Xbox 360 hard drive issues.

[»X«]

Basically, a mate at work's son decided to use his xbox to format the attached elite 120gb HD. However it formatted it apparently to fat32 and the xbox doesnt recognise it anymore.

Is there a way of formatting it back to fatx?

The xbox just says no storage device connected.

Edit:

Got the full story.

His son has an old xbox with a 20gb HD. He got a new elite system. He got a HD transfer kit and wanted to use that to move over his savegames etc.

Now thats as far as we know. The next thing is that the xbox states no storage device found.

The drive hasnt been removed from its housing, I thought he might of tried to change the firmware in the confusion.

So it remains that how can we put this 120gb hard drive back to FATX?

Its connected to this pc via usb and shows it as a 111gb fat32 drive which has a hidden folder, xbox360 and inside has loads of Data0000 files at various sizes.

Any help is much appreciated.

[Aergan]

I can't see how he got it to Fat32 without doing something very silly or he's not telling to truth.

I'm going to guess that he's hooked up the 120GB to the PC via USB, Windows will say "Do you wish to format this drive?" and he's clicked the inevitable Yes.

The transfer kit should be used to connect his Old HDD to his new Xbox via USB so that he can access the Transfer Conent menu, there shouldn't be a PC needed to be involved in any step along the way unless he's tried to inject files using a ultility.

Try the 120GB HDD in the Elite Xbox, see if you can format it. If not, try in his old Xbox. If not, probably screwed & he'll have to pre-order a 250GB drive off of Amazon UK.

[mobley]

We have the same problem, having attempted migration from a 20Gb to a 60Gb using official MS migration kit. I'm convinced this has something to do with the April XBOX update which adds USB storage support. I think when you first plug in the new drive using the transfer cable the XBOX thinks it is an external USB drive and formats it as such. I didn't see my son attempt the migration so I don't know exactly what messages appeared. Either now the migration kit doesn't work, or maybe now a dialog pops up saying "do you want to format this drive" and he said "yes". Tried to explain this to microsoft support via email, at third attempt was told this was a problem I'd need to call telephone support about. Wha? Haven't summoned up the energy to try this yet. Have found a couple of people posting about similar problems but haven't seen any answers yet. ShadowJoker - did you get any further with your problem?

[levi019910]

ya i need to change my FAT32 files into FATX files to PLZZ help!!

:huh:

[Spookie]

Could open it up and reflash the hard drive? I wouldn't worry about the warranty, to replace the hard drive with a 250GB one is only ?35.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I think the best thing to do is hddhackr to recreate partitions 0, 2 and 3.

Here is a good tutorial on how to hack a hard drive to work in the Xbox 360. You only need to follow part of that tutorial, basically taking the 120gig drive out the enclosure and connecting it to the PC, then running hddhackr in DOS.

Instead of flashing a security sector to the drive you want want to re create the partitions which is simly a case of typing "HDDHACKR C 09F0 A0".

09F0 A0 is the port the drive is connected on, hddhackr should tell you this as it will likely be different for you.

[mobley]

Thanks for the suggestion - but no joy sadly. HDDHackr c XXXX A0 runs OK with a progress bar and appears to be creating the three partitions. But when I reconnect to the XBOX it still behaves exactly like before - i.e not recognised when mounted on the XBOX, recognised as a usb memory device when connected via the migration cable. I tried connecting the drive via USB to the PC and it looks just like any USB drive, i.e. still formatted FAT32. I tried repeating the whole process, but with the same outcome.

Just in case the FAT32 partition was causing HDDHackr a headache I removed it (under Vista), then re-ran HDDHackr C. Went through the same process, but device still not recognised when mounted on XBOX.

Took a look at the drive with winhex and find that sector 16 is empty, presumably killed when the drive got formatted to FAT32 by the xbox back at the start of this tragedy. There appears to be no way to rebuild this sector as it is coded with a hash derived from the hard-drive serial number. Bummer.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Try and flash a security sector dumped from another 120gb Xbox 360 drive.

Google "xbox 360 120gb security sector download", you should be able to download this from the website in the first result.

Flash that to your drive, create the partitions again and see if it works.

As you can see i flashed the security sector from an official 250gb drive to a western digital 250gig drive.

Windows now thinks the drive is a different make and the drive has the serial number from the security sector it was flashed with, however it does work in the Xbox 360 perfectly.

I think that should work, however do so at your own risk.

[mobley]

Thanks for the suggestion - I have already tried that tack. Unfortunately HDDHackr can only fix the security sectors for Western Digital drives. As well as writing the sector it also does something devious to the drive's firmware (not sure what - maybe rewriting the drive's serial number if it's in eeprom, or changing the drive microcode so that it replies with a different, faked serial number that matches the security sector.) My drive is a pukka Microsoft-supplied Hitatch and so HDDHackr can't flash the firmware. I could install a security sector from another drive (with WinHex or whatever) but this still wouldn't work as the encoded drive serial in the copied sector wouldn't match the serial on my drive. There doesn't appear to be anyone (apart from MS) who knows how to encode a new security sector for a drive.

Final solution - bought another legit XBOX drive on eBay (New 120Gb for ?38), will go through migration steps very carefully and see if I can spot where things went wrong the first time. Did notice a dire warning on one eBay sellers page about need to follow migration steps carefully to avoid bricking the drive (as a result of the April XBOX update USB support), so looks like it's not very hard to go wrong now, with fatal consequences. I guess I'll reincarnate the bricked drive as a PC SATA or USB drive at some point.

Thanks again for help and suggestions

[mobley]

...and here's the final installment. Tried to migrate the content to a second new hard-drive. Official MS drive and transfer kit. MS instructions for the transfer program aren't too helpful as they just say "run the program and follow the on-screen prompts". However when I run the transfer disk program the screens don't look anything like the ones that show up on any of the YouTube walk-throughs i could find, including some fairly recent ones. There's a source and destination screen that look just like the ones you can get to through the new XBOX menus. The original drive shows up like you'd expect, along with the second drive (attached via transfer cable) which shows up as "USB device". Next step is a screen saying the target drive needs to be configured before the XBOX can use it, is that OK?. I aborted the process at this point, as I have a suspicion that continuing would format the new disk as FAT32 (like happened to the last one) and render the drive useless. Can't be 100% sure but I think the April 5th USB update to the XBOX software means the transfer program now doesn't work, and worse that that, trashes the destination drive.

This seemed to be confirmed further by the route we used in the end to move the content - which was to connect a USB FAT32 drive to the XBOX and move the content off the original 20Gb disk onto this drive, remove the 20Gb drive and attach the 120Gb one, then move the content back from the USB. This worked fine.

So, if you've found this thread because you've completed a migration but get the "no storage device found" error when you attach your new drive, call MS and ask for a new one right away! Then find a USB drive and migrate in two steps like we did.

[turbogaming]

I too had this issue. Plugged in my hard drives and no data transfer screen popped up. I found the data transfer option in the storage screen, it asked to prepare the destination drive for xbox. I did this and it wiped the 120gb and converted it to a much smaller drive. Once the data was transferred over, it is no longer recognized as an xbox drive. It works through the usb but not on the xbox.

Went to Microsoft support and was told my unit is not covered. There would be a $99 repair charge!!!!

I used everything there was Microsoft. I have no reason to 'hack' or mess with the system in any other way. I'm not a kid and I definitely do not have time for this.

[turbogaming]

To follow up with my previous post, I can't believe I wasted my time trying to call Microsoft support. They said the problem was my own, other people use the data migration cable successfully.

If I had the time, I'd rely on the hacking community to fix my situation but it's not worth it to me.

Once again another shoddy supported product from Microsoft, their data cable, their software and their hard drives. The pirates and 3rd party succeed and the companies which are suppose to support their own products fail.

What a mess. I wish I had kept my original 20gb hard drive. I never should have bought a new one.