[bonzobanana]

Could I just install xbmc and configure it so the xbox is always on and be accessed by other computers, xboxs, 360s, ps3s and various other portable media devices?

Also is there any power saving facilities to limit power consumption. I'm pretty sure there is a hard drive power save mode and possible a black screen screensaver mode. Any low power mode for the main cpu? Its a portable celeron processor I think in the xbox.

I'm thinking of using an old xbox without dvd drive so is it possible to replace the dvd drive with another ide hard drive?

I have a netgear sc101 but from what I understand as a nas drive its very limited so I'm going to strip out the hard drive and sell it as an enclosure only.

If the xbox isn't suitable can someone suggest a easy to configure nas/network enclosure which will be accessible by as many devices as possible.

My devices;

Various original xboxes with xbmc
windows xp pc
vista ultimate laptop
possibly a linux pc
ps3
xbox 360
pocket pc/wifi
tapwave zodiac/wifi
psp

media I want to share is purely mp3s and divx/xvid material.

[oddfeld]

Originally Posted by bonzobanana

Could I just install xbmc and configure it so the xbox is always on and be accessed by other computers, xboxs, 360s, ps3s and various other portable media devices?

An Xbox with XBMC will connect to pretty much anything, but accepting connections from other stuff is more limited - XBMC has an FTP server built in, plus it has a uPnP server, really designed so you can access media on one Xbox from another Xbox, if you have a network of them hooked up to every TV in your house, but it'll work just as well for sharing stuff out to other uPnP compatible clients such as Windows Media Centre or the XBox 360.

If you want support for any more protocols (fileserving over SMB, say), then it won't do that, although you could ditch XBMC, install Linux on the box and set it up to do whatever you like - it would certainly be possible to make a fully featured NAS like this, but not really a project for a linux novice. There's examples of people doing that on places like Tom's Hardware.

It's possible to ditch the DVD drive and stick a hard drive in its place, although you'll have to futz around with the power cable or use a y-splitter, and you'll have to jury rig some way to mount the drive in the large tray for the DVD-ROM drive.

As for power saving features, I'm not sure - I know there's no hardware support for wake-on-LAN.

[Chett]

Two Hard drives do work in a xbox but they wont both work at the same time, they both need XBMC (or any other hacked dash) set up on each drive and partitions C:, E:, F:, G: X:, Y:, & Z: (or one big F: and loose the G: ) to work, you`ll also need a switch on the hard drive power to alternate between the two.
Unless you flashed with Cromwell and made it a Linux only box.

[bonzobanana]

I have a spare xbox which I could certainly flash with cromwell but I'm not a great linux fan. I tried installing it on a pc but couldn't find drivers for some of the hardware on it and it was useless because of it.

Is it really hard to configure as a full network/nas drive using linux? That sounds like the ideal solution but its really all down to how much time I have to dedicate to do it. I really need an idiots guide.

[Chett]

I think your best bet is to start with Xubuntu, not the desktop xubuntu, theres also a version for the xbox called xubuntu and try to follow some of the posts on one of the many Ubuntu forums on how to configure it as a NAS.
Linux on the xbox is err, painfull, but if you set it up without the desktop environment and created some sort of headless server it might turn out to be a worthwhile project.

[bonzobanana]

thanks chett, sounds like it will be too time consuming for me. I'm not a linux fan anyway and it sounds like there will be a steep learning curve before I can get my head around it.