yes, your correct, i turned it off just for a short time just to let me out the snow bank as per manual.

My cousin has a 2001 and I have a 2004 and 2006 X5. There is a very big difference in traction between mine with Xdrive asnd his without. X drive is an excellent system and much better than the previous system the X5 had.
Over the past few months ive done some prety serious offroading and have not had one problem yet. Except for knocking my running boards loose from deep mud.

Both systems are called XDrive. There is no X5 without XDrive.

Quote from wikipedia:
"BMW invented a new four-wheel drive system dubbed xDrive shared both in the X5 and X3 in 2004. Instead of using the previous X5 system which consisted of power being split 60-40 (rear wheels-front wheels) and DSC to brake wheels losing traction, xDrive could variably cut off power to the front or rear axles in a matter of milliseconds, while transferring 100% of the engine power to either, thus allowing the vehicle to regain traction quickly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_X5

Yeah, ahh, I was wrong. There are two different styles of AWD....again...ALL X5's are AWD (let me clarify, again, ALL X5's are AWD...I misspoke when I said it was called xDrive prior to 2003).

So you are supposed to turn off dsc when stuck in heavy snow?

Maybe that is why I got stuck on the edge of my driveway with like 1.5 feet of ice and snow stacked on top of each other.

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