slow as the DVD drive alone - it just depends on the game. Installs definitely take longer though. There's a few guys on the xbox forums running some individual tests.

bigdogchris said:

You would have to have a real fucking high quality flash drive to run a game off it with better performance. In the PS3 going from the internal HDD to a SSD (which is the best of the best of flash technologies) shows marginal performance.

I highly doubt a USB flash drive of any type will offer a playable experience, let alone even work. The 360 features probably only installs to hard drives.

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No argument on the need for a good quality flash drive for use on the 360. However, the PS3 uses it's internal drive in a way that is very different from how it used on the 360. On the PS3, (some) games have mandatory installs while the 360 is making an image of the disc. It makes sense, to me at least, that on the PS3 the speed is going to be tied in with the speed of the Blu-Ray drive, or the speed at which the game actually requires the installed data. I find that on my PS3, copying movies/music over to the hard drive is faster after having moved to a 7200RPM drive. Games however, as you mentioned, show negligible benefit.

The 360, as evident by the links from above, and through personal experience, does indeed allow you to install games to a flash drive. Said games also perform on par with or slightly better than the internal hard drive in most cases, while performing roughly equivalent to the optical disc at worst.

Blue Knight said:

You're right. The arcade version does not come with a hard drive while the other versions do.

The arcade ver used to be neutered with only a component connection, no memory, and a wired controller, but those have been upgraded on recent releases for HDMI, 512mb of internal memory and wireless. It's attractive now because every few weeks there will be a deal on amazon or dell for the arcade version (really cheap price, extra controller, etc). The only downside was having to pay a premium for an xbox HD. But now with the USB option, the Flash drives are looking like an OK HD replacement.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the info, much appreciated.

There is a lot of misconception about the speed of USB flash devices.

The DVD inside of the Xbox 360 is 12x, which is rated for 16.2 MBytes/sec.

Currently, none of the commercially available 16GB USB 2.0 USB drives can write at that speed.

http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/?g=16gb

The ones that are closest - are the Mushkin Mulholland and the Verbatim Store n go (red) which are specc'ed at 17Mbytes write speed (but in realworld testing, can be closer to 12Mbytes/sec) There is a Super Talent USB 3.0 that is fast, but its in its own price range.

As you go down to the 1GB models, the write speed can go as low as 1Mbyte/sec.

The read speed - is basically the same as the harddrive approximately 25 MBytes/sec is average and fine and will only affect load speeds slightly and have no impact on actual gameplay.

The main reason for getting a USB flash for me is noise. I hate the dvd rumble, and can even hear the slight harddrive spin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujSDOUSMHts

I'm surprised you can hear the 5400 rpm harddrive over the X360 fans. Even at low rpm the fans make a humming/reving noise.

Yeah, the fans are loud-er. Especially on non-jaspers. But I can still hear the drive - the 20GB I have does make a noticeable noise now that I can compare it to a completely silent 16GB USB.

If there was an *easy* way for me to mod the Xbox360 with a $20 Fluid dynamic bearing fan or a double size heatsink I'd do it right how.

It could also be the maybe 8 watts or so less power the system is drawing, or maybe a little bit more airflow restriction with the harddrive, but I'm sensitive enough to tell enough of a difference to plunk down $35 on a 16GB USB (that will actually have some use later on because its not proprietary)

Agreed about the noise. Granted, I work around awfully loud aircraft so my hearing is far from great.

Also agreed about the flash drive write speed, copying games to it is kinda slow, but it only has to happen once per game, or disk in the case of those pesky multi-disk games. But I've noticed no difference from the hard drive in game loading, which is all that I can ask for. A much welcomed new, if overdue, feature.