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[Cappi]

I have found that SATA drives never work out in xbox's. They cause the xbox not to work, and then work other times, and  kill other components such as the dvd drive. Usually the hard drive dies after a month. It causes needless headaches so I refuse to use another sata HD in an xbox or computer.

This post has been edited by Cappi: May 9 2008, 12:50 AM

[BigPotty]

QUOTE(Cappi @ May 8 2008, 06:49 PM)

I have found that SATA drives never work out in xbox's. They cause the xbox not to work, and then work other times, and  kill other components such as the dvd drive. Usually the hard drive dies after a month. It causes needless headaches so I refuse to use another sata HD in an xbox or computer.

That sucks that you've had such bad luck with this. You mind sharing a few more details? Like what kind of hard drives (brand/model/size) and SATA adapters you were using? Maybe what version Xbox and Modchip you have? I've been going over this in my head for the last week and I'm trying to work out every angle I can.

Hopefully we can all come up with some sort of guidelines for this. I still think that the Xbox1 is the best system, as far as Modding goes. And I surely don't want to see it die out just yet. At least not till someone cracks the 360 as far as the original has been.

And as for an update, it just seems to get more weird! Yesterday, it seemed I could only get my box to boot correctly about 2 times in 15. Didn't have time to mess with anything though. So, today I tried it again real quick before work and it booted and rebooted 3 times without a hitch. Hadn't been moved or touched from the day prior!

Does anyone know if a bad DVD drive could lock up the HD on boot? (Like a solid HD LED?) I don't think mines bad yet, but maybe it's going out. Who the hell knows.

[xboxmods2977]

QUOTE(BigPotty @ May 9 2008, 04:34 AM)

Does anyone know if a bad DVD drive could lock up the HD on boot? (Like a solid HD LED?) I don't think mines bad yet, but maybe it's going out. Who the hell knows.

Just a little insight. I had the same problem with a regular PATA HD and it was because my resistance (POT) was not set correctly on the positive side of my HD light. It could also be a power supply issue. I hope this helps anyone. By the way, I would shoot for the cable select setting. And yes, SATA HD's need not have jumpers.

[FierceGaming]

Yeah I was having problems with the sata drive that I purchased so I just sent it back got an IDE.  Just cloned my original drive I did the softmod on and it worked first try.  I could have done something wrong on the sata but I just couldn't figure out what.  Anyway, I had a 1.6 version xbox....maybe that converter just doesn't work with a version 1.6?  I dunno.

[ozreplicator]

Hey all,
I installed a WD10EACS 1TB drive into a 1.0 xbox a little while ago, along with one of those Sabrent type IDE -SATA converters I found on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...em=250229080622

My problem seems to be the same as others are reporting, it seems to work ok most of the time, but sometimes hangs when booting, or boots very slowly.
When it does boot, sometimes it works ok, other times, after booting to the slayers menu, if you try and load xbmc or a game, it starts to load then goes back to the slayers menu. Rebooting it usually makes it work.
Other times I was able to ftp around 500GB to it without any problems.
Does anyone whow what the jumpers on the converter board are for ? Mine came with the holes on the board, but no pins. I soldered in the 4 pins and tried a jumper in the 2 positions but doesn't seem to have helped. It must be some sort of timing issue ?
I bought 2 of these converters at the same, I'll try the other one with the 1TB drive in a 1.6 xbox and see what happens...

[ozreplicator]

I forgot to mention that just after switch on before slayers boots, the occasional MS error 7 or 13 pops up on screen. again, a reboot fixes it.

[Chronusdark]

taking all the lockups into account how is the data? im thinking about doing this but i dont want to worry about data loss very much. with 1 tb i hope to xfer all my media to the drive and dont want to worry about it. lockups i can handle

[FourTwentySmiles]

Why not use a 1Tb drive as a SMB avalible drive instead of installing it to your xbox. this way no corruption cause its on your PC....and all the media is watched via XBMC. This would work for music, video, and pictures.....but not games (not sure about the games, but I know other media works great that way.)

OR

Is this thread just to see if the 1Tb can be successfully used INSIDE the xbox with no corruption.

[zx6r6]

Hello.
I noticed the adapter is listed as ATA 100/133, I take it you guys are using an 80 wire IDE cable? I've had similar problems on some older pc's with using 100/133 drives with 40 wire (ata 66) cables. Maybe the adapter is picky......

Hope this helps and I'm not just pointing out the obvious (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by zx6r6: May 26 2008, 08:08 PM

[capboy210]

Seagate makes IDE models of there 750GB hard drive... As far as the hardware goes in the xbox it works just fine, it never hangs etc... I also think Hitachi offers a IDE 1TB HDD. Although i have never seen one in a xbox.

But beware that the xbox is not fully compatable with a nearly full 750GB hdd. I have around 200 gigs free on my 750gb HDD but folders and files float around the F & G drive mysteriously. One day something will be on your F drive, and the next day it appeared on the G drive~!!

Its not exactly that dramatic but just beware, the partitioning acts goofy sometimes. But in all reality i have not lost any data yet on my xbox so you should be alright.

Just make sure that:

Your bios supports custom partitions
You split F & G evenly in space
Set the entire hard drive to 32k clusters!

[BigPotty]

A bit of an update...

So I've been working on this for a few weeks when I get some time away from work and the social life.
This is what I've tried thus far (in no particular order):

- Variety of jumper settings on the Sabrent Adapter, including using 2 jumpers! (currently have the jumper completely removed)

- Fully disassembled and cleaned the MB and all components of my Xbox.

- Re-soldered the 2 main pins for the power connector on my PSU (I have a 1.0 and it needed to be done anyhow)

- Checked over all of my mod chip soldering work and cleaned it up a bit (I've gained some soldering skills in the last year or so!)

- Checked all cable connections

- Tried a variety of settings:

-Tried all of the Acoustic Management options for my HD (Samsung 750gig)
-Tried different power management settings in XBMC for the HD
-Set the HD's link speed to 1.5 rather than 3.0 using Samsung's Speed Switcher Utility

- Turned off the DVD check in the X3 bios

- Tried (re)booting in a variety of ways:

-CD/DVD in or out
-Cold Boot/Reboot
-Warm Boot/Reboot
-IR Remote Dongle in/out
-Wired/Wireless controllers in/out

-Others I'm probably forgetting

So, none of this stuff seems to make a bit of difference. Very frustrating! And today I noticed another peculiar problem. It seems that I can copy files from my SMB share with no problem, but when I tried to move a folder with files in it from my G to my F, I kept getting file copy errors! XBMC would stop the copy and give some error message about failing to copy. I tried quite a few times before giving up and just using the SMB file transfer instead.

And here's something else I noticed today. This Sabrent adapter seems to me to be the exact same adapter as this Rosewill one:
Rosewill Adapter

And, after reading all of the reviews for both the Sabrent and Rosewill models, it seems that people have had a variety of problems with both. From them not working at all, to the same slow boot / no boot problem, even on a pc.

So, since I've sorta hit a wall with all this, I broke down and have ordered another adapter. I had to search high and low for another model and supplier that seemed like it would do the job. I will report back with any success/failures after I've had a chance to fully test it.

capboy210: Is it necessary to set ALL partitions to 32k clusters? I've been under the impression that only the large partitions need it?

[Bomb Bloke]

QUOTE(BigPotty @ May 29 2008, 02:45 PM)

capboy210: Is it necessary to set ALL partitions to 32k clusters? I've been under the impression that only the large partitions need it?

Only partitions larger then 256gb need to use larger clusters. I'm not even sure if the console would function if you did the entire drive that way.

[BigPotty]

Here we go again...

SO, a couple days ago my month old 750 gig SATA Samsung HD started the good ole "click of death". Of course, it's hard to say what exactly caused this. Heat? The SATA adapter? Samsung's new substandard HD's?

I read over the reviews for this particular model a little more closely than when I had impulsively bought the drive a month ago. It seems at least a few people have had the same problem or a DOA drive. I even read one review that said "I used to have great luck with Samsung" (paraphrasing). I've come to the same conclusion. I have Samsung drives that are a few years old running 24/7 and have never had a problem (SATA too). THANK GOD that Newegg is so freakin awesome. I was just past the 30 day mark, but I emailed them and they emailed me a prepaid UPS label and authorized the RMA!

Luckily, I hadn't reformated my old 300 gig Xbox HD, so I only lost a few things added over the last month.

Aside from all this, I intended to order a new SATA adapter from some no-name Yahoo shop, but they canceled the order and notified me they were out of stock. It "looked" like a higher quality adapter from the pictures. It has a JMicron JM20330 chipset and the store is kind enough to have a lot of info about the product:
http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/sahadradtoid.html

BUT, no stock, so I ordered a similar looking one from an Ebay Store:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...N:IT&ih=004

Paid $7.98 WITH shipping!! Which is great, but I looked over it real close and noticed some horrible soldering work. And as usual, it's made in freakin China. Also, it has a 2X2 set of jumper pins, but no jumper included or any indication of how they would work. And the packaging RAPES the english language. Which is as funny as always, but I'm sure my heart will stop for a second the first time I try to use it.

So now I have a new Samsung HD on the way and 2 SATA adapters to experiment with.

Of course I will report back here with the results...

[galvanash]

Hadn't looked at this thread since I posted it... Sorry to hear some people are having problems. Ive been up since day one (almost 2 months), and this is on an xbox I use as a uPnP server (it is on 24/7)... No issues with the hardware at all, runs like a clock.

I wouldn't at all be surprised that these little SATA adapters are hit and miss though, they don't exactly look like top notch engineering... But my particular one is solid so far.

ps. Im using the standard 40 pin IDE cable btw, but from my past experiences with xboxen 40/80 pin doesnt matter, as long as the cable is sound.

[galvanash]

BigPotty - I also have a 1.0 (although the 1TB is a 1.6). My 1.0 has a 320GB IDE and has always been a bit moody... I dont know what the issue is with mine. I dont exactly have the symptoms as you - mine will (maybe once a month, sometimes 2 months go by) just freeze up solid, and when this happens it refuses to boot (no xbox logo - nothing - nada).

Sometimes when it does this, if I wait a while (10 - 15 minutes) with it powered on it will actually start up (its kinda spooky, no idea what it is doing during all that time as there is no activity at all). Other times it just wont boot, even when I let it sit for hours. I generally open it up, look at everything, find nothing wrong, and then when I plug it back in everything is fine again... Im only posting this because I have spoke to friends with 1.0s and quite a few of them have dodgy ones as well. Id love to fix it though, as that is why I didn't put the 1TB in it. If I thought I could trust it Id put a 1TB in it as well. As it is now, Ill probably just buy another 1.6, they are like $60 or so on ebay...