Xbox 360 HDD

[Kraftman]

It's all right, I've looked into it and there's only a little bit of additional work needed to get everything working.

For those that are so inclined, here's the gist of what you need to do for the process:

Credit for this doesn't go to me, it's from another forum.

P.S. Mods: If this is "crossing the line" in terms of what we are and are not allowed to post about the subject, feel free to remove this post, but please keep the topic open so we may continue to discuss it (Behind said line of course).

I didn't want to void the warranty on my 20GB drive (just a wee bit warranty obsessive), so I copied the files off using an xbox -> usb adapter.

The _only_ time I opened any drive was my secondary enclosure (eBay), and that was to flash it with hddhackr.

I did all the file copying over USB.

[Kushan]

I've got an adapter to connect the actual 360 drive shell to a SATA port, so I don't even have to open it to flash it (in theory).

[magik]

Bingo (Y)

Also I'm pretty sure it's against rules to talk about cracking/hacking hardware.

Well, apparently it's okay for the iPhone, so I don't see why not here. But, hey, you never know.... Ah, Neowin. ;)

[Kushan]

Actually I am fairly sure this is ok to discuss because it doesn't help piracy or anything like that. Modding the original Xbox meant you could play copied games, so some people seen it as a sort of "guide to piracy", but the only thing this really lets you do is hold more content on your 360 without paying a premium.

[Smashing Pumpkin]

As opposed to being able to play a game without paying a premium.

This is piracy, I'm no saint, but I'm sure if I started talking about this in a brand new thread it'd get closed pretty quickly.

[Kushan]

How is it piracy? You're still paying for a hard drive, a legitimate hard drive, the only difference is you're not paying for an overpriced one sold by Microsoft. It's no different to buying a 3rd party controller or taking up a good offer on a game (or even importing one because it's cheaper in Asia).

I mean Microsoft essentially buys the exact same sorts of hard drives from the Manufacturers, sticks them in a cheap plastic shell and sells them to us for up to three times the price. We're effectively cutting out the middleman and the fact that Microsoft hasn't banned a single person from Live for doing it (when they can ABSOLUTELY detect it - the hddss.bin file floating around the interwebnets is unique to whatever drive it was ripped from) shows they're really not bothered about it, probably because more space means they can sell you more stuff.

[Smashing Pumpkin]

Oh no, I'm completely for anyone who's techincally minded enough to do this mod and get away with it. I'd do it myself if I could be bothered to figure it all out.

I'm just saying that MS don't want people to use their own HDDs with the 360, it's only intended to work with the official MS HDD. I don't think that this topic of conversation should be allowed under Neowin's rules and regulations. I've had threads deleted before and warning added to my profile for starting topics or asking in excisting ones about things that were considered piracy.

I just think there should be some uniformity in the way the rules are applied.

Piracy talk, or no piracy talk. And this is more on the piracy side of the fence than the non.

How is it piracy? You're still paying for a hard drive, a legitimate hard drive, the only difference is you're not paying for an overpriced one sold by Microsoft. It's no different to buying a 3rd party controller or taking up a good offer on a game (or even importing one because it's cheaper in Asia)

That's like saying that pirating the games is no different int hat you're paying for a legitimate dvd disc and just copying the files across from a proper game disc.

[nomis_nehc]

Heh, well, in any case, seems like this thread has helped some people. Or at least educated =D

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Yeah there is no ifs or buts, you are breaking T&C's and pirating along the way. Don't try to make out otherwise, it's not worth the embarrassment :laugh:

Not that I have a problem with you doing it personally, but don't kid yourselves.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Certain posts removed as they indeed went to a side with the details that I am not sure about. You said I could do it Kushan, and just to please all and because it was questionable with some references, I did indeed remove it.

Well, apparently it's okay for the iPhone, so I don't see why not here.

BINGO. It was decided by staff that for certain instances, as long as no direct links are provided, that there is nothing wrong with simply talking about a process out there, especially one that is of interest and a process that none of our members made themselves.

Also, considering MS could have easily sent a cease and desist to XBox Scenes Forums where not only the detailed instructions can be found, but also the files you need to pull it all of are linked to, I also see it is being okay to SIMPLY DISCUSS.

If anyone can find a conclusive statement from MS in regards to THIS EXACT SUBJECT, which I have not found any concrete proof the files needed from the HDD are part of their security and ant-piracy measures specifically, then by all means provide the information, and I will gladly close the thread. Until then, it is a grey area, and as of late, we at least have let some grey areas been discussed in certain situations. Ask for direct links, and of course things get closed.

[gunnerhkjp]

Man, this is awesome.

Went out and got a WD120GB HDD and flashed it in less than 5 minutes.

My 20GB is now 120GB. :shiftyninja:

[magik]

Haha, "gray areas". Ah, Neowin. :laugh:

[Kushan]

Certain posts removed as they indeed went to a side with the details that I am not sure about. You said I could do it Kushan, and just to please all and because it was questionable with some references, I did indeed remove it.

That's absolutely fine, Larry, I'll keep the details somewhat scarce from now on so as to not cause any trouble. I'm glad you're being open minded about all this, we could do with a few more grey areas around here ;P

[Kraftman]

I've got an adapter to connect the actual 360 drive shell to a SATA port, so I don't even have to open it to flash it (in theory).

You might think so, but I would not chance it.

You have to boot into DOS (not cmd.exe or command.com) to flash, and even then it actual has to detect the port to be used to flash, because there is no OS to negotiate which hardware is at which physical address.

Worth a shot I suppose. What adapter? An XSATA/XPORT, or the official Microsoft adapter?

[Kushan]

You might think so, but I would not chance it.

You have to boot into DOS (not cmd.exe or command.com) to flash, and even then it actual has to detect the port to be used to flash, because there is no OS to negotiate which hardware is at which physical address.

Worth a shot I suppose. What adapter? An XSATA/XPORT, or the official Microsoft adapter?

It's a "Minispy SATA Hard Drive Adapter". It literally turns the port on the 360's shell into a separate SATA data/power cable. It's not USB or anything like that, so it doesn't require any special drivers or something and should act just like a normal connection.

[Kushan]

Well (just to keep people updated) my little 360 Hard Drive adapter arrived yesterday and I was able to backup my hddss.bin file with ease.

Then, I backed up the entire drive. Hardest part was finding the elusive "Xplorer360 extreme 2", after that it was a doddle.

Now I just need to figure out how the hell I can boot into DOS...

[gunnerhkjp]

Now I just need to figure out how the hell I can boot into DOS...

If you can boot from a thumb drive, you can use "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool"

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

[Kushan]

Haha, funny you should post that, I had that out and running last night. Unfortunately, I couldn't find/figure out the appropriate DOS images to use for this purpose. My thumb drive has been formatted and is ready to go, I just can't find a working image to work from.

I never found THAT site, though, so I'll have a fiddle with that tonight.

[Kraftman]

There are no "DOS images" you need.

I use iPrep (x-projects.org) to build a bootable thumdrive, then simply copy the hddhackr files onto the root of the drive.

Boot into DOS, cd hddhackr, hddhackr -f.

[Kushan]

It's all right, I figured out the problem. Turns out my thumb drive might be one of the few on the planet that can't actually be used as a bootable device.

I think the problem lies in the fact that when I plug it in, it creates the removable storage hard drive (as normal) but it also creates a virtual CD drive. It's not one of those advertisement pens or anything, it's just a utility drive (With some encryption software and whatnot). I think my BIOS only sees this virtual CD drive and since I can't write any files to it, can't do anything with it.

But I got a workaround. I burned a copy of UBCD and used that to boot into FreeDOS. From there, my USB thumb drive miraculously appeared as drive C:\ so I can use that to do everything I need.

My 120Gb HDD has arrived, so I'll probably be flashing it within the next couple of days. I'll keep you guys posted.

[Kraftman]

My motherboard simply doesn't support booting from my USB drive (even though it supports it in the BIOS, supposedly, and its not a bad mobo), so I burned Hirens, then from there went to NTFS4DOS, then from there went to usb drive.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Just a side note, the official 120GB drive did get a price drop of $30 according to Kotaku (at least in the US), so although that is still way to high in my opinion, it is a step in the right direction.

[Kushan]

Yeah it's a step, but not quite the step needed to justify the silly price. I can pick up a 120Gb HDD for about ?30, Microsoft should be able to get them for less than that. Surely it couldn't cost more than ?20 to create the shell and put the HDD inside it.

Anyhow, so far things are looking good on my end. I flashed my 120Gb WD BEVS last night, although it took a few attempts to get it right. Some SATA chipsets have different modes they can work in (Such as SATA, Legacy IDE where it emulates an IDE interface so OSs can see it, etc.) and you need to make sure you select the correct one or hddhackr wont work correctly.

What happened to me was it would flash the drive, ask you to restart and run it again to verify it, but upon doing this still reported that the drive wasn't compatible with the 360. After a few times at doing this and getting frustrated, I remembered those options in my BIOS and basically enabled everything again (The reason it wasn't enabled like this in the first place was because at the time, there were no vista x64 SATA drivers available for my system).

Now it's flashed and hddhackr is reporting it should work with my 360. All I've got left to do now is rip out the old 20Gb HDD and plug the new one in.

[Kushan]

Well I managed to find time to swap the 20Gb for the 120Gb drive and copy all of the data over.

I hit a bit of a strange snag in that the new drive was reporting only 23Gb free out of 107Gb, but as it turns out apparently sometimes files can get corrupted when transferring over to the drive. Deleting everything on partition 3 and copying it over again (in smaller amounts) fixed the problem. I now have about 95Gb free on my new drive!

Of course, the day after I do it,

video appears that seems to show a much easier way of doing it all that doesn't involve booting into DOS, but I haven't tried this method. Worth a shot I'd say, though.

[nomis_nehc]

Nice one Kushan. I actually haven't had the time to do this, but looks like you took the plunge. I guess I should be thanked =D I kid I kid!

Anyway, I might look into this this weekend since NXE has arrived.