Xbox 360 Internal Drive: Third Time’s a Charm
I’m infinitely fascinated how home consoles evolve over their life span. Unused ports disappear, hard disc and media drives get swapped for faster/quieter/cheaper models. I recall my launch PS2 has a little blue light that flashed inside of it that I never noticed on any other system. Cute witoo light. *pinch*
Anyway, Microsoft has already begun rolling out the third drive for my beloved Xbox 360, this one coming from BenQ-LiteOn-Philips. The drive (BenQ VAD6038) apparently runs whisper quiet in comparison to the previous two drives used by Microsoft. I believe those two drives were from Samsung and Hitachi (in no particular order) but feel free to correct me.
According to the forum poster linked below, it’s not just an audible improvement. The drive is also more efficient, improving load times and game performance. There are a bunch more nude photos of the 360 over at their forum, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Via Xbox-scene tipped from Engadget
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oh..ok. I’m glad that you weren’t the one opening your 360. You don’t want to cancel out your warranty.
Actually, this would be the fourth drive. The first three were a Toshiba-Samsung, a Hitachi, and a Phillips. It sounds like they’ve stopped producing Xboxen with the TS and Hitachi. Which makes sense, as those are the two drives that have been pretty extensively hacked. AFAIK, the Phillips has not been hacked (or not as much as the other two) so it makes sense to drop the hacked drives and start releasing consoles using only drives that don’t have weird firmwares floating around.
It actually pisses me off when they release new versions of consoles. I wish they had quieter, more reliable drives from the very beginning.
My xbox’s drive broke the other day. I got SOO mad. luckely i have a 2 year warranty. If i had the one year id be screwed.
But they should really make a solution to the drive scratching your games. Im tired of buying gears of war over and over again!!