Hello everyone, today I bring you a small update to v2.5.3 that was published not so long ago. The update is live at the time of this post. The purpose of this update is to fix a few more bugs and to address the latest Xbox 360 system update.

In case you haven’t noticed, v2.5.3 was released back in March with a lot more changes. If you aren’t upgrading from v2.5.3, please see the v2.5.3 release notes here to see what else you can expect when you upgrade.

New USB Format

Basic support/detection has been added. It really is basic – Integrate into Windows has been replaced with “Open Folder”. Open Folder will make sure your Content folder is not hidden and open Explorer right to your content for easy browsing.

The Toolkit, Content, and Recovery views are not supported. The new USB format is not FATX, which is what these views were designed for.

The Content View may be supported in a future update.

Fixes

  • Fixed a relatively rare bug that would cause FATXplorer to silently crash on startup. Additionally, a new check has been added to verify the existence of essential components to help explain why FATXplorer may not start up properly. With this in place, FATXplorer should rarely crash on startup, and in the rare event of it doing so, will give more information about what went wrong and how to fix it.
  • Added handling for an extremely rare Windows issue where setting taskbar progress could cause a strange error message.
  • v2.5.3 fixed a bug where the Content View would fail to add items with the Read-Only attribute set. This fix didn’t work for games on demand and other package types that use data files. The fix is now working for all package types.
  • Fixed a caching bug in Windows Integration – renaming a file or folder would update the file system metadata, but not the information stored in the cache. This could lead to very strange behavior in the integration session. <= Important fix!

New Features

  • Added a Security Sector archiving feature. FATXplorer now automatically saves a backup of the Security Sector of every HDD you open to a folder named Archived Security Sectors. They are saved here in case something goes wrong with one of your HDDs and you need to restore the original Security Sector to fix it. Security Sectors are an important part of Xbox 360 HDDs and having a backup is recommended. For more information about Security Sectors, click here.
  • The Reporting ribbon group has been replaced with a new “Support” group to make it easier to get help. This group features the following options:
    • Create Support Package: If you need to contact FATXplorer support regarding a technical problem, you can use this option to create a package that will be able to assist FATXplorer support.
    • Contact Support: Open the web support form where you can contact FATXplorer support.
    • License Information: The serial number, name, and organization you entered during product registration.

Removed Features

The USB features in FATXplorer are now unnecessary. They are being removed to avoid possible confusion.

  • USB Formatter – USBs no longer require any special formatting.
  • Console USB Patcher – 2 TB sizes are now supported on the console by default, patching is now unnecessary.

Poll Results

Thank you to the 482 people who took the time to vote. It’s great to see that there is still a lot of interest in FATXplorer!

Results as of June 9, 2015.

Based on these results, here’s what is going to happen:

  • Original Xbox device support will be added in the next major update. (Release date: TBD)
  • The defragmenter will still be done, but there is no estimate when it will be available as it is a very complex feature and if it’s not designed properly, data loss could occur. We don’t want that (-:
  • There appears to be little to no interest in a Mac/Linux version. Support for these systems is currently not planned as a result.

 

It’s disappointing that USB features had to be removed so soon after a major revamp, but it’s good to see Microsoft finally allowing more flexible storage options for their customers. FATXplorer customers had the ability to use 2 TB storage years before anyone else could!

The next update is already planned! Get the latest news here.