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New Xbox update to shrink some hard drive installs

by Justin McElroy on Aug 3rd 2009 11:30AM

Posters on Cheap Ass Gamer who keep track of Xbox 360 hard drive installs noticed that those who'd been admitted to the dashboard update preview program were seeing games take up markedly less space than before (a fact later confirmed by Digital Foundry). How much smaller? Well, DF noticed that King of Fighters XII and Raiden Fighters Aces went from 3.4GB to 703 and 484MB respectively, post update.

By DF's approximation, the update allows the system to be more efficient in selecting what non-essential data it puts on the hard drive. Though that results in a big savings in some cases, there are exceptions. Fable 2, for example, is no smaller post-update, leading us to assume Lionhead needed every inch of the disc for all that GOTY material.

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Tags: hard-drive, installs, king-of-fighters-xii, microsoft, nxe, raiden-fighters-aces, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (80)

"Good luck not getting banned, Peter!"

he doesn't need luck - Microsoft don't check the legitimacy of HDD's - & they won't in the foreseeable future.

The Voice chat in a couple of months comment made me laugh XD
It's something the 360 has had for almost 4 years :P

I have both consoles & this is what i've found:

PS3 = Better Hardware + Value, & Media Playback Capabilities.
XBOX 360 = Better Software, Games & Services.

Now i just need a BD burner & BD discs to fall in price so i can make my own BD Movies :P
1:1 BD Rips FTW! :D

GO PC!!!!!!!!!!............ 8\

*crawls back into cave*
^mumble^

If you're interested in getting in on the preview, you can still sign up and get in, as of a few days ago. I signed up on Thursday night, and on Friday afternoon I turned on my Xbox and got a dashboard update - a quick check to my email confirmed that I had been accepted into the preview.

I hadn't noticed any large amounts of game install files, but I'll be sure to check it out.

I mean I hadn't noticed any large changes in the sizes of the files.

Monday morning, why do you hate me so?

someone said in an earlier post that you need to delete the game install and do it again. so that is probably why you didn't notice a change in the size....

Yeah, I read that - but the fact of the matter is that I didn't even look at the sizes, because I didn't expect them to change.

Five....

Five Dollar....

Five Dollar BUSTAH WOLF!

The smallest game I've seen mentioned post-NXE update was Toryumon Mah Jong (a JP-only release) weighing in at 98MBs after install. Darn that old 50MB XBLA size limit, eh?

is some of the non-essential data, the security stuff MS puts on the disc that you wouldn't need over and over again if it's the exact same stuff?

Nope, when the NXE launched it didn't install the security stuff. Dual layer DVDs can hold 8.9GB and the highest possible install size is 6.8GB. The difference in size is the 2.8GB of security being stripped out.

Excuse my typo, 2.1GB of data being stripped out.

It's most likely dummy files being stripped since they aren't needed when running off the HDD.

Sweet, this will make a ton of space for more por--... music. Yeah, good ol' music.

You don't put porn on your 360...

you stream it.

When will this update be released for the public?

August 11th

Now if only they would shrink down the rrod and e47 errors..

I have the same elite I started with about 2 years ago (actually I just turned that one into bust buy because my warrenty was about to expire and I wanted a new one) And that was running fine. They make things such a pain in the ass when you switch hard drives though (MS not best buy)

I have the Xbox Arcade( pause for laughs), unsurprisingly I am outta space. I do not own the expensive hard drive yet. Will this update help me out? I have save files for Mass Effect, Banjo Kazooie N.A.B, R.E.5 , Modern Warfare , and Orange Box . I'm pretty new to the Xbox community.

I think you may be confused. You have a system with no hard drive and you're talkimg about game saves, correct? This is talking about game installs, not game saves. There's an option on the 360 that allows you to copy a game disc to the hard drive. This allows you to play 360 games without the DVD drive spinning (less noise and reduced wear) and to have faster loading in most games. If you don't have a hard drive then you won't be able to use this feature.

Yes I was confused, but not now. Thanks.

Lately I have noticed some issues with audio quality in games running off my HDD. At first I thought it was just over compressed audio in Community/Indie Games but then it started happening in Battlefield 1943 and Fable 2 and Fallout 3 when installed to the HDD. Not sure what is going on but it is annoying.

Does anyone know if Call of Duty: World at War install shrinks in size?

I didn't get myself on the beta, but my hard drive is getting kinda full, so I'm looking forward to trying this out.

Sonic's genesis collection went from 3.4gigs to 700mb.

Guys, atleast comment on the picture. I haven't seen a post about it, and it all seems that you are ignoring it. So, who's that suppose to be? A guy from KoF? A pokemon fan?

to get the decrease in size, do you have to uninstall then reinstall the game, or will the size shrink by itself?

Uninstall and reinstall

Yeah I've noticed the install size has shrunken also. Before I would try to install Soul Calibur 4(one of my favorite Xbox 360 games of all time) and I only had 4.4 GB of Storage left and it wouldn't install, now post update it installs and I had 20 MB of hard drive space left even after I installed GTA IV (which takes up 6.8 GB's on my hard drive already). So yey.

so will this update brick the guys who mod their xboxes and steal games?

Seriously! I was just going through my hd yesterday clearing everything out so I could fit COD MW games. All I have is Hexic, Puzzle Fighter, and UFC Undisputed in the hard drive and I was able to leave 6.6gb free... to bad I need 6.7gb to download it to my hd, FML.

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New Xbox update to shrink some hard drive installs

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