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[Gamer]

QUOTE(outlaw_irish @ Dec 26 2008, 04:09 AM)

I know this is a noob question but what program do i need to run the xplorer360 extreme build 2? when i click what i downloaded it says that i need additional software to open the .rar file. should i download winzip, winace or rarlab winrar or some other program??? please help

use 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) or winrar to unpack the compressed file.

[jimbo70]

I've read this & a few other guides now & I'm having a problem I haven't seen anyone else talk about yet. When I boot into DOS and type run hddhackr -f it gives me the error of 'bad command or file name' and can't go any further. If I just type hddhackr it brings back info about the program & it's 3 uses, so I'm pretty sure the file is there ok.

I'm using the following setup:
-win98 boot floppy (tried xp boot floppy also with same results)
-wd1200bevs-22usto drive - the drive IS recognized in the BIOS
-Hddhacker v0.91 and hddss.bin (these 2 files are in the root of the floppy)
-my computer has two different sata sets, the built in Nvidia nForce 430/410 controller & a via vt6421 pci card, I get same results trying either. I normally have a harddrive connected to the Nvidia one which I disconnect & use that sata cable to go to the wd1200 drive.

I've read about going to Legacy mode, but I haven't found where I would do that, I assumed in the BIOS, but I don't see anything like that there. The only thing it talks about Legacy is for USB, not SATA. I tried hex editing the hddhackr file & it didn't  make any difference either.

What the heck am I missing?!? From the looks & sounds of this it should be a fairly easy project. Anybody got any ideas what I'm missing? It doesn't seem like the hddhackr program isn't recognizing the drive, because it doesn't seem like it's even getting that far.  

[Arimanio]

So often people will leach information from forums and not give proper thanks for the successes, moreover whining about their own failures. I just wanted to say thanks for the tutorial and info. It worked flawlessly, even on the new dashboard "experience."

I did run into the issue where a downloaded movie wouldn't play because it said something about doesn't recognize that format. I deleted the Rights Database in System Items under Memory in the System Settings blade and immediately played right away.

Also there were was a corrupt Arcade download (which I just re-d/led) and a an incomplete Game Add-On which downloaded just fine also.

Thanks again....good game,
Arimanio

QUOTE(jimbo70 @ Jan 1 2009, 02:02 AM)

I've read this & a few other guides now & I'm having a problem I haven't seen anyone else talk about yet. When I boot into DOS and type run hddhackr -f it gives me the error of 'bad command or file name' and can't go any further. If I just type hddhackr it brings back info about the program & it's 3 uses, so I'm pretty sure the file is there ok.

You seem to be using everything I just did to get it to work. Try typing hddhackr /f instead. I know that worked for me, accidentally, because I am just used to typing parameters that way. Also verify that your HDDSS.bin file is there in the root and it is named that exactly.

Ari

This post has been edited by Arimanio: Jan 1 2009, 06:30 PM

[skindogg]

Anyone seen an issue with a newly flashed BEVS 120gb drive not showing up in the memory blade to format?

hddhackr .91 flashed it fine, even shut down, restarted and it shows up again in hddhackr, but I hook it up to the 360 to format and it's just not there.

[skindogg]

Nvm problem solved.  after flashing with hddhackr, i just had to shutdown and not check it again.  for some reason if you go to check the drive in hddhackr again, it screws up and won't show up in the 360.  

I just shutdown after flash and put it in the 360 and it shows up to format.

[jimbo70]

I figured it out. I was typing 'run hddhackr -f' at the prompt instead of just 'hddhackr -f'. I was following tutorial from some site that obviously worded it wrong. Drive working great now.

[kleptodathief]

any updates on this xbox360 HD DIY tutorial? it seems too hard for noobs or novices lol, i do wanna try this one day

1) is there simplier NO hex edit needed method?
2) is the max size HD still the WD1200BEVS 120 hd? can we use a BIGGER model?
3) anyone in toronto do this mod? im willing to pay!


cheers

[jimbo70]

QUOTE(kleptodathief @ Jan 5 2009, 09:18 AM)

any updates on this xbox360 HD DIY tutorial? it seems too hard for noobs or novices lol, i do wanna try this one day

1) is there simplier NO hex edit needed method?
2) is the max size HD still the WD1200BEVS 120 hd? can we use a BIGGER model?
3) anyone in toronto do this mod? im willing to pay!
cheers

Depending on how much of this tutorial you really want to do varies on how hard this really is. I basically just did the first 4 steps of this tutorial being I didn't really have anything I wanted to go through the hassle of transferring from my 20 to the 120gb drive. If I had just typed the wording correctly in DOS the whole project would've taken about 15 minutes (including swapping the new drive to the old case & formatting).
If you just want to mod the 120gb like I did there's a good chance you don't have to do any hex editing.
The WD1200 is the only one supported. Pretty sure if you do get a bigger drive to work you will still only be able to use 120gb (107 when formatted) of it.
Depending on what you have on your existing 20gb drive (assuming you have one), you may want to just transfer some data to a memory card & do the basic drive upgrade. It really is quite easy.  

[skyliner99]

QUOTE(jimbo70 @ Jan 5 2009, 06:31 PM)

Depending on how much of this tutorial you really want to do varies on how hard this really is. I basically just did the first 4 steps of this tutorial being I didn't really have anything I wanted to go through the hassle of transferring from my 20 to the 120gb drive. If I had just typed the wording correctly in DOS the whole project would've taken about 15 minutes (including swapping the new drive to the old case & formatting).
If you just want to mod the 120gb like I did there's a good chance you don't have to do any hex editing.
The WD1200 is the only one supported. Pretty sure if you do get a bigger drive to work you will still only be able to use 120gb (107 when formatted) of it.
Depending on what you have on your existing 20gb drive (assuming you have one), you may want to just transfer some data to a memory card & do the basic drive upgrade. It really is quite easy.  

Yea I am pretty novice when it comes to 360 modding, and i found this hack fairly easy. I successfully made a 120 gig hdd with no hex editing. The only spots i had a little trouble were getting my flashdrive bootable, getting hddhackr to recognize my WD (switched bios to legacy mode)

to be honest the only real hard part is making sure you have all your data, and waiting for it all to transfer

[sintax69]

probably been asked B4 is there a list somewhere of compatable drives

I have a WD2500Bevs out of a 250gig passport and was wondering if I can use this to swap my 20gig or does it have to be real close to the size I really don't care if i lose the 250g capacity ?

[Greek Wizard]

Used the tutorial, and after a few hours, finally got it all working and set up.

Unfortunately my WD1200 would not show up in Xplorer so I had to do the hex thing and this was where most of my time was wasted.

It seems that Hex Workshop 6.0 (the link provided) is very buggy and will not start up due to a config issue, and after installing a whack of stuff (.NET 3.0 & 3.5) to get it to work, I finally read on the authors page that the 6.0 is the issue.

There is a newer 6.0.1 which solves the issue, so hopefully the OP updates the thread. Here is the link direct from BreakPoint http://www.bpsoft.com/bbl/download/downloa...le=hw32v601.exe

Here is the page detailing the startup issues: http://www.bpsoft.com/support/faq/content/hexworkshopv6/25/

Hopefully this saves someone some time that I have already wasted.

Honestly, it was work getting WinHex registered as I thought Hex Workshop sucked to be honest.

Seems all my saves are good, but I could not get GTA IV to start up from the drive as it complained about not being the same console etc. I deleted it and reinstalled it to the drive and now it works fine.

All my arcade games also seem to work fine.

Thanks to the OP, especially the hex parts..

This post has been edited by Greek Wizard: Jan 7 2009, 12:45 PM

[Pishposh]

Hi all,

I just got my XBOX HD all upgraded and I wanted to share with you my steps and pitfalls while trying to do it.  Most of the things contained here are already written in this thread but I wanted to compile them for the folks who can’t or are unable\unwilling to search through the thread.  This is the 'NO HEX' method.  Some people might still need to do it to get their HD recognized by hddhackr but I found it's just easier to find another SATA controller.

Special thanks to ‘The Specialist’ and a shout-out to ‘Hobartrus’ for the great tutorial.  I also want to thank all the thread contributors who have shared their trials, errors, and advice.

What you'll need:
hardware:
A PC (duh) with a SATA controller. If your PC is antiquated like mine you'll need an add-on card (I used this one it comes with all the cables you'll need and it's natively recognized by HDDHackr, though be warned it apparently has compatibility issues with some motherboards.)

A Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS 120 GB SATA hard drive

A Floppy boot disk (go here for disk images, I used a Windows 98SE OEM boot disk. You could probably also use a bootable flash drive or a zip disk or something as long as the media is writable under DOS) <-Confirmed!

A Xbox 360 w/ a 20GB hard drive (duh)

software:
HDDHackr

Xplorer360 'extreme build 2'

A hddss.bin dumped from a retail 360 120GB hdd

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Steps:

1.  Copy HDDHackr.com and the hddss.bin file to your bootable floppy disk.

2.  Turn off your PC, connect the WD BEVS drive, and boot the PC up on the floppy (I also disconnected my PC's hard drive just to be safe.)

3.  At the command prompt type "hddhackr -f" and hit enter. Follow through the prompts and be sure to create an undo file when asked.  If for some reason you cannot flash due to an error saying that 'sectors 16-22 do not match make sure you have a BEVS drive'  You need to hook this drive to another SATA controller and try to flash.  I went through 3 different computers before one finally worked for me.

4.  When it's finished, reboot on the floppy again. Run "hddhackr -f" again and it will tell you if the drive will be compatible with your 360 or not.

5.  Turn off your PC, disconnect the WD BEVS, and disconnect your 20GB drive from your 360. Disassemble the casing, and remove the 20GB drive. Hook the WB BEVS up to the connector and plug it into the 360. You're going to have to unhook the drive and pull it out again so I'd recommend not completely reassembling the casing... I just put one screw in to hold the drive in.

6.  Turn on your 360, goto the system blade, "console settings", and "system info." Jot down the serial number, you'll need it in the next step.

7.  Go back to the system blade, goto "memory" and you should have the option to format the drive. It will ask for the serial number, type it in and send it flying. (if it says "no device detected" something is wrong. Check the connections.)

8.  While it's formatting go ahead and hook the 20GB hard drive up to your PC. Boot up into Windows, create a folder on your desktop called "xbox" and run Xplorer360Extreme

9.  Within Xplorer360Extreme click "Drive" then "Open" then "Hard Drive or Mem Card". It should take a few seconds and then pop up some partitions in the left hand window. (If it doesn't detect the drive, check the connections and also make sure that your SATA controller driver is properly installed.)  You can also do this with the MS XBOX data transfer cable.

10.  Click on Partition 03, select all the items in the right hand window, and drag and drop them to the folder you created on your desktop. If you get errors you'll have to open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and manually kill the program... reopen the program and drag and drop the folders one at a time. When you find the problem folder create a subfolder in the xbox folder on your desktop with the same name as the problem folder, go into the problem folder and copy the folders/files in there one at a time. You may have to do this a few times, creating folders within folders. For me the problem file was a 0kb .db file within the compatibility folder under a few subfolders. I couldn't get the file to copy so I just created a blank text file and renamed it to the exact name of the file (it was st.db or something like that.) Once the copy starts going it will probably take awhile, depending on how much data you have... so take a break.

Do not try to drag and drop or extract the 'cache' folder from part 3.  You will go into a endless copy loop.  Instead, as mentioned above copy all the files out the cache folder in small batches until complete.  The only other folder I found that you have to do this to is the 'Compatibility' folder on Part 3.

11.  Within Xplorer360Extreme choose the "backup partition 2" option to dump the second partition to a bin file (named part2.bin or something like that.) It should create a 262MB file.  Then create a 20gb hdds.bin file from your original disk.

12.  Shutdown the PC and disconnect the 20GB drive. By this time the 360 should be done formatting the drive, so turn it off and disconnect the 120GB drive. Hook it up to the PC and boot up to Windows.  When you conntect this drive to the PC you will only see partition 2.  To get all your partitions back, restore your 20gb hdds.bin file to your 120gb drive.  Take this 120gb drive and boot into hddhackr again, Undo the flash, reboot, and then run hddhackr to re-flash your drive with the hddss.bin. Don't make another undo.bin, but after this final flash, the drive will be recognized in your 360 with all partitions there.  Format this drive in your XBOX again and you will see all 3 partitions. (Thanks thr4773r)

13. Connect the 120gb back to the PC and within Xplorer360Extreme click "Drive" then "Open" then "Hard Drive or Mem Card".   You should see all three partitions there.

14. Expand Partition 03 and copy all of the data from the xbox folder you created on your desktop. This will take awhile depending on how much data you have, so take another break.

15. After partition 3 is complete, select "restore partition 2", select the 262mb bin file you made in step 11 (part2.bin.) Once it completes, your drive is ready!

16.  You should now be able to put the 120gb back in your XBOX with almost all of your data and settings.  The caveat to this is that some game saves will either be missing or corrupted.  Some notable ones posted on the boards are 'Rock Band', and Fable II.  I can tell  you that I backed up my Fable II save to a MU and after I upgraded the drive it could not find my save on the HD but it started my save of the MU beautifully.  So my advice you is to try to save your most important gave saves to a MU(if you have one) or invest in a MS data tranfer cable as I don't think you'll see those issues if you do.  If im wrong someone correct me please.

XBOX transfer cable instructions can be found here.  I'm almost positive someone has successfully used the cable connected to a PC on the thread also.

[xxzone]

Thanks for the original and updated guide! What luck you posted this just today. I've had my drive for a few months, but put off doing the upgrade until after the dashboard update. Now it's a pain waiting for GTA4 to load, so I was going to do the upgrade soon. I want to rip some games to the drive, and 20 gigs doesn't cut it. I only have like 6.5 gigs left due to all the Rock Band DLC.

I'll probably use this tonight, so I very much appreciate you guys taking the time to post this information!

[Pishposh]

No problem.  Let me know if you need any help.

[skyliner99]

Just a little tip to make transferring data between Old and New Hdds a little faster and easier;

Clear the xbox's cache before moving all your data to your pc, it will however delete your game updates (eg halo 3 auto update 1.2) but if you have live, you can easily redownload these. It also clears the cache folder and a few other temporary folders. Instructions on clearing the cache can be found HERE