alright guys. thanks again for your suggestions.
i was able to unlock the hdd! then i used this guide
HERE i know i did everything correctly. i ftp'd to my softmodded xbox, ftp'd the contents of the C and E directories to the C and E folders in xboxhdm. i ftp'd the eeprom.bin to the eeprom folder in xboxhdm. made the iso.
i set the jumper on the hdd to master, booted into the linux cd, and went from there. it found the hdd, created the partitions and all that. said completed successfully. then i rebooted and chose option 3 and locked the hdd successfully.
when i put the hdd into the xbox, i got an error 13 screen. i know its a dashboard error. before i created the linux iso, i put an avalaunch default.xbe, the media folder, and avalaunch.xml into the C folder, replacing the original default.xbe.
i did this thinking itd boot to avalaunch, rather than the ms dash. was this a mistake? how can i get this hdd to work? thanks again.