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[billy_dimashq]

Through personal experience (before resorting to xbox-scene), I found out that 360 DVD drives can't be swapped between machines due to something from the drive being involved in the encryption, such that DVDs and XBox games will work but XBox 360 games will not.

Thing is, the drive in my 360 is a Hitachi-LG one, hence really noisy. I know there's a quieter one out, but apparently it isn't *that* much quieter (according to a mate of mine).

Supposing a new drive was released (maybe the Lite-On ones mentioned on the x-s frontpage?), I'd be interested in swapping my drive.

Here's my question - regarding all this firmware hacking, would it be possible to get a new drive, read the fw to my pc, and change the serial number of the drive to that of my current one, then flash this edited fw back to the drive and lo and behold it'll start reading 360 games?

Or is it the case that the entire firmware is involved in the encryption process and so a simple serial number edit (if this is even at all possible and is actually stored in the firmware) wouldn't help or would cause even more (specifically Live-related) problems?

[DaddyO21]

you would need to extract the key from the firmware and insert it into the firmware of the other drive.

[billy_dimashq]

ooh so it IS possible?

mind you i'm assuming i'd get banned if i did this as they'd know the drive is different.

provided the marriage theory from the XBox has carried over to the 360 (of couse there'd be no marriage thingy with the 360's removable HDD) then that's what'd happen i bet

[bongwater]

You just lay your key in the new drtives firmware.

[billy_dimashq]

yeah that's what Daddy021 said - what i'm getting at is whether live marries your eeprom to your dvd drive's model number like with the xbox where it marries your eeprom with your hard drive.

of course live wouldn't marry an eeprom to a hard drive on a 360 that'd be daft!

did anyone hear about people getting banned on the original xbox for changing their dvd drive?

i've repaired many xboxes at work by swapping dvd drives around and never had any returned for being banned...

[feflicker]

Yeah, we've been able to move drives between xbox's for a while now... All you do is flash the replacement drive with firmware patched with your old drives "drive id"...

It's not easy though. There are hardware requirements on your pc, etc. You need to be able to dump/write firmware from both drives (you don't need to write to your original, just dump)...