Installing xbox games to hard drive

[lord-of-creation]

Something i've never done but I'm about to start after my MW2 disk was scratched so bad that it no longer plays

Just wondering, do you have to install before playing it or can it be done at any time?

[lost in espace]

You will need a working disc regardless as you have to put it in to play.

[lord-of-creation]

lost in espace said:

You will need a working disc regardless as you have to put it in to play.

Yes but It wouldn't have got scratched in the first place as it was during playing that it got scratched. When installed to the hard drive, I assume there is no disk reading going on (just reading from the hard drive) and therefore no disk scratching

[CypherP]

The console will first check to ensure that a genuine copy of the game is in the CD drive. Once it has confirmed this, it will load the game from the hard disk, providing it has installed correctly. If the disc is that damaged that it will no longer load using it, then its questionable that the console will be able to write the game to the hard disk, but worth a go I guess.

[andrewrob]

You will still probably be able to use it. I had the same problem with a battlefield disc and still use it now.
Install a friends copy and your disc will still probably startup fine as if its scratched in the usual place it doesn't read that bit when it starts the game to check a disc is in.

ETA You are correct about the no disc reading once its installed apart from the initial check to make sure you have that game inserted. So if you pick your console up and shake it the disc will be fine after this point as it is not spun up again.

Edited by andrewrob on Friday 14th October 09:19

[BenM77]

Go to gamestation and get the disk repaired, then load it onto your xbox.

It only needs to spin up to verify the disk so you might get lucky

My xbox was scratching disks so I sent it back, Microsoft are very good even out of warranty.

Ben

[lord-of-creation]

I wasn't asking this with regards to installing MW2 and hoping it would work again

It is for all future games so that I don't have this disk scratching issue again

The reason I asked about whether there is a right or wrong way/time to install the game is that I had noticed someone in the forza 4 thread had said something along the lines of "I won't be installing the game before playing it this time ). Perhaps he was just referring to how long it takes to install

[andrewrob]

Ah I see. No I think its just because of the time it took being two discs. I think the total install is somewhere around 10Gb.
I install all of mine, it doesn't matter when you do it.