Purpose of Installing to Hard Drive?

Always wondered this. I thought it was going to be like a modded original xbox (yes, silly me) but I heard that it makes big games such as Fallout 3, Oblivion, HAWX run a lot more smooth.

Anybody know the actual reason?Purpose of Installing to Hard Drive?
decrease load times for most... not all games, sometimes it increases it or doesn't change it at all. plus its quieterPurpose of Installing to Hard Drive?
The Xbox doesn't sound like a starting chopper/ dying lawnmower anymore.
I just do it so the disk drive is never running, so that my xbox won't get RROD.
I do it because my Xbox sits right next to me on my desk when im playing so its alot quieter for me as the disc loading noises are really distracting, and also because my desk swivels about alot when im leaning on it so I don't want my discs to get scratched while playing.
it adds lifespan to your xbox360
I only have a 20GB HDD so I can't use it, but I've never heard of it improving things like texture pop-in in unreal engine games or games with long draw distances like Oblivion, and I wonder why? Shouldn't it help with things like that by improving performance and seek times over the drive, or is so much info cached in most games that it doesn't matter.
Ohhh, so say I get pissed off at a game and kick my desk and my 360 falls on its side with the disk inside while playing it but its being played from the hard drive, will it not get all scratched the hell up?
will not probably, but the xbox will definitely get rrods :)
You'll probably fry some other inner components.
[QUOTE=''mr_poodles123'']I just do it so the disk drive is never running, so that my xbox won't get RROD.[/QUOTE]

Genius.
Because it (generally) shortens load times and makes your xbox quieter.
A few times I have gotten ''disc read errors'' when the disc is perfectly clean. Installing the game from the disc to the hard drive fixed those problems, they seemed to pop up at the same time in the game. Load times seem slightly faster, which is nice if you're playing a game that needs to load frequently, so you save time on that.
My brother's 360 stopped reading one of his game discs, when he installed the game onto the hard drive then it worked again. I guess that could be a reason, but it's always baffled by as to why I would want to install a game on the hard drive. But after reading this thread it seems much more clear.
I can only afford to install one game at a time. I do it because it's quiet and often speeds up loading times.
I'm trying to think of a better way to say ''To increase load times and reduce noise'', but I can't.
I've installed a few that I play often just to reduce noise as others have said. Also, I have a badly scratched Mass Effect disk that was having trouble playing. Once I installed it it played fine.
Well this is always good news. Other than the part where I didn't install Madden '09 on there and my 360 got bumped and then the noise that makes gamers cringe happened. lol



But yea, thanks for all the info guys. And thankfully I have a 120 GB hard drive. lol
Something I am wondering about is, are you able to install original xbox games to the hdd ? I only have two original xbox games myself (Halo: CE and KotOR) but they are both on loan to a couple of friends who still own Xbox's so I cant ask them. I am guessing no, but I am curious as to if anyone else has tried this, its something Ive never really thought about until now.
I actually doubt you could do that. That's just like the modding of old xbox's... So my guess would be no. lol

Never hurts to try though. And prob still need the CD if able.