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[Mechanism8]

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This post has been edited by Mechanism8: Yesterday, 07:36 AM

[Mechanism8]

Gather 'round my friends, for I shall tell a tale of annoyance and lost time.

Ok, I'll go into DETAIL about the situation, but in a nutshell, I installed a new Maxtor 200 gig HDD in my XBOX, but not all of it is recognized. I've researched for hours and tried many things, but nothing so far. I've searched the forums, google...I've tried programs and tutorials...and I've now resorted to asking for help. I didn't want to bother you guys with this, but I know when to ask for help from people more xbox-savvy than I.

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Details:

Xbox version - Not sure. I swapped my shell with a Halo Xbox (I work in a game store and one came in used, so I swapped the shells...with the stickers still on it >.<). It came with the Tetris Worlds/Star Wars: Clone Wars bundle. (X-mas 2003). I know it somewhere between 1.1 and 1.5.

Chip - Spider Chip - A modding friend that knows everything (...if you catch my drift) told me to get a Spider Chip since it's cheap, solderless, and great. Yeah. I want bug spray. The Spider-Chip makers are taking their sweet ass time getting their programmer out, and they removed the ability to use the Xecuter programmer with the v1.1 of the spiderchip (it's usable in the v1.0 of the chip as far as I understand). So, I'm stuck using the BIOS I loaded in the first time until the programmer managed to crawl out.

BIOS - EvolutionX M8 Bios - It has LBA48 support. I think the BIOS has something to do with this. I did a google search and I keep seeing "Evox M8 BIOS (LBA48-06/IGR)".  I assume the 06 means F drive.  I've been trying to get it to work with a G drive. Conflict? Also, what does the IGR mean?

HDD  Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB - 6B200P0 - Got if from NewEgg. Not bad for only $103. Check it out. It's able to be locked too.

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Here's a major question I have:If your BIOS doesn't support drives over 137 gigs, and you install a 200 gig HDD, can you partition it so no drives go over 137, or do you need a BIOS that supports a G (7) drive? Can a BIOS that supports 67 (F and G drives) support one large F drive? Can a 06 BIOS have a G drive? Do dashboards have an effect on partitions and restrictions?

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The whole story

Here's how it went as far as I remember it (I've been doing this for days). I while back, my spiderchip arrived in the mail. I installed it and flashed it with the M8 BIOS. I installed Evox the manual way...used the Evox dashboard boot disk, FTPed the dashboard over to he HDD, and went from there. I tinkered around with my stock Xbox HDD, some things weren't working right, and little by little I learned what I was doing wrong. I wanted to see what I could do, and I had fun! I set it up to copy 2 games onto the E drive with DVD2XBOX. After playing around, I ordered a nice meaty 200gig drive.

The drive arrived in the mail, I shrieked like a 7 year old girl, and I connected it. I loaded the Evox boot disk, connected to the XBox via FTP, and was confused. If this is a new drive, why was it already partitioned like my old drive?! (I'm still bewildred by this) I though FlashFXP goofed, but it didn't. Also, why can't I copy files into these partitions?! I looked around, and I learned how to send RAW commands via FTP:

Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 (and 2,3,4,5,6,7, I think this was a mistake)
FormatDrive 'whatever key Formatpath gave me'

I thought it worked...but system settings in Evox said F: 129 gigs, G: 0 gigs. Huh? I thought I formatted the G drive! I paid for 200 gigs, and I want 200 gigs (more or less). At the time of this writing, I'm looking back and wondering if the "-06" means "only F drive [I'm referring to "Evox M8 BIOS (LBA48-06/IGR) ]" I used the drive like this for a day to show my buddies at work (I work in a small-chain game store, and I copied my music onto it and used XBMC to play them).

So, after trying unsucessfully to edit the evox.ini file, re-partitioning, and re-formatting, I decided to try Slayer's auto install, which I downloaded from Xbins (well, from a BitTorrent held on Xbins)... First, let me say, daaaaaaaahaaaahaam! Me likie Slayers.  I though that maybe I did something wrong and if I used Slayer's, it would know how to set everything everything up right. I set it to do a clean sweap and install a new large HDD, and nope, same problem. 129 gigs in F, nothing in G. Damn. I tried XBpartitioner 1.0, just to see what it could do, and it gave me a strange-ass Warning Error:

"LBA48 info not found! Custom partitions will not work with this BIOS! Update your BIOS to one which supports at least LBA48 version 2. Press Y to continue or any other buttons to abort"

But....but...but...the M8 BIOS SUPPORTS LBA48! What's going on?!?! It says "LBA48 version 2", what is this?

I'm frustrated. I'm about ready to connect the 200 gig to my PC, wipe it totally clean, and try again. But I don't want to go through that trouble just to have the same problem again. Please, I beg of you o-mighty xbox-scene forums, give me the knowledge I need to end my strife so I can spend less time researching and more time enjoying my time off! (I'll still try to figure things out on my own in the mean time, naturally).

[ferrari_rulz_02]

its the bios. can you downlaod the bios again, and use evtool and edit the settings for lba48?

then just flash your chip with that bios, and you will be fine

[wonderworm]

I have a question to add to this one.

The current bios I use has a F: and G: drive, but I don't think it can see over 129gb's rigth now.

I want to make a clone/backup of my 120gb drive to a 200gb drive.  Will the below steps work???  If not, what should I do?

1.  I unlock my current 120gb drive using config magic on my xbox.

2.  I connect both the 120gb and 200gb drives to my pc in proper master/slave order and boot to a ghost 2003 boot disk.

3.  Since both drives should be unlocked, I should be able to use ghost 2003 and ghost "disk to disk".  Are there any commands or parameters I should use since the drives are different sizes??

4.  When I get my hands on it (after performing the hd swap) I flash the bios with M8 to allow LBA48 so I can utilize the extra space.


Will the above steps work??  I currently don't have the latest evox dash or M8 bios yet.

[ferrari_rulz_02]

QUOTE(wonderworm @ Mar 14 2005, 06:56 PM)

I have a question to add to this one.

The current bios I use has a F: and G: drive, but I don't think it can see over 129gb's rigth now.

I want to make a clone/backup of my 120gb drive to a 200gb drive.  Will the below steps work???  If not, what should I do?

1.  I unlock my current 120gb drive using config magic on my xbox.

2.  I connect both the 120gb and 200gb drives to my pc in proper master/slave order and boot to a ghost 2003 boot disk.

3.  Since both drives should be unlocked, I should be able to use ghost 2003 and ghost "disk to disk".  Are there any commands or parameters I should use since the drives are different sizes??

4.  When I get my hands on it (after performing the hd swap) I flash the bios with M8 to allow LBA48 so I can utilize the extra space.
Will the above steps work??  I currently don't have the latest evox dash or M8 bios yet.

no, this WILL NOT work. i tried to do the exact sme thing. it wont work becasue teh partition sizes are different. what i neded up doing was transferring teh games to my pc (in 50gb lots), then back onto the new drive. took ages, but it worked.

trying to do it via ghost is just a waste of time, unless teh drive sizes are the same

[BjTheClown]

Mechanism8 - just an FYI- i am having the the EXACT same problem. same HD only from tiger direct for $103, using m8 bios, f=129 gigs g=0gigs.  ive been told to use xbtool and similar programs but they wont open my .bin file..... have you gotten xbtool to work with your bios?

[Mechanism8]

Alright, I connected my 200 maxtor to my PC, and XP detected the drive but didn't let me use it. Fair enough, since it's formatted in FatX, something XP can't read. So I booted to my XP install disk to format the drive, and it said the drive wasn't partitioned at all. Weird. Either way, I set up one large partition, formatted it with NTFS, and tried it on my PC. Works just fine, all 194 gigs of it (overhead takes the other 6 gigs I guess). I booted back up my XP install disk, deleted that 1 partition so the drive was totally clean, and put it back in my XBOX to try again.

I loaded up "Slayer's Evox Auto-Installer" and, of course, before doing anything to the drive, it says F: has 129 gigs, and G: has 0. Back to where I was before.

PLEASE, I know there's someone on this forum that knows how to fix this! I have a lot more riding on this than a nice Xbox...don't ask. I NEED to get the rest of this drive working!  Once again:

I'm using the EvoX M8 BIOS, which supports >137gig drives. I'm using "Slayer's Evox Auto-Installer v2.6" to install and format the drive. I'm using a Maxtor 200gig drive. I'm only getting 129gigs on the F: drive, and 0gigs in the G: drive. The only clues I have are:

*XBpartitioner 1.0 claims I don't have a BIOS that supports LBA48 version 2, but I CANNOT REFLASH THE CHIP since it's programmer isn't out yet.

*The BIOS I'm using is Evox M8 BIOS (LBA48-06/IGR), MD5 Hash: AA4D0820B932009090F780F0EE1D1B1C.  The -06 hints to the idea that this only supports an F: drive, but the xbox keeps trying to use a G: drive.  This is my only real lead.

I'm going to do a clean install, and access my HDD via FTP to see if messing with the .ini's will work.

I'm willing to pay $20 to whoever gives me the solution I need, assuming he gives it before I get it (I'm really not kidding, probably transfer through Paypal or MO!). Maybe tickling the natural greed of humans will get me the answer I need. Besides, I strongly believe in "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". I already know I could just do a hot swap to reflash the chip with a different BIOS, or wait until the spiderchip makers release their frikken programmer already, but I want to know how to get this thing working with the BIOS I have now.

[gsgleason]

go to the usual places and download evox m8_16 plus.  use the latest version of evtool (found on the x-s tools section) to modify the bios so F takes the rest of the drive.

flash your chip with that bios.

you'll probably have to reformat F using raw commands (back it up first)

then you should be okay.

just use an application to reflash your chip.  evox can flash it, and there are other apps out there to flash it.  

The bios you currently have doesn't support lba48 - that's what it certainly appears.  If it does, it's with f+g

The only way you can change that is by flashing the bios.  Use evolution-x to do so.