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[dchurch]

Hi,
I have read the many tutorials on hdd swapping with a softmodded  (audio exploit)xbox and last night attempted to change my original xbox hdd with a WD120gb drive.

I used the evox backup feature and copied the c:\backup dir to both my pc and my laptop (no harm in being safe ;-) and printed off the hddinfo.txt file.

I then installed ConfigMagic on the xbox and ran it.  I typed the HDD password that it gave me and double checked it and then got a friend to double check it as well.

I then took the xbox HDD out of the xbox and plugged it into my pc and plugged the new drive into the other IDE channel and ran ATAPDW.exe which saw the xbox drive and the new drive perfectly.

Now this is where I get confused - one tutorial says to unlock the xbox drive with the password in the hddinfo.txt - but in that file I only have 3 lines, the last being called hdd 'key'.
Another says to unlock it using the password shown by ConfigMagic.

I tried the hddunlock.exe with the ConfigMagic password, then checked with
atapwd.exe and sure enough, the xbox drive was unlocked.

Then I put the PC's OS drive back in and booted in Windows (XP) and then ran 'HDD Driver' which found the xbox drive, and then proceeded to give me lots of errors about file sizes - leading me to believe that I had incorrectly unlocked the drive.

I then read some other tutorial that stated that the drive could be unlocked using an incorrect password and that this could render the drive useless - it also stated that the password in the hddinfo.txt should be used to lock/unlock the xbox hdd.  There was no password in that file, just a key.

So, at that point I panicked and after having rebooted with my dos bootdisk with hddunlock etc.. on it (but not before running hddisabl.exe), I locked the drive using the ConfigMagic password.
I checked it using ATAPDW.exe and it said it was locked.

I tried to unlock it again using the code given in the hddinfo.exe (instead of the ConfigMagic one) and the hddunlock.exe said 'done' or something like it - checked it in ATAPDW.exe and it said it was NOT locked!

So, then I put it back into the xbox and the xbox booted fine and the HDD was accessable etc...

That's where I am now, after a whole 5 hours - in exactly the same place I started from :-D

My questions are:

If I try to unlock the xbox drive with the wrong password, will it still unlock? Or, is it that it can only be unlocked with the correct password bu re-locked using any?

Is the sequence I am after: Unlock the xbox hdd, clone to the new hdd, do the hex edit thing (why do I need to do this?), lock the new hdd with a password provided by LiveInfo after pointing at the EPROM backup created by Evox, and then put the new drive in the xbox in place of the original?

Or should I just use XBOXHDM (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=244043&st=0)?

Also, If I completely bugger the new drive up, is it possible to put a HardMod chip in and then use the drive? I'm led to believe that this is the case.

All help will be appreciated.  Sorry if I seem stupid, but the many tutorials have actually confused me rather than helped me - although, that is most certainly my fault and not the fault of the authors.   Plus the horror stories have made me a little paranoid :-)


Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by dchurch: Sep 9 2004, 12:35 PM

[bigfreak]

I'm upgrading to a 120GB drive as I'm typing this (doing what I'm  told and having a beer).  I'm using XBOXHDM and it's a breeze.  All you need is a CD burner to make the bootable CDROM.  You have your eeprom.bin file so all you need to do if plug your drive in, boot the CDROM, run the lock/unlock and then proceed to unlock your drive (won't hurt if it's already unlocked).  After it's unlocked, Control + ALT + delete to reboot the XBOXHDM cd.  Now boot the CD normally and run the utility.  Clone your drive (onto the new one).  On your new 120 gigger you can now make that "F:" drive they always talk about with the extra space.  After you've done with that, reboot the CD again and choose the lock/unlock again to lock your replacement HD (softmod won't work without it).

It seems super easy to me.  We'll see when I'm done.    

[dchurch]

So the new drive gets locked with a password that the xbox understands?

That's the bit that confuses me  

How has your hdd swap gone?

[bigfreak]

It went great.  I now have a ~105 GB F Drive.  

The HD password they talk about is encoded into your eprom.  You know the evox backup feature you used?  It created a eeprom.bin file.  You printed out that text file which is just confusing because you'll see the password info in hexidecimal instead of ascii.  Long story short, ignore the text file you printed out and just use your epprom.bin file with xboxhdm.  It was easy as pie.  This is what I did:

made xboxhdm CD
copied eeprom.bin to a floppy
hooked my original softmodded xbox drive up as primary master (/dev/hda)
hooked my replacement drive up as primary slave (/dev/hdb)
booted to xboxhdm CD
unlocked original HD with the -a switch which prompted me for the floppy that had the eeprom.bin file
rebooted
went into normal linux (first option)
ran the xboxhd program and chose "clone disk" or whatever
waited about 3.5 hours for the drive to be fully cloned
shutdown
put my replacement drive on primary master and removed the original drive.  (I could not create the F drive otherwise)
booted the CD again
went into linux again and back into the xboxhd script
this time I chose to create the F Drive
it created the partition ONLY
reboot
back to linux and then back to xboxhd
choose create the F Drive (again).  this time it formatted the created partition
rebooted again
went back into the lock/unlock tools I had used at first
locked the drive again with the -a switch which again prompted me for the floppy with the eeprom.bin file
shutdown
took the replacement drive popped it into the xbox...
SUCCESS!!

It wasn't really that hard, but you have to understand the flow:  unlock -> clone -> create F drive -> lock

Don't be confused by the lock/unlock password deal all you have to know is epprom.bin has it and that's all ya need.  

[triggernum5]

The xbox uses 2 things to calculate an unlock password:  The Unique HDD Key(in the eeprom) and the hdd's serial#(Read off the drive at boot).  This means that every hdd will have a unique calculated password since its dependant on the serial#.  xboxhdm 1.9 can calculate the password for a given hdd if it is given the xbox's eeprom.bin by emulating what the xbox would calculate on bootup.  It can then lock the new hdd with the calculated password.  Infact, it can even format/prepare a new hdd..  HDD Driver is horrible..  Avoid it.

[dchurch]

superp, thanks for the replies chaps.  I will avoid HDDriver like the plague and use xboxhdm instead.  Sunday night is the next time I will have time to have a go at it - so if you hear screaming on Sun. night, you know what's happened :-)

Nah - it sounds quite straight forwards.  I have a WD 120gb that's going in there on Sunday.

Just one other thing though, I have read that with the Audio hack Evox sometimes buggers up the EEPROM image and misreports the key/password.  I have managed to unlock and relock my drive using the password given to my by both LiveInfo and ConfigMagic.  If this wasn't a correct EEPROM image, it wouldn't have locked or unlocked would it?

[triggernum5]

I've never heard of any problem with the audio hack producing a faulty eeprom, but if you can unlock the hdd with your eeprom.bin with xboxhdm, then the eeprom is intact..

[dchurch]

thank you - that's what I needed to hear - Hopefully, bu Monday, my xbox will have a 120 gig drive in it - thanks guys for the help.  I shall follow these instructions.

[dchurch]

Hi - I've just booted into linux from the CD with the lock/unlock option, and tried to unlock the drive with the  -a switch and after pointing it at the eeprom.bin file on the floppy, it says : "No drive found on Primary Master, attach drive and try again."

After a reboot, the bios cannot see the primary master, wheras is didn't give me an error the first time machine booted - maybe implying that it could see it then?

I have the orig. xbox drive set up as Pri. Master and the replacement set up on the same cable as Pri. Slave.  I even took the jumper and set it manually on the orig. hdd rather than leave it to CS, and still it doesn't see it when it comes to unlock it.

Any ideas?

Does the xbox drive need to be the only one on the cable until it is unlocked or something daft like that?

This post has been edited by dchurch: Sep 11 2004, 08:07 PM

[dchurch]

Hi chaps - thanks very much for all the help - used that xboxhdm and it worked perfectly.
A friend came over, he plugged the drives in, changed the jumper settings so that neither disk was on CS and it recognised them both fine.
Tried to do a clone, which took about 30 mins, then tried to create the F drive. After serveral tries and reboots and it not cloning we decided to go with the 'create from scratch' option.
FTPed back into the xbox to get the C and E drives and after about 10 mins the transfer rate dropped to next to nothing (it turns out there was a corrupt file on the hdd that was the turning point - probably the reason the clone didn't work either).  
Changed the cables,  network cards, hub, ftp client software, and it turned out to be a bug in (a very early version of) Evox.
Loaded XBMC (which is usually my default dash) and started the transfer again and it worked perfectly.
Just finished it this morning at about 1am.
I now have a 108gb 'F' partition!

Thanks Chaps!