Game updates dissapear from cache folder

[Keihanzo]

Hi there,

I like to have all my games updated in order to fix bugs and use dlc, so I copied into the cache folder of my hd ALL the 360 games updates available (about 800 mb). Everything copied fine, checked later with xexmenu and every file it´s in the cache folder, L4D recognises DLC... all okay.
That was yesterday, I played dragon age and mass effect for a while and switched off the console (plugged off the power supply, no standby) and today, my cache folder is empty. And it is not the first time this happens and neither i´m the only one experiencing those issues.

I´ve been experiencing these issues for a while but I never saw it this clear before, usually, some updates remain in the folder.

Quickboots, arcades and utilities allways remain untouched

I have two Jtagged boxes with the latest XBR (Jasper and Falcon) with two official 120 gb hd. I play from a usb drive.

Well, I don´t know what to do about this, any insight?

Regards

[Arakon]

It's normal. The console will erase updates after a while, only 4 are cached at any time, all others erased.

[Keihanzo]

Thanks for your answer Arakon. I supose there is no way to change this .

Family and friends use my consoles on a daily basis, so more than 4 different games are played the same day. If I play dragon age I want my Dlc to work, If some friends come, I want Rock band DLC to work, My brother want PES updates to work, my Girlfriend Lips DLC, ¿and what about Forza 3 DLC If I want to play a bit?... . Bah, only Kidding, but this is a bummer since nowadays, if you want to have the game complete and without bugs you need patches and DLC.

It is Clear that 360 was designed to be used with LIVE.

[d4m4n]

Maybe XBR can be patched to not delete the updates. It's a PITA to reinstall the updates many times a week if you play much.
It may not be very high on the XBR developers to-do-list.

[dough4you]

Do you need to keep the game updates in the Cache folder?  I was under the impression that when a game loads, it checks the cache folder for an update, and if it is present, it patches the game.
If this is the case, I would assume that you don't need to keep the Title Update once you've loaded a game once. 
Of course, then the pain in the ass is having to load 4 title updates at a time and then loading those games, and then repeating the process over and over and .....

If what I have written is incorrect, please let me know.

dough

[Keihanzo]

Do you need to keep the game updates in the Cache folder?  I was under the impression that when a game loads, it checks the cache folder for an update, and if it is present, it patches the game.
If this is the case, I would assume that you don't need to keep the Title Update once you've loaded a game once.  
Of course, then the pain in the ass is having to load 4 title updates at a time and then loading those games, and then repeating the process over and over and .....

If what I have written is incorrect, please let me know.

dough

A game is only updated when the file is in the cache.
As a matter of feedback: hope XBR team can patch their rebooter in order to erase this limitation. Removing ping limitation would be also nice. But anyway, I´m glad for what they give us .

Regards.

[bobp]

It's very messy (especially if new TUs come out), and only compatible with the xexmenu way of launching, but you can apply the update file directly to the default.xex for the game using xextool (xextool -p default.xexp -o default.xex.patched default.xex). If there are other patch files in the update you'll have to apply them all manually as well. This will let you have more than 4 patched games, but you will have to keep the original files if you ever want to update to a new TU, or use the regular (Cache folder) way of patching.

[Keihanzo]

It's very messy (especially if new TUs come out), and only compatible with the xexmenu way of launching, but you can apply the update file directly to the default.xex for the game using xextool (xextool -p default.xexp -o default.xex.patched default.xex). If there are other patch files in the update you'll have to apply them all manually as well. This will let you have more than 4 patched games, but you will have to keep the original files if you ever want to update to a new TU, or use the regular (Cache folder) way of patching.

Yeah, I used this method when we had to patch the xex and it´s not very good... lot of games can´t be updated this way, other games need more than one TU to be updated, it is messy to back the game to its original form and last but not least: it´s a pain to do it this way.

[sandungas]

The only way by now that i can imagine to simplify this problem is a hombrew app that looks for the content that you want to run... and copyes the TU... from a "cache permanent" folder.... to the real "cache" folder
Im not sure if the 360 can load cache contents while is working.... maybe a reboot after the copy is neccesary

Later on... maybe a similar feature can be implemented in XBR, but i have no idea of the technicall problems to achieve something similar




This "cache permanent" folder (or cache2 or whatever) must be created by the user, and will be not available for the system cache
The limitation of 4 files in the real cache folder must be there to avoid overload of the ram (probably all cache content is loaded when the console boots)

[rkkman]

Just to let people know my TU's in the cache folder have not disappeared over the past 3 months.  The only 2 things that may effect this our:

1.  Created HD out of a 160GB laptop Drive

2.  No live profiles being used..

Go figure???

[chr0nos]

i have a xenon XBR

got 90 TU on hdd, no dissapearing here.

[joeyddr]

Same here i got about 25 updates in my cache for a while now.

[HooGLaNDeR]

so far i haven't had any disappearing TU's either on my xenon xbr3

[ultra64]

7 TUs, 3 weeks, still all there too.

[Xb0xGuru]

TBH I've never had TUs disappear - I've had games on my stock 360 which were updated via XBL and the TU stayed there until I cleared the cache.

[rkkman]

It's normal. The console will erase updates after a while, only 4 are cached at any time, all others erased.

Where did you read that Arakon because I think you are wrong on this.  And for you to be wrong is not good.  People look up to you. 

[Keihanzo]

Maybe updates dissapear only with live profiles. Testing it these days, I´ll be back reporting in a week or so.

[Arakon]

It's normal. The console will erase updates after a while, only 4 are cached at any time, all others erased.

Where did you read that Arakon because I think you are wrong on this.  And for you to be wrong is not good.  People look up to you. 

With a live profile and using xbox live, load any 5 or 6 games that need an update from live, update, play and turn off. at the end, if you go back to the first, it will ask to download the update again. Unless they changed it in 8xxx, but I don't think so.. otherwise people would end up with a completely overloaded cache folder after a few years.

[node21]

I also haven't experienced this, but because some people do I added a feature in xm360 version 0.8 to support the concept of a "backup" cache folder.

hdd:\Cache2

xm360 lets you see your Cache, and your Cache2...and lets you "restore" everything in Cache2 to Cache.

Hopefully someone finds this useful. :-)

[Keihanzo]

I also haven't experienced this, but because some people do I added a feature in xm360 version 0.8 to support the concept of a "backup" cache folder.

hdd:\Cache2

xm360 lets you see your Cache, and your Cache2...and lets you "restore" everything in Cache2 to Cache.

Hopefully someone finds this useful. :-)

This is great node21! I readed it in the readme of your latest release. BTW Great utility  

Thanks for your great work

EDIT: As expected, with a non live gamertag the Updates didn´t dissapear.