Strange File on HDD ?

The avatar item could have been from an achievement your earned in game.

That must have take a while, to sort everything.

Something is trying to be saved and making the file corrupt.

See if anymore avatar items do the same thing.

There might something wrong with that part of the partition on the Drive.

cheers for the reply JUAN

but unfortunatley the problem still persists with the randomly appearing corrupted avatar file, i have to say that the file isnt one of the avatar items on my hdd its something that just keeps appearing for no reason and ive noticed that this seems to occur only after playing forza 4 (the only achievement i have recieved lately which was also tagged to an avatar item reward was the set a time in all rivals mode) and i'm pretty sure its not the HDD as it is only 3 months old and was sent as a replacement for my old one by ms support.

i also did the redownload of my gamertag which was suggested by xbox to do because of the recent gamerscore issue and also had hopes that by doing this it would help with my problem which it hasnt.

but i also have 2 new developments which only occured the other day

problem 1: when i inserted a game into my console which started to load it then requested an update which i was expecting it to do after applying the update i then received a message saying that the disc was unreadable (which i knew was not true as it had just booted up) i then cleared the cache on my hdd and then the game redownloaded the update and loaded fine (note that i have to go through this process everytime i receive an update for a game which is not normal)

problem 2 : now this one has only happened once so far, i was on the dashboard and using the guide feature to view my friends when the console just locked up, i left it for a little while as i thought it may just be a slow net connection for some reason and didn't want to turn it off incase it caused further problems, after 5 mins i then get a message popup saying that the main xbox update for the console had corrupted and had to be downloaded again, i accepted this and the console updated fine as far as i know and havent recieved this message again.

the thing is that if this was a hdd problem i would get problems right away upon turning the console on, but it loads the dashboard and my gamertag with no problems.

at the moment i'm thinking of transferring my profile and all my save files to a usb stick and then formatting the hdd to see if this helps as the brand new hdd i received as a replacement i just inserted into my xbox and started using it as i found that it was already setup and was fully recognized by the xbox (would like a support reply to this question before trying it incase of further problems arising)

these are the steps ive taken so far:

1: redownloaded gamertag (hasnt helped)

2: cleared my cache (hasnt helped)

look forward to hearing from anyone who knows how to fix this issue...

Hard drive problems, like you are describing, are hard to definitively say it is the hard drive because of all the problems, but some things are acting normally.

But I will tell you from experience, this is a Hard drive going bad. It just so happens it is not a total fail yet.

Having to re-download patches, Dashboard lagging locking up, items corrupting.  All adding up to new hard drive in your future. Good news is you can still get all your save data.

Back up all the saves you want and anything else you can think of, that can not be re download.

Some music tracks can not be download; Rockband/GH/LipSing those kind of games.

I really hope it's not the HDD going bad again especially as my replacement was brand new out the box from ms support 3 months ago (which doesn't really say much for these new hard drives if they are prone to self destructing so easily)

but what im going to do is backup everything to a usb, reformat the hdd and just keep all my saves and profile on the usb and just use the hdd to store dlc and installed games and see if i get anymore problems, when i last ran everything of the usb whilst waiting for my new hdd replacement i remember i never had any problems so i know it's not the console itself (although i'm beginning to think that the hdd ports in the console may be going bad for some reason and killing the hdd).

if i keep getting update and corruption problems after doing the above i'm probably going to have phone support as i'm sure it's all still under warranty, but i doubt they will replace the hdd again.

just seems weird that the only corrupt file i get is the avatar one and all other content on the hdd stays fine (apart from the one time corruption of the dash update), even the game updates on the hdd stay fine after i have redownloaded them and the console never asks for the games to be updated again when i play them, but as you say and i do agree that it is all pointing to yet another failure.of the hdd, beginning to wish i'd never traded my old arcade xbox in for this new slim xbox now.

but anyway thanks for your help

It was a refurbished drive?

I never heard of a sata port going bad, causing problem.

But it could happen. I don't know how you would go about testing that.

no it wasnt a refurbished drive they sent me as far as im aware because the drive came in the packaging as if it was bought direct from a shop, i really hope i didnt get the same drive back cos they said i would be receiving a new one but i think if it was the old one then it would have gone wrong way sooner cos after reformatting that one it died within a week lol.

at the moment i've resorted to playing the ps3 whilst ive got the xbox totally disconnected from all power sources before i do all the transferring and reformatting tomorrow.

as for the sata port i think if there was a prob with it then the hdd would not even be recognized by the system and the only people who can check that are the repair team if i send it in to be checked.

Great thanks for the update :)

Good to hear this was resolved for you. :) Please feel free to post another thread if you run into any other questions. 
 

Locking thread.