To anyone who was wondering if you can use a 20 gig drive hdss file modified to report 120 gigs:
Though the answer is already here in the forum for the technically inclined, it's apparent that those less tech-savvy are having issues understanding it. Here is the simple version: No, you cannot use a 20 gig drive hdss file modified to report as 120 gigs.
When people talk about the sectors being signed, it means that all the data for the hdss has been digitally signed by microsoft using a digital certificate that only they possess.
By digitally signing an item, you are doing a math calculation on the data that will spit out a unique, and very long hexadecimal number, and then certify that the number is legal/valid. If you change just a single bit in the original information, the entire number will be completely different.
So this means that if you change the hard disk size to report(which is stored in the hdss file), it changes the number calculated by the equation. When that number doesn't match the number stored as the signature, the XBox will reject the hdss sectors as invalid.
Since the xbox 360 ignores drives that don't report properly, when you turn on your console, you should see no memory units installed. It's as if the hard drive was not physically attached.
The signatures are most likely created at the factory and written to the drive before they're packaged.
Now you may be wondering why we can't simply create our own signature after modifying the drive size. This is because we'd have to make our own certificates and the xbox has a way of checking the certificate used to sign the data, and will not trust a signature from a certificate that Microsoft doesn't own. This is probably similar in concept to the way Internet Explorer won't automatically trust an SSL certificate issued from an unknown company. If you look in your computer's certificate store(google it), you'll see a whole bunch of Trusted Root Authentication Authorities. Those are certificates that IE is programmed to trust to sign SSL data. You can add more to IE, or delete them.
With the xbox, the trusted root authorities are probably hardcoded into the dashboard. That means you can't add your own CA(certificate authority) as trusted. And THAT means that the xbox will not trust a hard drive with an hdss file signed by someone other than microsoft. And THAT means no, you can't use a 20 gig hdss file modified to report 120 gigs.
There's always an exception to the rule: If you hack the xbox's kernel or dashboard you might be able to fool it. But then you get banned from live, if you're even able to connect. Plus you run the risk of bricking your xbox with ANY hack you try. Then again, you also run the risk of bricking it by playing it since it seems to warp the motherboards...
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Topic: TheSpecialist's HDDHackr v0.90 - Adds Support for 120GB Drives! (Read 1214 times)