Post by: hobartrus on August 30, 2008, 06:12:00 PM
I want to specifically thank roofus and anger, the guys who made Xplorer360, as well as TheSpecialist, the guy who made HDDHackr and also hacked Xplorer360 to play nice with the WD BEVS drive... I also want to thank him for taking the time to explain how to work with these tools, and I also want to thank folks in this thread for documenting what worked and didn't work for them. Most of the steps in this tutorial were gleaned directly from posts in that thread.
This tutorial may be reposted and distributed elsewhere as long as it is not modified and credit is given to the afore-mentioned folks (roofus, anger, TheSpecialist, and those from that thread.)
In this tutorial I will list the exact steps that I followed that led to success. Some of the steps may not be necessary and some may be redundant, but I wanted to be sure to document everything.
Also, this tutorial focuses pretty much just on the software needed and the steps required to make it work. I'm going to assume that you already know how to physically replace the hard drive. If you don't, there are plenty of other tutorials available (such as this one) that will show you how to do it.
Additionally, these steps were written with Windows XP in mind. If you are using a different OS (such as Vista) these steps may not work for you (but they should give you a pretty good idea what to do.)
And finally, the obligatory disclaimer: you do this at your own risk! If you end up destroying your 360 hard drive, your shiny new 120GB WD BEVS drive, or your PC I cannot be held responsible, even if you follow these steps to the letter.
Ok, let's get this thing started!
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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)
- A Xbox 360 w/ a 20GB hard drive (duh)
software:
- HDDHackr
- Xplorer360 Beta 6
- Xplorer360 'extreme build 2' (you may be able to just use this hacked version and not need the Beta 6 version at all... you may also be able to skip some of the steps in this tutorial thanks to this version, which I will note.)
- Winhex (needed for verification purposes)
- Hex Workshop (needed unless you have a registered version of Winhex.)
- A hddss.bin dumped from a retail 360 120GB hdd (I'm not linking to one because they contain copyrighted code. You're smart, I'm sure you can find some way to get ahold of one.)
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The Steps:
- Copy HDDHackr.com and the hddss.bin file to your bootable floppy disk.
- 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.)
- At the command prompt type "hddhackr -f" and hit enter. Follow through the prompts and be sure to create an undo file when asked.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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 Xplorer360 Beta 6 (you may also be able to use the "extreme build 2" version.)
- Within Xplorer360 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.)
- 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.
- Close Xplorer360 and run the Xplorer360 "extreme build 2" hack. Open the drive like you did in step 9 and 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.
- 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.
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Now for the "tricky" (and possibly unnecessary) parts. If you are using the "extreme build 2" hack of Xplorer 360 some or all of the steps in this section may not be required... I don't know for sure. I did the steps exactly as I'm going to show here and it worked for me. - Open up Hex Workshop. Click "Options" and "Preferences." On the "Layout" tab in the "Rows" section uncheck the "Fit to Window" box and ensure the Bytes/Row is set to 16. This isn't necessary but it makes the next steps easier.
- Click "Disk" then "Open Drive", change the "Select" drop down to Physical Disks and locate your 120GB drive. Be sure you select the correct drive or this could potentially cause catastrophic problems.
- This is the potentially tricky part. You need to get to byte 80000 in hex, but Hex Workshop doesn't let you go to a specific byte offset on drives, only to a specific sector. Assuming the sector size of your drive is the same as mine, or 512 decimal bytes (which I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be,) the sector you should have to goto is 400 (hex.) You do this by clicking "Edit" then "Goto", typing 400 in the "Offset" field and choosing "Beginning of Drive" in the "From Where" section. If the sector size is different for some reason, you'll have to do a little math to get to the right offset (here's my math, just to give you an idea... 0x80000 is 524288 in decimal. 524288/512 (the sector size) is 1024, 1024 is 400 in hex. You could probably do all the math in hex, but I'm not good at hex math so I convert to decimal.)
- You should see a bunch of columns numbered 0-F, and they should all have "00" in them. If they have anything else in them you are either working with the wrong drive or you are at the wrong offset, don't change anything! Otherwise change the columns as follows:
58 54 41 46 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 01
And save by clicking the disk icon or clicking "File" and "Save" - Leaving Hex Workshop open, open up Winhex and either goto offset 80000 or do a search for the word "XTAF." Verify that starting at byte 80000 you see the string above (58 54 41 46, etc.) If you do see the string, go on to the next step. If you don't then you need to back to Hex Workshop and undo your changes, and then find the correct offset to make the changes to. If you are lucky enough to have a registered copy of Winhex or another hex editor that lets you goto a specific byte, you can simply navigate to byte offset 0x80000 and make the changes. The shareware version of Winhex does not allow you to save though.
- Within Hex Workshop open Xplorer360.exe (the beta 6 version, not the "extreme build 2" version.) I'm assuming that this change already exists in the "extreme build 2" version so you can probably skip this step, but I'm including it because I did this. Goto offset F0C2 (hex) where you will find the following values:
68 77 03
change them to:
00 C2 1A
Save the file. You will be prompted to make a backup, which is always a good idea.
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The rest of these steps fall are most definitely "necessary". - Load Xplorer360 beta 6 version (you can probably use the "extreme build 2" version, but I don't know for sure) and open the 120GB drive like you did with the 20GB drive in step 9. If the drive won't open or it opens but you can't access the partitions then something isn't right, go back and check your work.
- 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.
- Close Xplorer360 Beta 6 and open the "extreme build 2" version. Open the drive, then select "restore partition 2", select the 262mb bin file you made in step 11 (part2.bin.) Once it completes, your drive is ready!
Now, Shutdown your PC, pop the 120GB drive into your 360 enclosure. It's probably a good idea to only partially assemble it so you can test it. If you hook it up and your 360 boots up and looks like it did on your 20GB, you should be done!
You may want to check your XBL connection and ensure your XBLA games and other DLC works. You might also verify that your original XBox games still work, and check a game save or two just to make sure nothing is corrupted. Then turn off your 360, reassemble your drive, hook it back up, fire up your 360, and bask in the knowledge that you spent $70 and about an hour (of work time, not data-copying time) instead of $180 to upgrade your 360 from 20GB to 120GB.
Post by: hobartrus on August 30, 2008, 10:38:00 PM
If you don't you'll probably get a very annoying error about media usage rights and won't be able to watch or download DRM encrusted videos.
Post by: flatbushkidus on September 10, 2008, 05:27:00 PM
since your switching it to a 120gb instead of something smaller, im just wondering.
This post has been edited by flatbushkidus: Sep 11 2008, 12:33 AM
Post by: thr4773r on September 10, 2008, 05:55:00 PM
Its always good to have more info crammed down our throats then nothing at all.
My method was a bit different though. Didn't require as much winhex use. I've posted mine before, so I'm not going to get into that again, but I did have questions at the "Possibly Unnecessary steps" 13-18. What is going on there?
The changes in the hexadecimal code kinda made me ponder, but may have been taken care of on my side the different method I used.
Also, when trying to restore partition 2 to the newly formatted drive, I ran into problems where the program(xplorer360) just hung. I bypassed this by just restoring a whole 20GB image to the 120GB drive. The only issue with this is the freespace remaining following. I end up with an 107GB drive, but 13GB free space. A format takes care of that and shows the whole 120GB drive.
I'm thinking that there may need to be files copied over to the drive first so that you can simply restore the partition 2 without using an image of the whole 20GB drive. If you and others have had success with this, then there may be hope.
If you know what the reason for your steps, I'd be interested, and it would put just a little more info out there for us.
Thanks.
Post by: hobartrus on September 11, 2008, 10:14:00 AM
QUOTE(flatbushkidus @ Sep 10 2008, 06:03 PM) 
btw when u change the original 20gb hd with the WD 120gb BREV, did the console recognize it as 120gb or just 20 gb?
since your switching it to a 120gb instead of something smaller, im just wondering.
In order for the console to see it at all you have to flash the drive with an hddss.bin from an existing 360 drive. If you use one from a 20GB drive the console will only see 20GB (well, ~13GB.) If you use one from a 120GB drive the 360 will see the full 120GB (~107GB)
Once you've flashed the drive you have to format it on the 360, and then you can start copying your data.
Post by: hobartrus on September 11, 2008, 11:29:00 AM
QUOTE(thr4773r @ Sep 10 2008, 06:31 PM)
First off, Good Job on the Tut.
Its always good to have more info crammed down our throats then nothing at all.
My method was a bit different though. Didn't require as much winhex use. I've posted mine before, so I'm not going to get into that again, but I did have questions at the "Possibly Unnecessary steps" 13-18. What is going on there?
The changes in the hexadecimal code kinda made me ponder, but may have been taken care of on my side the different method I used.
Also, when trying to restore partition 2 to the newly formatted drive, I ran into problems where the program(xplorer360) just hung. I bypassed this by just restoring a whole 20GB image to the 120GB drive. The only issue with this is the freespace remaining following. I end up with an 107GB drive, but 13GB free space. A format takes care of that and shows the whole 120GB drive.
I'm thinking that there may need to be files copied over to the drive first so that you can simply restore the partition 2 without using an image of the whole 20GB drive. If you and others have had success with this, then there may be hope.
If you know what the reason for your steps, I'd be interested, and it would put just a little more info out there for us.
Thanks.
Thanks for the encouragement...
Since I was successful in upgrading my drive, I wanted to document all of the steps exactly as I did them... and I wanted to do it while it was still fresh in my mind. I realized as I was writing that some of the steps may have been superfluous thanks mainly to the hacked version of Xplorer360 'extreme build 2' that TheSpecialist put out.
You see there were some changes that were required, hex edits to both the drive and the original version of Xplorer360 Beta 6 to make them work together. When I was upgrading my drive I made these changes prior to downloading the 'extreme build 2' version.
The 'extreme build 2' version was apparently made specifically for working with the BEVS drive... so it's possible that by using that version none of the hex editing steps are neccesary. It's also possible that the only hex edits required are those done to the drive itself... but I don't know that for sure because I didn't do it that way. The only people who could answer that question would be those who have tried it, or TheSpecialist.
As for restoring partition 2, I had no problems with that. Using the 'extreme build 2' version I was able to create the image of partition 2 and restore the image without any lock ups or other issues. The only time I got lock ups was when I was copying the data off of my 20GB from partition 3 using the Xplorer360 Beta 6. The work around was to copy the data one folder at a time until I found the problem folder, and then I created the folder structure on my desktop and copied the files/subfolders one at a time until I found the problem file (which was st.db, I believe.) Fortunately the file was a 0kb file so I just created a blank text file and renamed.
Post by: thesonandheir on September 13, 2008, 06:31:00 PM
Now ready for the fall update, woo hoo!
Post by: Jackel25 on September 14, 2008, 02:27:00 PM
I plan on buying an arcade 360 and use my old 20GB on it, then use this tutorial to make the 20 a 120. Just wondering if this is Xbox LIVE friendly?, from what I've read there has been no issue. Also I am a little confused on the 360 seeing the whole 120GB. Does this happen when you format the WD 120 on the 360? I only have a 20GB 360 Drive to flash.
Post by: jerri blank on September 21, 2008, 10:10:00 PM
Thanks for a great tutorial.
Post by: speedle on September 24, 2008, 05:31:00 AM
just wanted to say a huge thankyou for this guide and all the effort you guys have put into developing these programs and guides to help the 360 community get one up on MS!
i purchased a wd1200-bevs usto 120gb, flashed it last night with the image after hex editing hddhackr (thanks specialist!) plonked it in my xbox formatted and awesomeness 107gb of storage! total cost £32!!!!
so again many thanks! legends!
Post by: pigboy306 on September 24, 2008, 02:28:00 PM
Bad news.... I think I fried my drive... I have a broken 20gb hard drive so just wanted to fix it with a 120gb drive. Flashed OK...formatted ok did all the Hex steps OK put the drive back together... however now my xbox nor my pc spot the drive I guess it is cooked. Anyhow that was probably my bad...
My question is , when i get a new drive, do I need to do all the steps just to put in a 120gb drive, the Xbox 'sees' the drive to format as I have nothing to copy can I just leave it there???
Post by: speedle on September 25, 2008, 08:59:00 AM
QUOTE(pigboy306 @ Sep 24 2008, 10:04 PM)
Bad news.... I think I fried my drive... I have a broken 20gb hard drive so just wanted to fix it with a 120gb drive. Flashed OK...formatted ok did all the Hex steps OK put the drive back together... however now my xbox nor my pc spot the drive I guess it is cooked. Anyhow that was probably my bad...
My question is , when i get a new drive, do I need to do all the steps just to put in a 120gb drive, the Xbox 'sees' the drive to format as I have nothing to copy can I just leave it there???
sorry to here that chap.
the new drive will have to be flashed with the hddss.bin before loading it into the xbox. id recommend you do a quick format of it before flashing (this is what i did). once its in the xbox it should show as unformatted and you'll need to let the box format it to its own XFAT file system. once thats done it should be happy days!
re: your now broken 120gb drive, did hddhackr see it initially and now its not seeing it at all? have you tried using the undo option to restore the drive or is it not responding at all?
Post by: SimplexPL on September 26, 2008, 05:11:00 PM
While attempting to install bevs I somehow messed up my original 20gb drive. The thread describing the problem is here: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=662197
All help extremely appreciated.
EDIT: looks like I'm not alone:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...p;#entry4349197
This post has been edited by SimplexPL: Sep 27 2008, 12:31 AM
Post by: Spark on September 28, 2008, 09:20:00 AM
Post by: bbking67 on September 28, 2008, 06:12:00 PM
One thing I did not do was the winhex/hex studio mods... i used the newer versio0n of xplorer360 so i was hoping this was unnecessary (the instructions for this part are a bit sketchy).
I have a small DRM issue on my xbox that I can't seem to figure out. I have a few games from the marketplace that were purchased. Now these still work fine with the gamertag they were bought under, but they no longer function for the other two xbox live accounts on the xbox. i deleted the drm database and I even tried the new drm transfer tool with no luck. Even free demo videos from the marketplace have suffered the same fate.
I am going to try re-downloading some of the content to see what happens, but I am on a very slow internet link (live in the country so i have to suffer with throttles fixed wireless).
Thanks for this thread! I just save over $100!
Post by: SimplexPL on September 29, 2008, 01:24:00 AM
QUOTE(Spark @ Sep 28 2008, 05:56 PM) 
Thanks for the great guide, none of the hexing is required anymore by the way, at least I didn't have to do any of it anyway.
On saturday I succesfully converted bevs into xbox360 compatible drive. I also thought that hexing wont be possible, but it turned out I had to do it - neither xplorer360 beta 6 nor extreme 2 would work without those hex magic.
Post by: Mach1024 on September 29, 2008, 11:22:00 AM
QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Sep 29 2008, 02:00 AM)
On saturday I succesfully converted bevs into xbox360 compatible drive. I also thought that hexing wont be possible, but it turned out I had to do it - neither xplorer360 beta 6 nor extreme 2 would work without those hex magic.
I went about it a bit differently. After running the hddhack and formatting the 120 GB drive, I had off loaded my 20 GB drives files when I decided that I could live without my game saves. So after playing with the drive a bit by downloading a few games and arcade titles I owned, I read about the backwards compatibility problem with these drives. So I tested out some xbox titles and lo and behold they did not work. I tried the Xbox 2007 update from Microsoft, but that did not resolve the issue.
So, I plugged the 120GB back into my comp and continued with the procedure by looking at the 80000 byte offset but found that it had already been updated with a string slightly different from the one described on the guide (Don't ask me what it was, I didn't write it down). I used xplorer360 extreme 2 to copy the files (I used the extreme 2 version exclusively through out) and restored the partition 2. Then I plugged the drive back in the 360 and, in addition to having all my game saves and downloaded content, the backwards compatibility was now working again.
So, I guess that the official drives from Microsoft have backwards compatibility files that cannot be installed via the 360 backwards compatibility update. I wonder if the 360 formatting of official drives skips the backwards compatibility portions of the drive or if formatted drives lose backwards compatibility? Of if just copying the "compatibility" folder of my old drive to the new drive would have worked as well?
Post by: SimplexPL on September 29, 2008, 01:13:00 PM
This forced me to edit hdd partition with hexedit the way it is described in the tutorial. After that partition 3 appeared under xplorer360 xtreme 2 and it was also possible to restore partition 2, too.
Post by: speedle on September 30, 2008, 04:04:00 AM
Post by: pigboy306 on September 30, 2008, 12:42:00 PM
QUOTE(speedle @ Sep 25 2008, 03:35 PM)
sorry to here that chap.
the new drive will have to be flashed with the hddss.bin before loading it into the xbox. id recommend you do a quick format of it before flashing (this is what i did). once its in the xbox it should show as unformatted and you'll need to let the box format it to its own XFAT file system. once thats done it should be happy days!
re: your now broken 120gb drive, did hddhackr see it initially and now its not seeing it at all? have you tried using the undo option to restore the drive or is it not responding at all?
Bios wouldn't 'see' the drive so i guess it is fried, slight smell of burning from the mainboard so i figure it shorted... sent it back to the supplier as duff...if i get a new one great if not i am in same position as now
Post by: ubiman on October 03, 2008, 12:03:00 AM
QUOTE(bbking67 @ Sep 28 2008, 08:48 PM)
I followed this guide and successfully upgraded to a 22UST0 BEVS drive (120GB). I used a copy of HDDSS.BIN found on the usual public places. The BIN I flashed turned out to be from a Fujitsu drive (according to HDDHACKR), but everything seems okay.
One thing I did not do was the winhex/hex studio mods... i used the newer versio0n of xplorer360 so i was hoping this was unnecessary (the instructions for this part are a bit sketchy).
I have a small DRM issue on my xbox that I can't seem to figure out. I have a few games from the marketplace that were purchased. Now these still work fine with the gamertag they were bought under, but they no longer function for the other two xbox live accounts on the xbox. i deleted the drm database and I even tried the new drm transfer tool with no luck. Even free demo videos from the marketplace have suffered the same fate.
I am going to try re-downloading some of the content to see what happens, but I am on a very slow internet link (live in the country so i have to suffer with throttles fixed wireless).
Thanks for this thread! I just save over $100!
What is a 22UST0 BEVS drive?
Fujitsu bin? I thought this was for WD drives?
Post by: SimplexPL on October 03, 2008, 07:30:00 AM
QUOTE(ubiman @ Oct 3 2008, 08:39 AM)
What is a 22UST0 BEVS drive?
This is simply particular 'subtype' of WD12000BEVS drive - "22UST0" moniker changes depending on date of production. All BEVS drives can be converted, provided you hook them up to compatible SATA controller (Intel ICH9 did not work for me, external VIA 6421 controller worked)
QUOTE
Fujitsu bin? I thought this was for WD drives?
Try to read and understand what you are reading, no offence.
The .bin file contains information taken from a genuine original 120gb xbox360 disk - as it happens Microsoft uses Fujitsu HDDs - so after successful flash of the WD drive it will be visible as Fujitsu disk, to fool the console.
My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.
This post has been edited by SimplexPL: Oct 3 2008, 02:34 PM
Post by: pigboy306 on October 03, 2008, 12:03:00 PM
so will have another go... anyhow i have a case and a dff 20gb drive, so have nothing to move or convert can i just stop at the format stage (8) without the hex editing and backing up as i have nothing to copy??
Post by: Xbox-Warrior on October 03, 2008, 06:46:00 PM
QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Oct 3 2008, 06:06 AM)
My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.
Yes each drive has its own serial number. But I really don't think MS will ban people for having modded hard drives. I mean the PS3 owners are also able to upgrade their drives by themselves without flashing the firmware either. I also think they know that $180 for a 120G drive is really stupid. I paid $45 for my BEVS 120G drive.
Now if you have a modded dvd firmware that's a different story and you better buy a different book if you don't like bad endings. Its only a matter of time before you get caught. I have been caught during the Halo 3 Beta period. I would also suggest flashing back your dvd firmware before applying the fall update or any update as far as that goes.
This coming Monday Xbox Live will be down 24 hours for this reason they are coming with the fall update to be realeased later on down the line.
So everyone tread softly in the coming months. You have been warned. No BS. I expect the update to also have with it the new Ban Hammer.
Post by: Mach1024 on October 04, 2008, 04:09:00 AM
QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Oct 3 2008, 08:06 AM)
My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.
My opinion is that they could do three things:
One is ban a particular hard drive serial number. That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update. Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken). From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials.
Two, they could ban the consoles from Live running the drive. Suddenly their are now drives that ban consoles connected to Live. People would unload their drives on unsuspecting buyers on ebay/craigslist/etc and then more consoles would be banned. The users would complain about how they just bought a used drive and MS would have to explain why their drive is violating copyright, is bad for the user (in MS's point of view). And would they unban the console? Wouldn't the user just resell the drive? Copyright laws vary from country to country, so such drives might be perfectly legit even with the serial in certain countries and Microsoft would probably have only it service agreement to rely on.
Three, they could ban the gamer tag from Live if caught using a banned serial multiple times. They would have to weigh the costs of live subscription revenue vs the lost hard drive revenue. And the legalities of this would probably be messy as with point two.
As an aside, I've noticed that the 360 drives from Hong Kong don't seem to be listed on ebay anymore. Perhaps those were using the same mod we've used on our drives.
This post has been edited by Mach1024: Oct 4 2008, 11:15 AM
Post by: speedle on October 08, 2008, 09:02:00 AM
thing that gets me is that you can buy a core console in the uk now for £129.99 rrp but the 120gb drives are still upwards of £119!!! i mean WTF! M$ need to bring down the price of these drives ASAP, theyre shooting themselves in the foot.
as for bans, i can understand M$ banning people for hacking the DVD firmware as it allows the user to copy games and of course this costs the industry a huge amount of money. i doubt very much that M$ will ban us for using modded drives. i mean we are using offcial firmware (technically
) on these updated drives not hacked firmware (although i apprciate that the BIN files are copywrighted). but you could just claim ignorance and say you bought it second hand like that...the most likely consiquece is as mach said above;
"One is ban a particular hard drive serial number. That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update. Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken). From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials."
but here's hoping! i dont want to get banned! i use live almost every night. id be expecting my yearly memebership costs refunded if they did ban me! damn you Gates!!!
Post by: usvelt on October 11, 2008, 01:16:00 PM
I registered on this forum just to say a big thanks for the tutorial
Worked an absolute treat ( I had to use a hex editor on my drive) but all worked well.
Superb.
Many thanks.
Post by: DrGremlin on October 20, 2008, 01:46:00 PM
They are working on my 20gb hdd but not on the 120gb.
I heard something that they have to be resigned, but i dont have a clue how to do that.
Any ideas?
Post by: cyanides on October 22, 2008, 12:01:00 AM
QUOTE(jerri blank @ Sep 21 2008, 11:46 PM)
I'm sorry if this is a n00b question, but the search function of the site doesn't work for me. Is it true that I can't work on the 360 drives by connecting them to my laptop's USB port with an SATA cable adapter? I have to actually connect them to the hard drive controller in a desktop computer, right?
Thanks for a great tutorial.
I didn't see this question answered and I too was wondering if it is possible to do this mod using a laptop.
QUOTE(thr4773r @ Sep 10 2008, 07:31 PM)
Also, when trying to restore partition 2 to the newly formatted drive, I ran into problems where the program(xplorer360) just hung. I bypassed this by just restoring a whole 20GB image to the 120GB drive. The only issue with this is the freespace remaining following. I end up with an 107GB drive, but 13GB free space. A format takes care of that and shows the whole 120GB drive.
I'm thinking that there may need to be files copied over to the drive first so that you can simply restore the partition 2 without using an image of the whole 20GB drive. If you and others have had success with this, then there may be hope.
I have not done this yet so I may be miss understanding what you did. The way I understand it you put a 20gb drive image to the 120 gb drive, formatted in the xbox360 and it was then recognized as a 120 gb drive. Why not put a 20gb image on a 250 gb drive, put in xbox360 and format? If after formatting it recognized your drive as a 120 wouldn't the same technique work on a larger hd?
Thanks,
Marc
Post by: thr4773r on October 22, 2008, 12:12:00 PM
QUOTE(cyanides @ Oct 22 2008, 01:37 AM)
I didn't see this question answered and I too was wondering if it is possible to do this mod using a laptop.
I have not done this yet so I may be miss understanding what you did. The way I understand it you put a 20gb drive image to the 120 gb drive, formatted in the xbox360 and it was then recognized as a 120 gb drive. Why not put a 20gb image on a 250 gb drive, put in xbox360 and format? If after formatting it recognized your drive as a 120 wouldn't the same technique work on a larger hd?
Thanks,
Marc
My putting of the 20GB image on the newly formatted 120GB hard drive was done after using hddhackr and getting a working(recognized in 360)hard drive. It is a way to get around having to hexedit your hard drive to get the other partitions (0, 2). You still have to use a legit 120GB hddss.bin to prep your hard drive and have it recognized in your 360.
The requirements are that you have the Specialist version of xplorer360 and that you have a image of your 20GB hard drive backed up. I know its a pain, takes up 18.6 Gb, but its a 100% way to get your hard drive working correctly.
Once you have a hackr'd drive flashed and working, if you look in it with xplorer360, you will only have 1 partition. Original games won't work because the emulator partition is not there. Like I said above, restoring a 20GB image to your 120GB drive will eliminate the need to hex-edit your drive. You don't even need to let it completely restore, because that can take some time. Let it run about 3 or 4 minutes and then stop xplorer360's restore function. When you close and reopen the drive in xplorer360, you'll see all the partitions that should be there. At that point, you can install the hard drive in your 360 and run the emulation update disk to get the latest emulation software loaded. If for some reason, you let the restore go too long, or just let it finish restoring the 20 GB image to your drive, you'll see something like
total space 107 GB
free space 13GB
or something like that.
One other note. You may have to put the drive back in your pc for a quick hddhackr -u, followed by a reboot and a hddhackr -f to get the drive recognized by the 360 again after you restore the image to the hard drive. If you have to flash it again, do not make another undo.bin. The first one you made the first time you flashed is fine.
I've had it happen where immediately the drive is usable, but only 13gb free(solved with another format) and also having to undo with hddhackr and redo again to get it visible again.
As long as you have these pieces of software, the correct hard drive, a valid hddss.bin, and a compatible sata port, you can get the drive working very quickly.
Post by: cyanides on October 22, 2008, 03:24:00 PM
Post by: cherryfool on October 26, 2008, 07:15:00 PM
I purchased my WD drive from ebuyer in the UK. Specifically it's a WD1200BEVS-00VAT0. I can confirm this works for almost everything.
BUT, it doesn't work with existing Rock Band game saves. Basically, after installing the new drive, Rock Band refuses to load my profile's saves giving the error "Loading has faled for an unknown reason. Selected storage device is no longer available". It then allows you to play the game without any previously saved information (musicians, bands, etc.). I've tried loading the game saves "from another device", selecting the harddrive as source, but this results in the same message
.I've not found any workarounds for this but there are others with the same problem, e.g. here and here.
For me this makes this mod unusable (the wife would murder me if I lost her rockband saves!
) which is really gutting because it's otherwise great!
Post by: barzi on October 27, 2008, 03:33:00 AM
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD1200BEVS
Because I see nothing in the topic start about the Blue part.. But this is the only WD1200BEVS you can get here in The Netherlands..
So is this the right one?
And can I also use a 60GB Harddisk?
Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD600BEVS
Because MS is using a 60GB harddisk now in the premium consoles.
And is the undo file the same as dumping the hddss.bin from your 20GB HDD? So a backup..?
This post has been edited by barzi: Oct 27 2008, 10:43 AM
Post by: SynGamer on November 05, 2008, 05:44:00 PM
Any help? I've set my USB flash drive (all i have, no Floppy) up with i believe Windows98SE boot files...
EDIT: are there any cheaper SATA controllers that are guaranteed to work with HDDHackr? I have the ICH9 Intel chipset and it works fine for me for everything else i use it for, so i'd like to keep costs down for this project.
This post has been edited by SynGamer: Nov 6 2008, 01:47 AM
Post by: dmac271 on November 05, 2008, 07:01:00 PM
QUOTE(SynGamer @ Nov 5 2008, 06:20 PM)
I keep getting Disk Boot Failure, please insert...
Any help? I've set my USB flash drive (all i have, no Floppy) up with i believe Windows98SE boot files...
EDIT: are there any cheaper SATA controllers that are guaranteed to work with HDDHackr? I have the ICH9 Intel chipset and it works fine for me for everything else i use it for, so i'd like to keep costs down for this project.
the only reason that would be happening is if your flash drive wasnt configured properly for boot.
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
try that website for help
Post by: SynGamer on November 05, 2008, 07:21:00 PM
QUOTE(dmac271 @ Nov 5 2008, 09:37 PM)
ive done all the pre hard drive steps and i just want to confirm that before you format the 120gb hard drive you insert your OWN xbox serial number?
the only reason that would be happening is if your flash drive wasnt configured properly for boot.
http://www.weethet.n...romusbstick.php
try that website for help
My problem is that i don't have a floppy drive on my computer so i am unable to get the boot sector files...if someone could send those to me, that would be great, but until then, it looks like i'm out of luck.
Post by: dmac271 on November 05, 2008, 07:44:00 PM
QUOTE(SynGamer @ Nov 5 2008, 07:57 PM)
My problem is that i don't have a floppy drive on my computer so i am unable to get the boot sector files...if someone could send those to me, that would be great, but until then, it looks like i'm out of luck.
sorry i sent the wrong link i wasnt paying attention.
http://www.thepcspy....usb_flash_drive
use that one and the files to download are in the comments
Post by: SynGamer on November 05, 2008, 09:04:00 PM
QUOTE(dmac271 @ Nov 5 2008, 10:20 PM)
sorry i sent the wrong link i wasnt paying attention.
http://www.thepcspy....usb_flash_drive
use that one and the files to download are in the comments
My problem now is do i boot from USB-FFD (or was it FDD?) or USB-HDD?
Post by: dmac271 on November 05, 2008, 09:47:00 PM
QUOTE(SynGamer @ Nov 5 2008, 09:40 PM)
My problem now is do i boot from USB-FFD (or was it FDD?) or USB-HDD?
should just boot to usb drive try both and see if either gets you to dos mode
Post by: SynGamer on November 05, 2008, 09:53:00 PM
QUOTE(dmac271 @ Nov 6 2008, 12:23 AM)
should just boot to usb drive try both and see if either gets you to dos mode
I have a ICH9 chipset so i'm not sure if i can even get there or if i do boot into DoS if i'll have further problems but i'm going to try.
Post by: dmac271 on November 05, 2008, 10:14:00 PM
Post by: SynGamer on November 05, 2008, 10:44:00 PM
My options when booting are;Floppy
LS120
Hard Drive
CDROM
ZIP
USB-FFS
USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
USB-HDD
Legacy LAN
Nothing works
EDIT: just to clarify, i have my Hard Drive and Optical disconnected.I'm using a Kingston thumb drive (1GB) and i followed the directions in the link you sent me exactly. I'm going into the BIOS and trying to boot from there buy nothing...perhaps it's a setting in the BIOS?
Post by: guyver0 on November 06, 2008, 12:49:00 PM
Post by: dmac271 on November 06, 2008, 01:23:00 PM
QUOTE(guyver0 @ Nov 6 2008, 01:25 PM)
i have an intel d945plrn motherboard that im connecting my bevs with, however after booting into hddhackr -f [using an hp boot flash disk] it searches in enhanced mode first and then legacy mode and then says enter the nr of the drive to be used, numbers between 1-4 im stuck here
you need to hex edit hddhackr with hex editor so it can manually find your device
Post by: sweapon on November 06, 2008, 10:09:00 PM
Post by: dmac271 on November 06, 2008, 10:30:00 PM
QUOTE(sweapon @ Nov 6 2008, 10:45 PM)
can it be any digital wetern 120 gb hard disk or does it have to be a laptop(slim) harddrive????
laptop slim BEVS series
Post by: sweapon on November 07, 2008, 12:40:00 AM
QUOTE(dmac271 @ Nov 7 2008, 08:06 AM)
laptop slim BEVS series
can i use sata II type harddrives? i know that in the end it will not fit , but can it work connected?
Post by: sweapon on November 07, 2008, 01:48:00 AM
Post by: seg7 on November 07, 2008, 03:28:00 AM
Post by: monkeyspank on November 07, 2008, 10:29:00 AM
QUOTE(SynGamer @ Nov 6 2008, 05:29 AM)
I have a ICH9 chipset so i'm not sure if i can even get there or if i do boot into DoS if i'll have further problems but i'm going to try.
I used my ICH9 chipset successfully. I had to connect another SATA hard drive as well to get the flash to work.
Also, instead of using a USB thumb drive, you can do it from a hard drive. Burn a boot CD. Put all the files you need (hddhackr, hddss.bin) into a folder on your C drive, for instance C:\360\
boot off the CD into DOS and navigate to C:\360\ (might change drive letter to D:\ due to the RAM drive, I'm not sure, but you'll know when you have the right drive with a quick dir command) and run hddhackr from there.
This post has been edited by monkeyspank: Nov 7 2008, 06:31 PM
Post by: dmac271 on November 07, 2008, 11:06:00 AM
Post by: monkeyspank on November 07, 2008, 01:44:00 PM
When I restored partition 2 to my new 120gb, partition 1 disappeared in Xplorer360.
Tried the drive in my xbox and everything seems fine (except the rockband save but not bothered by that)
Shall I do it again to try and get partition 1 to show? before I go saving games to my new drive?
Post by: dmac271 on November 07, 2008, 04:19:00 PM
QUOTE(monkeyspank @ Nov 7 2008, 02:20 PM)
Is partition 1 important? lol
When I restored partition 2 to my new 120gb, partition 1 disappeared in Xplorer360.
Tried the drive in my xbox and everything seems fine (except the rockband save but not bothered by that)
Shall I do it again to try and get partition 1 to show? before I go saving games to my new drive?
im not sure what partition 1 is and i wont be able to restore my files until tomorrow but im just going to assume that it does do something or it wouldnt be on there in the first place. I would start over and try again.
Post by: DHR on November 08, 2008, 12:19:00 PM
Probably took at least half hour for a 300mb folder. Can't imagine how long my 6gb Content folder is going to take
Post by: Elmlea on November 08, 2008, 05:57:00 PM
QUOTE(Mach1024 @ Sep 29 2008, 05:58 PM)
I read about the backwards compatibility problem with these drives. So I tested out some xbox titles and lo and behold they did not work. I tried the Xbox 2007 update from Microsoft, but that did not resolve the issue.
I've got this problem. I bought a Hong Kong 120Gb HD through eBay, and while it works a treat in every other way, it won't let me start any backward compatible games, regardless of whether they're on disc or downloaded through Xbox Originals on Live. I presume there's something strange about partition 2 on the HK drives that are all over eBay.
Anyone got any tips on how I might go about fixing it? I don't have an original 20Gb drive anymore, so I can't simply copy over any files that live in partition 2 as I don't even know what files are meant to be there. I'm not an expert when it comes to things like hex editors so I'm wary of losing everything if I make a few mistakes.
Since formatting doesn't seem to touch partition 2, I was planning on just buying a new UK 120Gb drive and using the transfer cable to move everything over from partition 3 on my HK one, but if there's a cheaper way, or a way I can adjust my HK drive to repair partition 2 then I'd rather do that.
Anyone got any advice?
Post by: supertrek32 on November 10, 2008, 08:14:00 PM
Anyway, my only question concerns the hddss.bin file. Are these unique per HDD? I ask because if these are unique, MS could start banning any duplicate drives based off this - I wouldn't want to borrow my friends HDD so they wouldn't get caught up in it.
Post by: tthome on November 11, 2008, 07:30:00 AM
Things that I have successfully done:
I have a working 107GB Hard Drive recognized in my xbox 360 with nothing on it (clean) and my original 20GB still has the saved games and all the downloads, updates, XBL arcade games on them.
I'm trying (as I'm typing this) to just go for it and use the Xbox Xplorer Extreme 2 to copy all the files from the 20GB hard drive - partition 3 to my PC...I started this last night at 8pm, and it's still running (10 hours later).
Here are my questions:
Does it take this long to see the "dumping folders" dialog box when copying all the files from your 20GB HD to your desktop?
After copying parition 3, I still need to create an image of parition 2 to go onto the new 120GB Drive correct?
Is it safe to say that after my 360 recognized my 120GB that I have a partition 2 and 3 on there? If so, I assume I just copy from my desktop all the parition 3 information that came from the 20GB drive to the partition 3 on the 120GB and load the parition 2 image from my 20GB drive to my 120GB? This will essentially move all my files right?
Or should I just go through the hex stuff?
I'm shocked that Xplorer Extreme 2 is taking this long...is Extreme 2 the Specialist version of Xbox Explorer that people are referencing?
Post by: ntriusbil on November 12, 2008, 03:26:00 PM
QUOTE(Elmlea @ Nov 9 2008, 02:33 AM)
I've got this problem. I bought a Hong Kong 120Gb HD through eBay, and while it works a treat in every other way, it won't let me start any backward compatible games, regardless of whether they're on disc or downloaded through Xbox Originals on Live. I presume there's something strange about partition 2 on the HK drives that are all over eBay.
Anyone got any tips on how I might go about fixing it? I don't have an original 20Gb drive anymore, so I can't simply copy over any files that live in partition 2 as I don't even know what files are meant to be there. I'm not an expert when it comes to things like hex editors so I'm wary of losing everything if I make a few mistakes.
Since formatting doesn't seem to touch partition 2, I was planning on just buying a new UK 120Gb drive and using the transfer cable to move everything over from partition 3 on my HK one, but if there's a cheaper way, or a way I can adjust my HK drive to repair partition 2 then I'd rather do that.
Anyone got any advice?
I also had the backward compatibility problem. I was testing Halo 1 from the disc, and it said it couldn't start - that I should download it again. This is how I fixed it...
I was using only the extreme2 version of xplorer. Once the xbox formatted the 120, it was working fine and showing 107GB free. However, extreme2 xplorer only showed Partition 1. Attempting to restore partition 2 at this point would crash the program.
I tested it by downloading a small XBLA game, and that seemed to go fine. I then reformatted the drive, but still only got partition 1 and couldn't restore partition 2.
I went and got the non-extreme xplorer. After doing the hex edits to the drive and the application, it showed partitions 0 and 3. I tested partition 3 and was able to copy to it. I then restored my partition 2 successfully (happy!). I copied the rest of my data to partition 3, and I now have a fully functional drive.*
* - I couldn't watch any downloaded videos until I deleted my rights management database. I'm guessing that it rebuilt itself properly.
* - My Fable 2 save is "corrupt." I'm guessing that is due to the hardware signing. I would really like some education on this. I can see that the "scene" frowns on this because of the cheating implications, but I would really like my Fable 2 save back. On the other hand, I don't want the big MS to think I'm cheating and jeopardize my account either. Anyone have any thoughts?
Post by: tza88 on November 13, 2008, 02:17:00 PM
2 questions though
1. Has anyone been banned yet that has done this?
2. Has anyone used the HDD Migration kit that came with the Elite to transfer the files to the formatted drive, instead of using Xplorer?
A buddy of mine has the elite and i wanted to see if i could use that to transfer my info instead of doing all the hex stuff.
Thanks for any help
Post by: tthome on November 13, 2008, 03:38:00 PM
My 120Gb shows up as 107GB and I have all my data backed up to my pc...partition 3 files are there and so is the parition2.bin file...
when I go to view my 120GB drive using xplorer X2...I only see parition 1 on the drive, not 1, 2 and 3.
I've downloaded the hex stuff (ALL GREEK TO ME)...I do the first part by opening up the physical drive and selection the 120GB drive...a list of stuff, change the setting to 16 bit, yada yada...but when I do the goto 400 hex it really doesn't display anything different.
I see columns 0 through F and it's full of zeros but do I change all these columns to the ones suggestest in the "tut"? Also, when I do the goto shouldn't I see something change??? I don't.
I'm so stinking close I know, but I can't figure out the hex part...please, can anyone do a screen shot of what it needs to look like? I'll host the images if someone can email them to me or PM me a link, something.
I'd really like to get all my saves, updates, content over before the NXE thing kicks in next week. I have a feeling after that transferring data might be harder.
Please oh XBOX HARD DRIVE UPGRADER GODS!!! HELP ME>>>>!!!
Post by: Fermbiz on November 14, 2008, 11:07:00 PM
Thx in advance.
Post by: Benjams33 on November 16, 2008, 01:15:00 AM
Thanks for the tutorial.
Post by: vlj9r on November 16, 2008, 04:54:00 AM
QUOTE(Fermbiz @ Nov 15 2008, 01:43 AM)
Can someone me..the noob?? Ive been trying for the past 4 nights to boot up using the USB drive but its just not happening. Gave up on that and decided to put DOS on a floppy. Copied and paste hddss.bin to the floppy and I boot up to DOS. At the A prompt I type run hddhackr -f and i keep getting bad command. I tried different DOS programs but nothing is working. What am I doing wrong?
Thx in advance.
make sure there is a copy of hddhackr in the floppy.
Post by: Fermbiz on November 16, 2008, 09:28:00 AM
QUOTE(vlj9r @ Nov 16 2008, 01:30 PM)
make sure there is a copy of hddhackr in the floppy.
Yea...I figured that out last night. For some reason thought the hddhackr was for something else.
I borrowed an extra 20 gig hdd from a friend and used that to swap out drives. Then I used the MS transfer kit to brng my whole profile, saves, and dlc over to my brand new 120 gig
.got 90gb left and I only paid 60 bucks for it.
Post by: ichiban06 on November 17, 2008, 07:34:00 PM
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 17, 2008, 10:29:00 PM
I've been reading this forum and several others. I want to try this mod if I can. I originally read an article in PC World about doing this and had started to follow their instructions but now after read this forum, I'm afraid that the PC World article may have left out a few details.
So here is what I want to try.
First, I ordered my Western Digital Drive that came about 2 weeks ago. Yeah, yeah.. spent to much time being scared.
I had downloaded hddhackr and now have version .91, and I download the HP USB bootable utility that was described in the PC World article. And that works, I can boot from the USB drive, and I made a regular floppy and that works too.
I downloaded a 'hddss.bin' file, just in case I didn't want to use a 120gb xbox drive to try and Winhex it. That's the part that scares me.
I tried to do it today, and after I rebooted, the USB was no longer bootable and I used the floppy and ran it again and it said something about the serial number not being correct and failed to perform the operation.
So the only thing that I can figure is that the hddss.bin file I used was not a good one, and might have actually contained a virus that caused my USB drive not to boot any longer.
So I am starting all over again. I recreated my USB bootable drive, copied to it hddhackr file, as I said this time I made sure I have what I think is the latest, version .91.
Here is my situation, I have two Xbox's, one is an Elite with the 120gb drive and the other is a Pro with a 60gb drive.
So I do have the ability to do that Winhex on my 120gb drive to get a hddss.bin file and then I would know that the two drives would really never be on the xbox system at the same time. One Xbox is my living room and the other is in my bedroom.
But because I'm scared of doing the Winhex thing, and because I want void only one of the warranty's of the two xbox systems. If I open and take out the 120gb hard drive and mess that up I'm screwed.
I would rather only mess up the 60gb drive if any at all.
And yes, one would say if I'm not comfortable then don't do the hack.
I will do it, I just want to know that you are all out there to help me if I run into problems and to guide me.
I did order the transfer cable from MS, but if I use that to help in copying over the drive's image will I still be able to use the drive that the copy was made from (in this case the 60gb drive, not that I would really use it again if this works). MS said that you can use the transfer cable but you can only transfer a drive once. What does that mean? What does that transfer utility really do?
Now there was also in the instructions listed here (page 1) that I need to do run "Xplorer360 Beta 6 (you may also be able to use the "extreme build 2" version)" Do I really need to use this?
I do have a memory unit for the Xbox box as well. I actually have my gametag and game saves on the memory unit. This is how I play on each of my two xbox's. If I'm in the bedroom, I pull the card out and plug it in in the living room if I want to play there.
I had been doing the gametag recover each time I move from system to system. But then I discovered that I can just use the memory unit and move that only. A lot easier!
Ok before I write a book and then no one read this, I will end this tonight.
I'm going in the morning, try again the hddhackr and see if that works with the new hddss.bin once, if not I will open my 120gb drive and try the winhex method.
At that point I will definitely need all your help!
I thank you in advance for you help and I guess encouragement.
Rob
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 17, 2008, 11:51:00 PM
I just wanted to add something to my previous posting.
I had gotten a MS data transfer cable and read in the other thread on this system that you can use the data transfer cable to get the hddss.bin file from a 120gb drive without opening up the xbox drive and without breaking the seal.
Is this true. How would I do this, I just watch a video that explains how to do a data transfer and that is only hooking up the extra drive to an xbox usb port.
So how would you run winhex?
Can you plug this data transfer cable up to a PC and get access to the hard drive that way. Because MS's instructions says if you connect this cable to a PC you could damage the PC or hard drive?
Does anyone know if this can be done safely? And if it's at all possible.
Boy, I would love to be able to do get the hddss.bin file without having to open or break the seal on this drive, and hence not void my warranty.
Thanks again!
Rob
Post by: chrysilis on November 18, 2008, 03:55:00 AM
QUOTE(ntriusbil @ Nov 13 2008, 08:32 AM)
* - My Fable 2 save is "corrupt." I'm guessing that is due to the hardware signing. I would really like some education on this. I can see that the "scene" frowns on this because of the cheating implications, but I would really like my Fable 2 save back. On the other hand, I don't want the big MS to think I'm cheating and jeopardize my account either. Anyone have any thoughts?
I also have this problem
everything else works fine. Did you manage to solve the issue?
Post by: dangerouseddy on November 18, 2008, 10:21:00 AM
Post by: thr4773r on November 18, 2008, 11:35:00 AM
QUOTE(rlanza1054 @ Nov 18 2008, 01:27 AM)
Hi again,
I just wanted to add something to my previous posting.
I had gotten a MS data transfer cable and read in the other thread on this system that you can use the data transfer cable to get the hddss.bin file from a 120gb drive without opening up the xbox drive and without breaking the seal.
Is this true. How would I do this, I just watch a video that explains how to do a data transfer and that is only hooking up the extra drive to an xbox usb port.
So how would you run winhex?
Can you plug this data transfer cable up to a PC and get access to the hard drive that way. Because MS's instructions says if you connect this cable to a PC you could damage the PC or hard drive?
Does anyone know if this can be done safely? And if it's at all possible.
Boy, I would love to be able to do get the hddss.bin file without having to open or break the seal on this drive, and hence not void my warranty.
Thanks again!
Rob
Yes it works without removing the drive from the shell.
Use the MS Transfer cable as previously stated and use either winhex to copy sectors 16-22, or use the specialist's xplorer360 extreme 2 version. Either way works.
The warnings from MS are negligible. If you don't have a separate power source connected (with floating grounds being a problem) or draw too much current from your USB, what damage could you do? You can overwrite data of course, but do not write to your original disk when you connect it, and remove the drive when you are done and you should be ok.
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 11:38:00 AM
After a lot of reading last night, I'm trying again.
This is what I am doing right now .. I have the MS data transfer cable.
I tried to attach it to my 120gb drive and plug the other end into my laptop USB port.
My laptop saw the drive but could not mount for the obvious reason, it was formatted for something that XP doesn't understand.
I run a program called Xplorer 360 (hopefully the latest version).
I try to see if it could see the xbox 120gb drive (that xp does not see) and yes it does.
So as suggested, I used the drop down menu and selected to make a hddss.bin file. It worked.
So my first question, this is a pure hddss.bin file for a 120gb drive. It should be good and my next step should be to run hddhackr on the Western Digital Drive.
Also, there was an option to copy or backup to an image file, the whole 120gb xbox drive. I'm doing that now.
And yes, I see the 3 partitions.
Wow, I'm so close!
Frankly, I wanted this to get working today before they send out the new experience upgrade on the 19th, which is later tonight.
Please someone, try and verify if I'm doing OK so far?
I'm a little scared that I won't be able to create those other partitions.
Rob
Post by: thr4773r on November 18, 2008, 12:18:00 PM
Recovering a 20gb image to my newly hacked hard drive was the easiest way to get the other partitions onto my 120GB hard drives. Of course if you do it this way, you have to re-flash the WD drive with hddhackr again. After flashing the hddss.bin and getting a working drive, recover your 20gb image, 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 the drive in your 360, and play away!!
Post by: jyrisa on November 18, 2008, 01:18:00 PM
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 01:56:00 PM
The Xpolorer is still copying the 120gb ... more than an hour how. But it hasn't died.
And thr4773r if that message was meant for me, yeah now that I see it working, your probably right, I should have copied the drive that's really being replaced which is a 60gb drive. It would not take as long to do the copy.
I am going to copy the 60gb anyway just to be safe and have an emergency copy of both.
I did the Hddhackr and it finally came up with that wonderful message, your drive will work on an xbox 360.
The next thing I am doing, I watched a video on how to take apart the hard drive out of it's protect case, no problem there (but almost lost the 'spring').
I then attached the new Western Digital to the drive casing unit (without screwing it all together) and installed it on my xbox and tried to see if it recognized it and then did a format.
I am going to have a question. Because, it seems when you format the drive, it wants the serial number of the console entered.
Does that mean when I restore my 120gb image (that I am copying now) to get all the partitions installed correctly do I have to be concerned about this console serial number?
thr4773r, maybe I should have just restored the 60gb drive then it will have the correct consoles serial number. But then I would have to run hddhackr again to fake the back into being a 120gb drive.
Any comments at this point?
Rob
Post by: thr4773r on November 18, 2008, 02:24:00 PM
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 02:27:00 PM
Hitachi
HDD: 5K250-60
Model: HTS542560K9SA00
5400RPM
SATA
Firmware: C3JP
Microsoft Part Number: X816930-001
The above was from the label slapped on the top of the hard drive.
Rob
Post by: thr4773r on November 18, 2008, 02:31:00 PM
QUOTE(rlanza1054 @ Nov 18 2008, 03:32 PM)
And thr4773r if that message was meant for me, yeah now that I see it working, your probably right, I should have copied the drive that's really being replaced which is a 60gb drive. It would not take as long to do the copy.
....
I am going to have a question. Because, it seems when you format the drive, it wants the serial number of the console entered.
Does that mean when I restore my 120gb image (that I am copying now) to get all the partitions installed correctly do I have to be concerned about this console serial number?
thr4773r, maybe I should have just restored the 60gb drive then it will have the correct consoles serial number. But then I would have to run hddhackr again to fake the back into being a 120gb drive.
Any comments at this point?
Rob
The hard drive contents do not matter, nor does the serial when you're formatting the drive. The serial they are asking you for is the serial number of your console, basically to make sure you intend to format your hard drive, instead of your 10 month old getting a hold on your controller and accidentally deleting all of your game saves and content...
Backing up your 120GB drive is a bit more used space and time than you need. I was annoyed that I had to use 20GB for mine, but like I said, that was the easiest way for me.
All I used the backup image for was to add the same other partitions on my replacement drive. The Big one doesn't matter so much, as its already there from hddhackr. Applying the 20Gb image gave me my emulator partition so I can use my original xbox games...
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 02:50:00 PM
At least now for the 120gb drive I never had to break the seal on it to get the hddss.bin file. That was what was bothering me. My systems are very much under warranty.
But I wanted to attempt this 'fun' hack (and to me it was more of a fun project, a little scary but fun) before they rolled out the NXE update which might start happening at 12am midnight tonight!
And just a little about me, I've only had an Xbox 360 for about 2 months now that's all my experience.
By trade, I am a technician when I am working.
So, right now on two machines seperately, I have the 120gb still being backed up (it'a about 90 percent done) and I started to backup the 60gb drive on another computer.
I also made a hddss.bin of the 60gb as well, but will probably never need that.
And of course I have the 120gb one that I made with Xplorer360 today.
Actually, both drives have almost to the letter the same exact info / data on them. If I downloaded something on the living room xbox, I always just re-downloaded it to the xbox in the bedroom.
Of course, at some point, I would run out of room on the 60gb so that was part of the reason to do the upgrade. So I can have the same stuff on both equally.
OK, my final question:
Once these backups are down, I just take one of them (probably the 120gb) and do a restore to the Western Digital. That will force the drive to end up having a total of 3 partitions. I won't have to any more hexing around, is that correct? I hope so, I wanted to avoid that stuff as much as possible.
Boy, I have to tell you that this was very very easy. Just make sure you have the latest utilities that are out there. And it is important to read everything. You think you have the latest version and a few messages down in a thread and there is a newer version to download.
So I'm not done yet, but I am beginning to feel confidant that all will go well, especially since someone came to my aid and watched over me. Thank you, thr4773r!
Post by: leorimolo on November 18, 2008, 04:12:00 PM
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 06:50:00 PM
Well, I want to say I had success, and I did, but I had a minor problem happen and then discovered I lost a small part (and I'm upset about it).
So here goes, using the MS/Xbox Data transfer cable was the best option for the following reasons:
1) I did not void my warranty by breaking the seal on my 120gb hard drive, for which I only needed it to get a clean copy of the hddss.bin file.
2) Using Xplorer360 program (the latest version) and the data transfer cable, copying hex 16 -22 locations (which I was uncomfortable doing) was as easy as a drop down menu to 'copy hddss.bin'.
After I had gotten a copy of the hddss.bin file, I used hddhackr to place the signature onto the new Western Digital drive. When I did that, I did get the message that is was now ready for Xbox 360.
I tested it out and connected to my xbox 360 and it saw it perfectly, and I even formatted it without issue.
3) Having the Data Transfer cable allowed me to easily make a backup copy of the 120gb hard drive, using Xplorer360.
4) Making a backup of my 120gb hard drive meant I would not have to play around with winhex or anything else to get the missing partitions easily put back.
5) To get the partitions back, I just did a restore from the backup I make of the 120gb drive to the new Western Digital Drive.
This is when the problem happened and this was not a major problem.
I thought that after I did the restore to get the all the partitions back, that Xbox 360 would see the drive and be happy. But for some reason, and I believe it happened when I hooked it up to my Windows XP machine to do the restore, it saw it as a Western Digtial and maybe rewrote the signature back to the original, but I'm not sure.
So in the end all I had to do after restoring the drive was to run hddhackr once again. Hook the drive up, no need to format or anything else, all the data was there from my 120gb drive.
It was suggested that I should have save time to just do a restore from a smaller drive (in my case it would have been the 60gb that I was upgrading) and they probably in the long run were right. Since I had to run hddhackr over again.
So the only seal that was broken was on the xbox hard drive case that I was upgrading and not the 120gb.
So I only voided one xbox 360's warranty. That damm sticker, there is really no way to take it off without damaging it, they will always know it.
Now for my being upset with this. When watching the video on how to disassemble the hard drive case, they warn you to be careful not to loose the spring that is used to keep the drive in place when it's attached.
I almost lost the spring but managed to find it after it flew a few feet. However, I did loose the little plastic nub that was what you push to release the hard drive from the main unit of the xbox.
So does anyone know where to get that little piece of plastic, the nub or whatever you call it.
It might turn up but I think the dog got it!
So in the end, yes I have a working 120gb xbox hard drive that cost about $50 and then I spent another $15 on a Torx screwdriver set, but that will come in handy now and then.
Rob
PS The truth, when I ordered the Pro I did that to save some money, and I figured I'd do this upgrade and still spend less than I did on the Elite. But what I didn't realize until I got the Pro in the house, what that it did not come with the correct audio adapter if you are going to hook up the Xbox with an HDMI cable which I did (I had spare HDMI's laying around). The cost for the cable was $50 and it ended up coming with yet another HDMI cable that I did not need.
So total = I should have gotten an Elite to begin with. But then again, I would have had the fun I did all day today! I just wish I could find that plastic nub.
Ok it's here tonight, Xbox's New Experience, arriving at your doorstep tonight about midnight! Wow! I've been waiting for this!
Post by: hobartrus on November 18, 2008, 07:16:00 PM
QUOTE(leorimolo @ Nov 18 2008, 05:48 PM)
You should update it on how to do it with a usb key. Much easier, and alot of people dont have floppys now a days
The tutorial is not meant to cover every possible contingency, but to serve as a general guide for how to do the upgrade. Obviously there are differences in equipment (such as using a USB key instead of a floppy) that make following the steps exactly as I laid them out impossible.
I don't have any experience doing it using a USB key. I did every step in my tutorial exactly as I listed them, so I know it works... if I start rewriting it to include steps for other methods I'd feel the need to experiment with those methods myself, and frankly I just don't have the time or desire to do that right now.
So, even though I noted in the tutorial that it could be reposted as long as it wasn't modified, I'll now remove that "restriction." Anyone is welcome to use my tutorial as a basis for an updated tutorial with additional information from their own experiences, as long as the folks who are credited in the tutorial are still given credit. Maybe you could also correct some of the typos and grammatical errors...
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 18, 2008, 07:40:00 PM
I found the stupid little plastic nub, it was in my bed? In my bed? I was working in the other room when I did this.
Oh well, it's back and now I feel complete with my little nub!
Off to play some Xbox 360 with a large hard drive!
Rob
Ok, now I'm a happy camper!
I found the stupid little plastic nub, it was in my bed? In my bed? I was working in the other room when I did this.
Oh well, it's back and now I feel complete with my little nub!
Off to play some Xbox 360 with a large hard drive!
Rob
QUOTE(hobartrus @ Nov 18 2008, 09:52 PM) 
So, even though I noted in the tutorial that it could be reposted as long as it wasn't modified, I'll now remove that "restriction."
I would recommend keeping the original post somewhere, and then have the users (me) modify a copy of the original.
This everyone can always go back to the original post, just in case the modifications get too complicated or off topic.
Just a suggestion!
Rob
Post by: volcs0 on November 18, 2008, 10:18:00 PM
I just stumbled upon this, and I'm wondering if I should prevent the update until I order the drive and do this upgrade from our current 20gb hard drive...
Thanks for the advice.
Post by: hobartrus on November 19, 2008, 11:15:00 AM
QUOTE(rlanza1054 @ Nov 18 2008, 09:16 PM)
I would recommend keeping the original post somewhere, and then have the users (me) modify a copy of the original.
This everyone can always go back to the original post, just in case the modifications get too complicated or off topic.
Just a suggestion!
Rob
That's a great idea... but it's not my forum and I have no admin rights... I'm just a user. So anyone who wants to modify it would have to copy and paste it into a new post anyway.
Anyway, I'm glad you found your nub! I'll bet the dog helped it find it's way to your bed... if he's anything like my dog.
Post by: slikk on November 20, 2008, 03:15:00 AM
QUOTE(volcs0 @ Nov 18 2008, 09:54 PM)
Is there any reason to suspect that this will not work after the NXE upgrade?
I just stumbled upon this, and I'm wondering if I should prevent the update until I order the drive and do this upgrade from our current 20gb hard drive...
Thanks for the advice.
I just did this upgrade today, and I've been a member of the NXE preview program for the last two weeks. No problems related to the NXE (and I haven't been banned - yet?). Be warned that some of your saved games will not work on the new hard drive - my RB2 save didn't work, but my Mirror's Edge one did. I've also heard that Fable 2 saves will stop working. We probably have 360gamesaves.com to thank for that
Post by: rlanza1054 on November 20, 2008, 08:35:00 PM
QUOTE(hobartrus @ Nov 19 2008, 01:51 PM)
Anyway, I'm glad you found your nub! I'll bet the dog helped it find it's way to your bed... if he's anything like my dog.
Oh wow! Your probably right, Dylan probably picked it up and tried to play with it in my bed. He is allowed into my bed. I have a stair set for him to get up into it. He's a Yorkie.
Back to Xbox:
I've upgraded to NXE and have had no problems at all.
So far this worked out great.
Rob
Hi all again,
Since we upgraded to NXE and now I have both my Xbox's with a 120gb drive, I copied 3 of the games that I play regularly to the hard drive with the new option to play from the hard drive instead of the DVD.
It works good! Not too much speed improvement, but there is when loading different levels.
My concern is that it's going to be eay to run out of room on the hard drive even with 120gb of space to play with.
I have a feeling that Microsoft Xbox will be announcing very shortly a new larger hard drive at maybe 500gb.
I would bet anything that this is going to happen.
It will probably be the last upgrade they do before coming out with a new xbox.
So in the long run they are finding way to get more money out of this box.
Do you agree with my thinking?
Rob
Post by: julianbl on November 22, 2008, 04:45:00 PM
QUOTE(monkeyspank @ Nov 7 2008, 07:20 PM)
Is partition 1 important? lol
When I restored partition 2 to my new 120gb, partition 1 disappeared in Xplorer360.
Tried the drive in my xbox and everything seems fine (except the rockband save but not bothered by that)
Shall I do it again to try and get partition 1 to show? before I go saving games to my new drive?
I'm in the same situation. everything works perfect but I don't have a partition 1. I read somewhere that partition 1 is cache, put i have a cache folder in partition 3. Would I notice a decrease of performance for not having partition 1 (cache)?
regards,
Julián
Post by: supertrek32 on November 22, 2008, 05:57:00 PM
If no one knows, could someone post an MD5 hash of their hddss.bin?
Post by: jerri blank on November 22, 2008, 06:23:00 PM
QUOTE(supertrek32 @ Nov 22 2008, 08:33 PM)
Can anyone answer my question about whether the hddss.bin files are unique? If I took 2 keys off different (retail) 120GB harddrives, would they be the same? Or are keys/serial numbers/etc. stored here that would vary?
If no one knows, could someone post an MD5 hash of their hddss.bin?
I don't think it's unique. I got one that I'm sure has been passed around plenty.
Post by: Adidajs on November 24, 2008, 04:38:00 PM
1. IMPORTANT: you may need to access xplorer360 under administrator (right-click run as administrator) or check the box under compatibility for vista OS (i used vista x64). I kept getting "couldn't find a FATX drive" until i did this.
2. personal: i could not get my mobo- asus p5w dh deluxe to flash my 120gb hard drive no matter the IDE configuration. (i could see it for the 20gb hdd however) I found confirmation of mobo problem on a german site. I used another computer to flash the 120gb hard drive.
3. i needed to hex edit xplorer360 to see partitions (only partition 1 was visible before hex edit)for the 120gb hdd after i flashed it and formatted it in the xbox360. I actually transferred all my 20gb backed up files one-by-one to the newly flashed 120gb hard drive. (when i dragged the whole folder, it supposedly transferred but i could see nothing there.) The backup of the 20gb was much easier for me. the file st.db was the sole problem.
4. i used winhex instead of hex workshop b/c I could see the 80000 position with winhex and had to calculate it for hex workshop. since i had never done this before, if I couldn't see it I wasn't sure I could trust my own calculations in case they were off from what the OP stated.
This hack took me a couple of days since I had classes interfering. since my internet connection won't let me access Xbox live (something about apt MTU's are problematic), i took my newly formatted console to work, and it updated (avatars were missing) beautifully.
Thanks everyone. Currently installing my xbox360 library to the HDD.
Post by: Adidajs on November 24, 2008, 05:25:00 PM
QUOTE(supertrek32 @ Nov 22 2008, 07:33 PM) 
Can anyone answer my question about whether the hddss.bin files are unique? If I took 2 keys off different (retail) 120GB harddrives, would they be the same? Or are keys/serial numbers/etc. stored here that would vary?
If no one knows, could someone post an MD5 hash of their hddss.bin?
I think they are unique, but apparently microsoft isn't banning the use of copied hddss.bin files.
Post by: Reaper527 on November 30, 2008, 10:33:00 AM
QUOTE(hobartrus @ Nov 18 2008, 09:52 PM)
The tutorial is not meant to cover every possible contingency, but to serve as a general guide for how to do the upgrade. Obviously there are differences in equipment (such as using a USB key instead of a floppy) that make following the steps exactly as I laid them out impossible.
I don't have any experience doing it using a USB key. I did every step in my tutorial exactly as I listed them, so I know it works... if I start rewriting it to include steps for other methods I'd feel the need to experiment with those methods myself, and frankly I just don't have the time or desire to do that right now.
So, even though I noted in the tutorial that it could be reposted as long as it wasn't modified, I'll now remove that "restriction." Anyone is welcome to use my tutorial as a basis for an updated tutorial with additional information from their own experiences, as long as the folks who are credited in the tutorial are still given credit. Maybe you could also correct some of the typos and grammatical errors...
i'm not going to edit your guide, as its your call if you want this info in there, but i have 2 suggestions of possible additions.
1. the thumb drive setup really is an easy solution if you did want to add it to the guide. what i did was take my bootable thumbdrive that iprep made when i flashed my dvd drive, and simply drag/dropped the hddhackr tool over (right in the root). when it said "do you accept the terms of use" on bootup, i simply said no, so that it would spit me out to dos and i could access the hddhackr tool
2. its worthwhile to mention the potential need to hex edit the hddhackr tool. you don't need to write up a guide for it, but maybe c/p the section from the readme on the subject. (my via chipset wasn't recognized by the tool, so i had to manually hex edit the program to get my drive flashed. it was simple, but not obvious, as every drive in my computer showed up EXCEPT my wd1600.)
even if this doesn't get added to the guide, its in the replies now, so hopefully someone will find this useful
Post by: Bakko on December 01, 2008, 04:43:00 AM
Small problem though. When I was backing up my 20gb HDD to my desktop, I realized I still had Gears 2 saved on there and didn't want to wait to backup a whole game. So I swapped my 20gb back into my Xbox, but now it doesn't recognize it. I don't believe I did anything to cause this. Does opening the harddrive with Xplorer change something that the 360 wouldn't like?
If anyone has some advice to fix this, much appreciated.
Post by: hurders on December 01, 2008, 05:39:00 AM
QUOTE(Bakko @ Dec 1 2008, 12:19 PM)
I did this mod yesterday and it worked great. Thanks!
Small problem though. When I was backing up my 20gb HDD to my desktop, I realized I still had Gears 2 saved on there and didn't want to wait to backup a whole game. So I swapped my 20gb back into my Xbox, but now it doesn't recognize it. I don't believe I did anything to cause this. Does opening the harddrive with Xplorer change something that the 360 wouldn't like?
If anyone has some advice to fix this, much appreciated.
I haven't done the mod yet but this is one of the things that is making me unsure of doing it. I have seen a few reports of 20GB hard drives becomming unreadable in the 360 after they have been browsed by Xplorer even if nothing is changed. I really want to do this mod but I'm not so keen is it makes my 20GB drive defunct as I'd like to keep that working as a backup. Does this happen to all drives or is it just some? And why does it happen if you are just reading data from the drive? What is Xplorer changing on the drive to make it unrecognisable in the 360?
Post by: Reaper527 on December 01, 2008, 11:12:00 AM
Post by: Bakko on December 01, 2008, 01:25:00 PM
QUOTE(Reaper527 @ Dec 1 2008, 01:48 PM)
try reseating the drive. i had the same problem, reseated the drive, and everything worked fine. i was able to reconnect my 20 gig drive after i extracted all the data from it.
I have the harddrive enclosure open while plugged in so I can quickly swap my two harddrives. My 120gb works perfcetly but my 20gb isn't detected no matter how many times after reseating the cables and rebooting. If I just knew what directory game save files were in, I could just backup that portion, as that's all I really care for. The rest can be redownloaded from XBLA.
Post by: Reaper527 on December 01, 2008, 04:09:00 PM
QUOTE(Bakko @ Dec 1 2008, 04:01 PM)
If I just knew what directory game save files were in, I could just backup that portion, as that's all I really care for. The rest can be redownloaded from XBLA.
partition 3 -> content
you might have to do some searching though, as this is where your marketplace downloads and profiles go as well.
i would just right click the content folder, choose extract, and then drag/drop it onto your new harddrive. (and when i say i would, i mean thats what i did this past weekend. drag/drop from the old drive gave me errors, extract did not. drag/drop to the new drive worked perfect)
Post by: Bakko on December 01, 2008, 05:29:00 PM
In short, everything is on my new drive and working great. Thanks for the help, Reaper.
Post by: indus49 on December 02, 2008, 07:00:00 AM
1. Does the swap (and the freq. passed around hddss.bin file) play nicely with the new NXE?
2. Plain and simple, what are the big risks in doing this hack?
Thanks
Post by: Madmarky01 on December 02, 2008, 07:52:00 AM
Post by: jyrisa on December 02, 2008, 10:56:00 AM
It goes like BEVS->Computer->M$ 120gb harddrive.
Post by: fnice on December 03, 2008, 12:04:00 PM
it's a 500GB sata-2 for a notebook, This would help With the new NXE Dash
Post by: jyrisa on December 03, 2008, 12:55:00 PM
Post by: v_lestat on December 05, 2008, 08:21:00 PM
i will admit its been a long while since i did those previous 2 so i may be forgetting what i did back then.
i can see partitions 0,2,3 everything seems fine.
xbox has formatted drive and there is 107gb free.
i can play a game put saves on it from my memory card
everything seems ok... BUT
when i drag and drop partition 3 files back into the partition 3 using ANY version of xlporer360 and then put the drive back in my 360 the 360 only see's 11 gigs or 30 gigs or 14 gig free....
there should be atleast 100gb free.
none of my svaes are there, infact it sees nothing, all folders under the memory menu are 0... menaing it can not read anything. it doesnt say they are corrupt, it just says there is nothing there , even though there should be dozens and dozens of game saves.
now i saw the OP said he had a similar issue and just hddhackr -u then hddhackr -f and it worked fine.
but here is what i am wondering.
using WinHex offset 400 shows this
58 54 41 46 78 99 76 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 01 XTAFx|v....|....
is this correct?
also, after freshly formatting the 120gb in the 360 i see a new file called name.txt which has the name of my hard drive in it "hard drive"
my original 20gb does not, in fact the original 20gb has a file called index.dat.
when i hexedit that, it appears to be a directly listing of all the files and partitions on the drive.
1)
do i need to hex the drive to show exactly what the OP has or should i leave it alone....
should i NOT use the index.dat file from the original drive??? since that seems to reflect the 20gb partition table and not the 120gb partition table?
2)
i feel like something is completely wrong.... did i miss something guys ?
has xplorer360 Xtreme 2 made the hex location look so wierd ?
i want to say i have been looking for the answer for a while now and this thread has been great, many many thanks to the OP for posting this,, its a life saver but right now i am lost,, i do not want to hex and save my drive before someone says its ok or to just leave it alone!
Post by: v_lestat on December 05, 2008, 08:39:00 PM
i just redid everything using xplorer360 Xtreme 2 and now everything appears to be working fine. I DID NOT INCLUDE THE INDEX.DAT file from my original 20gb...
107gb free space, all my games saves are there, everything looks ok....
i dropped the NXE on it to see if loading a game on the drive works.
since i am using ixtreme 1.4 8x speed,,, well... its pretty slow compared to my normal 360 unmodded lol.
so,,, xtreme 2 did the trick,,, wth lol......
why is this tutorial not in the tutorial section of the main xbox-scene site?
the 360 section there is missing so many tutorials..
Post by: OldBomb on December 06, 2008, 02:45:00 AM
I ripped hddssbin from my 20gb with hddhackr because i was curious, put my hdd back in the box and now its not being detected
Post by: slimjim604 on December 10, 2008, 02:34:00 PM
steps 1-8 is all I need to follow correct?
Post by: Reaper527 on December 10, 2008, 03:08:00 PM
QUOTE(indus49 @ Dec 2 2008, 09:36 AM)
Hey all - new to the forum... looking to try this out. 2 Questions:
1. Does the swap (and the freq. passed around hddss.bin file) play nicely with the new NXE?
2. Plain and simple, what are the big risks in doing this hack?
Thanks
1. it plays fine
2. at the current time, there are no risks. in the future, ms COULD use this as a method for banning (though i personally think this is very unlikely for pr reasons, they could technically detect it)
Post by: SimplexPL on December 10, 2008, 04:32:00 PM
http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Xbox_360_Hard_Drive_Upgrade
It helped my upgrade two 20gb drives to 120gb. As a side note - both 20gb drives are no longer recognized by any console.
Post by: idiotechnick on December 10, 2008, 04:57:00 PM
QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Dec 11 2008, 07:08 AM)
Sorry if this was already mentioned, but there is a really good tutorial here;
http://beta.ivancove...d_Drive_Upgrade
It helped my upgrade two 20gb drives to 120gb. As a side note - both 20gb drives are no longer recognized by any console.
Seem xplorer 360 not yet compatible with all 20 gb hdd. Lets just pray that thespecialist make some improvement that make 20 gb dead can be alive again. (at least keep the ss bin thing for future)
Post by: randytech2 on December 11, 2008, 05:45:00 PM
Post by: idiotechnick on December 12, 2008, 12:05:00 AM
QUOTE(randytech2 @ Dec 12 2008, 08:21 AM)
Help, I flashed the drive & everytime I reboot it tells me I need to flash again. I had to use hex edit on hddhackr.com just to get it to see my hard.drive. I am stumped; is there a solution to my problem?
Try this. After u flash. Turn off the pc and unplug the drive! dont reboot again to dos! Sometimes the mobo post make the ss messed!
Post by: Gamer on December 19, 2008, 08:52:00 AM
My setup was using a 120GB WD drive (model 22USTO).
I made a USB flash drive to boot to dos as I don't have a floppy anymore.
After flashing hddss.bin to drive, every single time I rebooted to check if drive was okay...all serial numbers, models etc matched on screen but it reported the drive was mismatched. It wouldn't get recognised in Xbox.
Flashed again but didn't reboot to check drive...just switched off PC and plugged drive into console. Now it was recognised by console. Formatted in console fine.
Had to use Winhex to edit 0x80000 address as only partition 1 could be seen in Xplorer360, nothing else.
After editing in Winhex, partition 3 could be seen, allowing for restoring partition 2 from backup.
Transferred everything else to partition 3.
Everything works 100% now.
Thanks again for the good guide.
Post by: Jred on December 22, 2008, 01:35:00 AM
Yesterday, flashed to the hdds.bin for a 120gb on a 120 DEVS. All worked. Used winhex and made modification, and then restored Partition2. all went well. Created partition 3 via winhex and it shows up fine. copied folders i backed up from partition3 on my 20gb drive and all seemed. well. All downloaded content is still there.
1 problem.....
when I load up rock band 2, it no longer loads the profile. in fact, i get that there was an error loading the profile off of the disk. i then started a new band and went to save, and it said there was an unknown error saving the game. in both instances it said the storage device was no longer available.
What did i do wrong when i copied stuff off of partition 3?
I can say that I didn't copy the folder back in the same order i copied them off of the 20gb drive in, but i can't see how that matters.
also, something to note, i'm running NXE, and was before the copy. also, when i started up the new drive after the restore, it said there was a console update, and it looked like NXE reinstalling itself.
Please help. I still have my original 20gb drive and my original backup of it.
Post by: SimplexPL on December 22, 2008, 01:40:00 AM
Post by: windy3001 on December 22, 2008, 09:19:00 AM
QUOTE(guyver0 @ Nov 6 2008, 08:25 PM)
i have an intel d945plrn motherboard that im connecting my bevs with, however after booting into hddhackr -f [using an hp boot flash disk] it searches in enhanced mode first and then legacy mode and then says enter the nr of the drive to be used, numbers between 1-4 im stuck here
I'm having the same problem, I know the reply was something about using a hexeditor to edit hddhackr. I was wondering if anyone had an easy to follow method of doing this?
Post by: Morticae on December 23, 2008, 07:11:00 PM
From my understanding Vista doesn't have DOS and you can't create a boot disk... wondering what people did to get around this. The computer available to me has Vista so I am kind of stuck with using it.
Post by: Martinchris23 on December 24, 2008, 02:21:00 AM
QUOTE(Morticae @ Dec 24 2008, 02:47 AM)
Anybody with experience doing this in Vista?
From my understanding Vista doesn't have DOS and you can't create a boot disk... wondering what people did to get around this. The computer available to me has Vista so I am kind of stuck with using it.
You can download utilities to create DOS bootable devices from the web.
http://www.bootdisk.com/ is just one site i found by searching 'DOS bootable disc vista'
Post by: Morticae on December 24, 2008, 02:41:00 AM
QUOTE(Martinchris23 @ Dec 24 2008, 01:57 AM)
You can download utilities to create DOS bootable devices from the web.
http://www.bootdisk.com/ is just one site i found by searching 'DOS bootable disc vista'
Haha. I went to that site twice while I was searching and came to the conclusion it couldn't help me... but you are right. I created a disc and was able to boot it up. I'll give this tutorial a whirl. Thanks!
Post by: outlaw_irish on December 25, 2008, 06:33:00 PM
Post by: Gamer on December 26, 2008, 03:06:00 AM
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.
Post by: jimbo70 on December 31, 2008, 05:26:00 PM
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.
Post by: Arimanio on January 01, 2009, 10:30:00 AM
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
Post by: skindogg on January 02, 2009, 06:52:00 PM
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.
Post by: skindogg on January 03, 2009, 12:47:00 AM
I just shutdown after flash and put it in the 360 and it shows up to format.
Post by: jimbo70 on January 04, 2009, 07:51:00 PM
Post by: kleptodathief on January 05, 2009, 06:42:00 AM
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
Post by: jimbo70 on January 05, 2009, 03:55:00 PM
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.
Post by: skyliner99 on January 05, 2009, 05:39:00 PM
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
Post by: sintax69 on January 05, 2009, 07:04:00 PM
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 ????
Post by: Greek Wizard on January 07, 2009, 04:45:00 AM
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
Post by: Pishposh on January 07, 2009, 02:11:00 PM
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 cant 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.
Post by: xxzone on January 07, 2009, 02:59:00 PM
I'll probably use this tonight, so I very much appreciate you guys taking the time to post this information!
Post by: Pishposh on January 07, 2009, 04:59:00 PM
Post by: skyliner99 on January 07, 2009, 05:12:00 PM
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
Post by: xxzone on January 08, 2009, 11:55:00 AM
QUOTE(skyliner99 @ Jan 8 2009, 01:48 AM)
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
Great tip! Thanks guys!
I was actually able to edit the hddhacker.exe last night, so it would see my NForce4 SATA ports. I was able to flash my 120 drive. I did a reboot and had hddhacker verify it would work on the xbox 360, so that part is done at least.
I was hoping to get data transfer cables so I wouldn't have to mess around with my 20 gig drive, but I realized today that I don't have a 2nd enclosure so that wont work. I have no problem technically going through the process of hooking up my old 20g drive to grab the files off, but I want it to still be usable after I'm done. I think a lot of people jack them up when creating a backup with hddhacker. This was the standard practice for a while it seems to resolve the issue of not being able to see all the partitions on the new 120g drive. I read another post by reaper572 that had an easy work around for that. He said after you format the 120 drive in your xbox, you simply create a offline profile and it makes all the partitions appear. If that works as planned, then I'm hoping my 20g hd is safe after transferring the files. I think it was hddhackr causing the unreadable error on the 20 gig drive and not 360explorer.
The other issue I have is with game saves. I have fable2 and Rock band 1/2. I've read these have issue. reaper572 had a workaround for rockband, but I think it involves moving your saves to a memory card. I don't think there is a fix for fable2. I also have Perfect Dark, but I can play through that again if I ever feel like it.
The search limitations on the forum make it very hard to find info about these specific issues. I tried searching rock band and got 31 pages. I may bite the bullet tonight after doing research today, but any insight about game transfer issues would be greatly appreciated, and once again thanks a ton for the clearing cache tip!
Post by: Pishposh on January 08, 2009, 12:07:00 PM
I have just confirmed that you can copy your Rock Band and Fable II saves over to your new drive using the method below. Let me know if anyone finds a better/quicker/cheaper way of doing it. You will need a XBOX MU to accomplish. Borrow one if you can.
First, On your original 20gb XBOX drive 'MOVE' the game saves to the MU. Don't try to copy. It wont work. You don't need to copy RB DLC that should have copied over fine.
Second, Hook up your new 120gb XBOX drive and delete the Rock Band or Fable II save games on your new hard drive. They will be unplayable anyway.
Third, 'MOVE' your save games to new hard drive. Voila! You can now play with those game saves off the new HD.
Please only do this AFTER you absolutly know you don't need to make any other changes to your new HD otherwise you need to move them back to your MU before you make any HD changes.
-P
This post has been edited by Pishposh: Jan 8 2009, 08:08 PM
Post by: xxzone on January 08, 2009, 02:05:00 PM
Well I guess I'll be getting a memory card on the way home. That's for the idiots version of it, so I finally understand it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
This post has been edited by xxzone: Jan 8 2009, 10:18 PM
Post by: kandiman on January 11, 2009, 02:45:00 AM
would it be worth getting a 160gig hard drive? it's only 7$ more
Post by: Bon Scott on January 11, 2009, 06:45:00 PM
Post by: zuma351 on January 15, 2009, 12:43:00 AM
Post by: ajkj36 on January 17, 2009, 08:20:00 PM
Post by: cydol on January 18, 2009, 05:59:00 AM
Post by: rEs on January 22, 2009, 04:47:00 AM
I've almost succesfully upgraded my 20gb to a WD 120gb.
This is what i've done following various guides
-I've backed up the 20gb to an image bin image, bin image of only partition2 and also exported files from part3 (excluding cache and compatibility)
-I've done the firmware tweak on the 120gb.
-Hex tweak to re create the Partition 0 and 2. Now all partitions show up in Xplorer360 Beta 6 Extreme2
- restored partition2 from the image.
- Formatted Partition 3 on the 360, it showed as 107gb free:)
-Injected the files extracted from the disk (also tried the ones extracted from the Full .bin image) to partition 3. I've also started again and first did the index file, then the other folders (someone said that helps)
Now my problem is the data on partition 3 doesn't seem to be readable. It must be there as the free space has gone down a few gb (on the 360), but it doesn't see any files there. I can copy an item from my memory unit to it, so its working storage.
Also in Xplorer360 the injected folders dont appear, i believe the single index file i injected on its own appears and it sees a cache folder.
What have i done wrong / missed. I've now tried several times, serveral formats with several injecting files.
Thanks in advance
Post by: gutterball on January 22, 2009, 03:55:00 PM
QUOTE(rEs @ Jan 22 2009, 07:23 AM)
What have i done wrong / missed. I've now tried several times, serveral formats with several injecting files.
Thanks in advance
I tried the hex editing and I could not get it to work. I used the info in post #30 by thr4773r and was able to get my 120G going without any hex editing at all.
Basically:
Xplorer360 to create full image of your 20G.
Xplorer360 to extract contents of partition 3 to your PC (I skipped the cache, but I think it's okay to extract).
hddhackr -f on the 120G, create undo and flash.
hddhackr -f on the 120G to confirm.
Format 120G on your 360, will show 107G free and only 1 partition in Xplorer360.
Xplorer360 to restore your 20G image to the formatted 120G, all 3 partitions should now be present, but with the 20G hddss.bin file so it won't show proper free space.
hddhackr -f on the 120G again, (no undo, if it asks), should automatically flash 120G hdd and confirm working.
Format 120G again on 360, should now show 107G free.
Xplorer360 to move the files back onto partition 3 of your new 120G.
Good luck!
Post by: poseidon0380 on January 22, 2009, 09:35:00 PM
QUOTE(Bon Scott @ Jan 12 2009, 02:45 AM)
All this process transforms a WD 120 HD BEVS in a Fujitsu HD 120 (the one that built the retail X360 HD). But if I got a normal Fujitsu HD 120, would it be possible to turn it in a X360 HD ?
The same question! Anybody help?
Post by: msquared on January 23, 2009, 02:25:00 PM
QUOTE(poseidon0380 @ Jan 23 2009, 06:11 AM)
The same question! Anybody help?
from everything that i have read this is not possible
from the information that i have found it would be possible to do IF keyword here is IF you can flash the fujitsu drives firmware, now wile saying that i know it is possible to do, but we would need the source code for hddhackr and know how to program in assembly
another way to do this is for someone to make a program that uses the code that TS has but open it up to an actual fujitsu drive. if TS would add support for the fujitsu MHW2BJ and the MHW2BH series drives (which i think is what the actual 120g xbox 360 drives are then we would all be happy
Post by: egiblock on January 25, 2009, 03:36:00 PM
worked perfectly for me to transfer over ALMOST everything from my 20 to 120 drive..
just need my rockband 2 data...
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
QUOTE(rEs @ Jan 22 2009, 07:23 AM)
Hi,
I've almost succesfully upgraded my 20gb to a WD 120gb.
This is what i've done following various guides
-I've backed up the 20gb to an image bin image, bin image of only partition2 and also exported files from part3 (excluding cache and compatibility)
-I've done the firmware tweak on the 120gb.
-Hex tweak to re create the Partition 0 and 2. Now all partitions show up in Xplorer360 Beta 6 Extreme2
- restored partition2 from the image.
- Formatted Partition 3 on the 360, it showed as 107gb free:)
-Injected the files extracted from the disk (also tried the ones extracted from the Full .bin image) to partition 3. I've also started again and first did the index file, then the other folders (someone said that helps)
Now my problem is the data on partition 3 doesn't seem to be readable. It must be there as the free space has gone down a few gb (on the 360), but it doesn't see any files there. I can copy an item from my memory unit to it, so its working storage.
Also in Xplorer360 the injected folders dont appear, i believe the single index file i injected on its own appears and it sees a cache folder.
What have i done wrong / missed. I've now tried several times, serveral formats with several injecting files.
Thanks in advance
In between these steps did you format the drive in the 360 ???
-I've done the firmware tweak on the 120gb.
>>> hook up new drive, and format with xbox360.
-Hex tweak to re create the Partition 0 and 2. Now all partitions show up in Xplorer360 Beta 6 Extreme2
Post by: duckhater on January 25, 2009, 11:07:00 PM
Post by: gutterball on January 26, 2009, 12:19:00 AM
QUOTE(duckhater @ Jan 26 2009, 01:43 AM)
Trying to figure out how to boot HddHackr from vista (I have no floppy drive)...
Your operating system is irrelevant for hddhacker as you are supposed to boot to DOS.
I created and used a bootable USB key. Not sure about links here, so just google bootable USB key and you'll find what you need. Good luck!
Post by: rEs on January 26, 2009, 03:13:00 AM
QUOTE(gutterball @ Jan 23 2009, 01:31 AM)
I tried the hex editing and I could not get it to work. I used the info in post #30 by thr4773r and was able to get my 120G going without any hex editing at all.
Basically:
Xplorer360 to create full image of your 20G.
Xplorer360 to extract contents of partition 3 to your PC (I skipped the cache, but I think it's okay to extract).
hddhackr -f on the 120G, create undo and flash.
hddhackr -f on the 120G to confirm.
Format 120G on your 360, will show 107G free and only 1 partition in Xplorer360.
Xplorer360 to restore your 20G image to the formatted 120G, all 3 partitions should now be present, but with the 20G hddss.bin file so it won't show proper free space.
hddhackr -f on the 120G again, (no undo, if it asks), should automatically flash 120G hdd and confirm working.
Format 120G again on 360, should now show 107G free.
Xplorer360 to move the files back onto partition 3 of your new 120G.
Good luck!
Thanks, for some reason letting it restore the 20gb image in xplorer360 to the 120gb then the following steps allowed my partition 3 to work properly. The guide i followed had that as an alternative method which i didnt try as there wasn't much difference as restoring it wouldnt leave data on it, due to re formatting, i didnt try that initally.
Anyway Happy Chappy now:)
Thx mate
Post by: merciscool on January 27, 2009, 03:36:00 AM
Anyway, I read every post in this topic from page 1-11 and I have a few questions that I didn't see answered or not in depth enough to give me a complete answer.
First off, what I'm trying to do is format the WDBEVS HDD I purchased so that it works with the 360. A friend of mine gave me his old 20GB 360HDD so that I actually already have his blank HDD as another shell and don't have to open up my original 20GB HDD with all my game saves/files and replace that with the 120GB.
So I hope you guys can clear up these questions for me as others have asked them in this topic too, but hadn't been really addressed so far.
1) I don't have access to a tower type of PC, so as a few others have already asked in this topic, can I do this with a laptop without removing the laptop's internal HDD? There are various ports such as an eSata on the laptop and I want to know if it's possible and if so, how to hook the WDBEVS HDD up, which port would make this possible.
2) I called microsoft and told them I needed the migration kit, so that they would send me the transfer cable and CD. It worked, even though I don't have an elite or a 120GB HDD and plan on just copying my files from my 20GB HDD to my custom created 120GB HDD. So I've seen a few people say that this method will work using the migration transfer cable, but I guess what I want to know is, will everything from my 20GB official HDD transfer to my newly formatted custom 120GB HDD? I don't want to lose anything.
3)If so, what steps in the listed tutorials are not necessary if using a migration kit method?
and finally
4) What are the pros and cons to using the migration cable? What I mean is, I noticed no one answered the question about the cable on a previous page about how the cable claims to be a ONE TIME data transfer. Does this mean that when you use the cable, it will then erase the original source 20GB drive once it's copied the files to the new HDD? This information could be useful for those who are using the migration kit, because it might be wise to backup the 20GB HDD to a computer in case of any errors during transfer.
I think answers to these questions will clear up pretty much the only questions I didn't see resolved from this topic!
Thanks in advance!
Post by: tmsmith on January 28, 2009, 08:58:00 PM
Worked like a charm. Hardest part was getting back together at the end.
Post by: tmsmith on January 28, 2009, 11:25:00 PM
QUOTE(tmsmith @ Jan 28 2009, 11:34 PM)
BIG thanks for this!
Worked like a charm. Hardest part was getting back together at the end.
Didn't see an edit button, but I wanted to add that I was able to do all the steps in Vista 64bit. All I had to do was get my Flashdrive bootable.
Hope this cleared some worries.
Post by: happygizmo11 on February 01, 2009, 08:48:00 AM
Post by: tmsmith on February 02, 2009, 02:45:00 PM
QUOTE(happygizmo11 @ Feb 1 2009, 11:24 AM)
Hey guys, quick question. How would I go about this if I had lets say a broken 20gb hard drive I wanted to do this to. So basically I cant get anything off the 20gb. Would this still be possible?
I wish I could help but I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. If it is broken, chances are it will be unrecoverable. You can try and follow the steps and at least see if you can get the data off the 20GB (if thats what you are trying to get the stuff off your Xbox 20GB). If not, you can try the whole trick with sticking it in the freezer (in a plastic ziploc bag) and try and recover it using Xplorer.
Post by: k2xtrEm on February 07, 2009, 11:30:00 AM
Post by: early105 on February 08, 2009, 04:47:00 PM
QUOTE(tmsmith @ Jan 28 2009, 11:34 PM)
BIG thanks for this!
Worked like a charm. Hardest part was getting back together at the end.
Pal, I can't agree anymore, since I almost at the end; but I get stuck to move the files in partition 3 back to the new 120G HD which is already formatted and recognized by the xbox 360, as well as the partition 2 was restored from 20G image, and the partition 3 can be seen by the xplorer360 in Vista 32 that run under administrator and compactible to XP mode.
My problem is I cannot drag and drop the backup files (partition 3 files from PC to xplorer360), xplorer360 does not allowed; Then, I used the command from the tool bar "Insert Folder", however, it's still NOTHING appeared in the new 120HDD even it showed up "Injecting Folder" during the process.
What steps should I do and what I have missed? please advice me & help...Thank you.
Post by: early105 on February 09, 2009, 10:32:00 PM
QUOTE(early105 @ Feb 8 2009, 07:23 PM)
Pal, I can't agree anymore, since I almost at the end; but I get stuck to move the files in partition 3 back to the new 120G HD which is already formatted and recognized by the xbox 360, as well as the partition 2 was restored from 20G image, and the partition 3 can be seen by the xplorer360 in Vista 32 that run under administrator and compactible to XP mode.
My problem is I cannot drag and drop the backup files (partition 3 files from PC to xplorer360), xplorer360 does not allowed; Then, I used the command from the tool bar "Insert Folder", however, it's still NOTHING appeared in the new 120HDD even it showed up "Injecting Folder" during the process.
What steps should I do and what I have missed? please advice me & help...Thank you.
Finally, it seems I found a solution, it's not perfect but it works.
As I read some other threads that someone mentioned putting the index file back first may help. YES! it really works, but the content, the folder I selected to inject, didn't show up immediately after the process finished. I need to close the xplorer360 and reopen it, then the injected contents show up in the NEW 120G HD.
Thus, I also wanna share my setup and configuration for people who have chance to read my experience, and hope they would get help.
WD 120G BEVS - 22RST0
WINDOWS VISTA 32 with a NVIDIA 122-CK-NF68 MB, thus, nforce SATA
xplorer360 xtreme build 2 (for the whole process)
hddhackr v091
Thumb drive boot-up.
I did do everything as the OP did, thanks pal.
and, also did what gutterball did (in post #145)
However, I did spend 3 nights, almost 3 hours every night, to complete the whole upgrade thing that, of course, is including the searching time and the reading time.
oh, yea, my 20G HD is still able to be read by the 360.
Post by: early105 on February 09, 2009, 11:28:00 PM
As the people said, Fable 2 is unable to be read.
But I found another game that also cannot be read or also corrupted. it's "The Last Remnant"! Holly! it's a long game! I almost spend 50hr+ on this game but still haven't finished yet!
I start thinking a Memory Unit...Man, it costs $40
M$For people who are playing this game, TLR, Highly recommend you finish it first. You know, it's really long!
Post by: CocoaPistolero on February 12, 2009, 05:59:00 PM
Post by: DarkManX4lf on February 12, 2009, 07:07:00 PM
Also is there a list of saved games that do not work after upgrading to a 120gb hdd by using this method?
So far the games reported are:
Fable II
Rockband 2
Any others?
This post has been edited by DarkManX4lf: Feb 13 2009, 03:27 AM
Post by: ZprivateZ on February 12, 2009, 07:27:00 PM
Post by: hobartrus on February 13, 2009, 01:40:00 PM
QUOTE(DarkManX4lf @ Feb 12 2009, 08:43 PM)
This is a great tutorial, but I'm just not sure about one part. So you flash the 120gb hard drive with hddss.bin and you plug it into the 360 and format it. Once this is done I dont understand why we have to hex edit the 120gb drive? What is the reason for that? Is this so you can copy your old files from the 20gb ?
Essentially, yes. The "original" version of Xplorer360 Beta 6 would not access the BEVS drive without making the changes to the drive and the program using the hex editor.
It's my understanding that the "extreme build 2" version of the software eliminated the need for the hex editing... however, when I was originally upgrading my drive and got to the point that I needed to access the drive in Xplorer360, I didn't know about the "extreme build 2" version... so I made the changes to the drive and the program using the hex editor.
Then, when it came time to write the tutorial, I wanted to make sure I documented every step I took exactly as I took them so that the process could be repeated by others. I didn't want to assume that the hex editing was no longer necessary, which is why I included it in my tutorial. I did, however, made sure to note that it might not be necessary.
Post by: DarkManX4lf on February 13, 2009, 06:15:00 PM
QUOTE(hobartrus @ Feb 13 2009, 04:16 PM)
Essentially, yes. The "original" version of Xplorer360 Beta 6 would not access the BEVS drive without making the changes to the drive and the program using the hex editor.
It's my understanding that the "extreme build 2" version of the software eliminated the need for the hex editing... however, when I was originally upgrading my drive and got to the point that I needed to access the drive in Xplorer360, I didn't know about the "extreme build 2" version... so I made the changes to the drive and the program using the hex editor.
Then, when it came time to write the tutorial, I wanted to make sure I documented every step I took exactly as I took them so that the process could be repeated by others. I didn't want to assume that the hex editing was no longer necessary, which is why I included it in my tutorial. I did, however, made sure to note that it might not be necessary.
Oh ok, I was just wondering. I'm quite new to modding anything on my 360.
Anymore games that will not work once you do the 120gb upgrade?
Post by: kleptodathief on February 15, 2009, 02:20:00 AM
Post by: DarkManX4lf on February 15, 2009, 07:58:00 AM
QUOTE(kleptodathief @ Feb 15 2009, 06:04 AM)
anyone figure a way to upgrade to a 320gb or bigger HD? or its not possible yet?
No, its not possible yet, until MS releases a larger hard drive. So if they release a 200gb hard drive you can upgrade to a 200gb hard drive using this method. Same goes for larger drives.
Post by: ap3x on February 16, 2009, 03:52:00 PM
Software:
Hddhackr 0.91
Hddss.bin (seemingly from a FUJITSU MHW2120BH)
Hex Workshop (6.01)
Xplorer360 Extreme 2 build
Windows Vista Ultimate
I didnt use any of the other software listed at the start of the tutorial.
Hardware:
WD1200BEVS drive (model WD1200BEVS-00UST0)
PC using ASUS A8N-E (nForce4 Ultra chipset)
Xbox Arcade (Falcon chipset)
The boot disk I used I just created by formatting a floppy through Windows and checking the Create an MS-DOS startup disk option.
Steps 1-4: Since I was using a PC with an nForce4 Ultra chipset (evidently not supported by hddhackr auto-detection), when I came to flash the WD drive it was not auto-detected. I followed the instructions on how to edit hddhackr.com (using Hex Workshop) from the hddhackr readme.txt (the values for my PC were 09 70 09 e0) and retried. It failed again but I realised that Id edited hddhackr.com to use ports 3 or 4 but the drive was attached to port 1. I attached the drive to port 3 and retried and this time it worked.
Steps 5-7: I set it formatting on the Xbox 360.
Steps 8-12: I connected the old 20GB drive to my PC. Using Xplorer360 Extreme 2 I copied the contents of partition 3 to my PC (I didnt clear the cache beforehand) and backed up partition 2 to a .bin file (a 256MB file in my case). Copying the contents of partition 3 was a bit of a pain because of repeated errors and having to kill the app but I ploughed on and got it all copied. I then skipped all the hex editing stuff gambling that the Extreme 2 version of Xplorer360 would work without it it did.
Step 19: I connected the now formatted 120GB drive to my PC and opened it with Xplorer360 Extreme 2.
Step 20: Unfortunately, I couldnt expand Partition 3 because there wasnt one all I had was partition 1. So I decided to skip to step 21 and come back to the copying.
Step 21: I restored partition 2 after which partition 1 had disappeared and partitions 2 and 3 had appeared.
Step 20 revisited: Now equipped with a partition 3 I went back to step 20 and copied the data backed-up in step 10 to it.
I then fitted the 120GB HDD into the Xbox 360 HDD enclosure and attached to the Xbox to do some tests. I dont have a great deal of downloaded content but the few game videos I have work OK. I then tried the following games:
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III
Guitar Hero World Tour
Rock Band
Gears of War
Fable II
Mirrors Edge
Of these, all worked OK apart from Rock Band and Fable II as expected and I can confirm that the method of moving their savegames to a MU and back worked OK.
All done now and working fine,
Thanks again to hobartrus, TheSpecialist et al.
Post by: Mach1024 on February 20, 2009, 02:37:00 PM
QUOTE(k2xtrEm @ Feb 7 2009, 01:06 PM)
If I do not want the data from the 20gb drive can I just stop after I have formatted the 120gb in the 360?
I did that. The hard drive was recognized and worked fine. However, backwards compatibility was unavailable due to a missing partition (I think the BC stuff was stored on partition 1). Even the download BC update from MS wouldn't solve this problem. So I just copied all the partitions over with 360 Explorer and it seems to be working great.
Post by: whatami1223 on February 24, 2009, 10:49:00 AM
anyway, i've been searching for a week now to find a cheap Scorpio WD1200BEVS HDD but i can't find any. so i was messing around with my laptop recently and, by some twist of fate, it says here my Laptop's HDD is a Scorpio WD1200BEVS-75UST0. now that's ironic, and lucky at the same time.
i wanna ask if will this model work with the xbox 360? i'm not really sure if its an IDE or a SATA drive. is there any way to know?
thanks for your replies
This post has been edited by whatami1223: Feb 24 2009, 07:07 PM
Post by: big jeffrey on February 25, 2009, 12:59:00 PM
Post by: big jeffrey on February 26, 2009, 11:24:00 AM
Post by: Texy on February 26, 2009, 02:39:00 PM
I have a problem copying my backed up files to partition 3 with Xplorer360 Extreme 2. I was able to drag from the original drive
to my backup folder, but I can't drag back onto the new drive. I have also tried Edit, Insert Folder, and this goes through the motions, but the files do not copy. I am running XP Home Premium.
Any idea's?
Texy
Post by: big jeffrey on February 26, 2009, 03:31:00 PM
QUOTE(Texy @ Feb 27 2009, 12:23 AM)
Thanks to the OP for this tut.
I have a problem copying my backed up files to partition 3 with Xplorer360 Extreme 2. I was able to drag from the original drive
to my backup folder, but I can't drag back onto the new drive. I have also tried Edit, Insert Folder, and this goes through the motions, but the files do not copy. I am running XP Home Premium.
Any idea's?
Texy
The exact same thing happened to me!
Post by: Texy on February 28, 2009, 12:58:00 AM
I,m waiting for an extra sata cable to arrive today so that I can try it again in another machine running XP.
Explorer can clear write to the disk because I was able to restore partition 2 (when there was none), and I can create a new folder on partition 3 also, I just cant copy my backup files to it for some reason.
Texy
Post by: wutang01 on February 28, 2009, 04:30:00 AM
Bought a 1200BEVS this morning.
Now I have a 98 bootable image on my Toshiba 4GB USB stick ...
Loaded it up, typed hddhackr -f
And I get this error:
"An internal stack overflow has caused this session to be halted.
Change the STACKS setting in your CONFIG.SYS file, and then try again"
So what I did was, I went back to the folder containing the 98 bootable files.
Edited the config.sys in notepad, and changed three values as outlined here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/145799
STACKS=64,512
FILES=60
BUFFERS=40
But I'm still getting the error message. Does someone understand what I'm talking about? Does someone know what I can do to get past this?
Because I believe that once I've passed this, I'm on my way to getting the 120GB setup and away I go ...
I look forward in hearing your replies. Thanks in advance!
Post by: ramgeek on March 03, 2009, 12:11:00 PM
QUOTE(wutang01 @ Feb 28 2009, 01:06 PM)
Hey guys. I'm trying to update my Xbox 360 hard drive from 20GB to 120GB.
Bought a 1200BEVS this morning.
Now I have a 98 bootable image on my Toshiba 4GB USB stick ...
Loaded it up, typed hddhackr -f
And I get this error:
"An internal stack overflow has caused this session to be halted.
Change the STACKS setting in your CONFIG.SYS file, and then try again"
Have you tried deleting your autoexec.bat and config.sys files or renaming them to
autoexec.bak and config.bak. This way it does not load them
Post by: ETheGlorious on April 03, 2009, 10:51:00 AM
Quick question. Why wouldn't it be possible to simply clone the HD using DOS based software such a GHOST, or some other HD imaging software? Has anyone tried? The Process would obviously be easier, I would assume Xbox file structure would be the only conflicting issue. As it not being FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS. I would be willing to give it a shot though. Also, what limits HD storage, 2.5'' are up to at least 500GB. Has anyone tried formatting a larger HD and only been able to allocate 120GB? Either way I appreciate all the information, time, and effort you guys give, Thanks.
Post by: ravihpa on April 08, 2009, 09:59:00 AM
First of all, thanx a lot for this awesome guide. Am sure it's gonna help me when I do this as soon as I get my Arcade
Anyways, I had a question. Since am gonna be getting an arcade, I'll obviously not get an HDD with it, but I have a friend who has a working 20 GB HDD, and I was thinking, do I HAVE to get a 20 GB Xbox 360 HDD ? or is there a way where I can just directly buy the WD HDD. I know there won't be any way for me to connect that WD HDD to the 360 without the casing, but what would you guys say are my options ?
Or is it that I would HAVE to shell out money for a 20 gb 360 HDD ?
PS: That friend of mine is a modder himself (but a PS2 modder) and recently got his 360. He would be more than happy to allow me to mess around with his 360 20 gb HDD as he himself is interested in upgrading his own to a 120 gb
Thanx a lot in advance for all the advice/suggestion
Post by: hdlockx on April 11, 2009, 07:11:00 AM
Thanks again.
Post by: maninjapan on April 13, 2009, 12:20:00 AM
first time person here - so please be nice and excuse my stupidity.
tried following the guide and did it down to a T except this keeps happening every time I try to check if the hdd has been flashed properly.
Am using a WD1200BEVS as stated and using a 120gb hssbin file.
Have tried disconnecting and then going to format but xbox doesn't even recognize it.
Any help would be grateful.
(IMG:http://i400.photobucket.com/albums/pp81/robertwilliambright/090413_14000001-1.jpg)
Post by: maninjapan on April 13, 2009, 03:08:00 AM
Post by: NaumanManzoor on April 14, 2009, 03:29:00 PM
"plz enter nr from 1-4 or x-exit"
I pressed all 1-4 but it says invalid .
using "WIN 98 DOS" booting from USB drive .
can anyone help
Post by: maninjapan on April 15, 2009, 05:48:00 PM
Post by: LoonDawg on April 16, 2009, 09:36:00 AM
I ran hddhackr -f and flashed my drive, put it in the 360 which was recognized and I formatted it in the 360. When I hooked it back up to my PC and ran Xplorer360 to transfer files back to it, the hard disk is not recognized. I get the error that Xplorer can't detect a HD with a FATX format. (Hex Workshop doesn't detect the drive either).
Please help, I am so close but can't seem to find anyone else with this problem.
Thanks.
Post by: LoonDawg on April 16, 2009, 12:35:00 PM
Post by: gibletboy on April 16, 2009, 03:19:00 PM
Does anyone know if the newer WD1200BEVE models will work? I can't find a WD1200BEVS at my local micro center but they had plenty of these in stock for about $65. I haven't seen the MS 120GB drives in the store until recently (after being noticably absent for a while). Now they're all over and I figured maybe they upgraded to a newer 120GB drive and the WD1200BEVE might be it? Anyone tried with these?
Post by: gibletboy on April 16, 2009, 05:44:00 PM
QUOTE(gibletboy @ Apr 16 2009, 04:55 PM)
Greetings,
Does anyone know if the newer WD1200BEVE models will work? I can't find a WD1200BEVS at my local micro center but they had plenty of these in stock for about $65. I haven't seen the MS 120GB drives in the store until recently (after being noticably absent for a while). Now they're all over and I figured maybe they upgraded to a newer 120GB drive and the WD1200BEVE might be it? Anyone tried with these?
NM, I just realized that is the IDE version. I guess I'm taking the drive back to micro center. I can't believe I didn't check before I left the sotre! Doh!
Post by: pcramrod on May 02, 2009, 02:23:00 PM
Thanks...
Whoops... I think I found my answer in the HDDHackr thread. Use the HDAT tool...
Post by: CoLD FiRE on May 07, 2009, 12:25:00 PM
just did my 120GB by following this tutorial and everything worked as it's supposed to..though I had to hexedit my drive to get it working in xplorer360...who could complain with an xbox 360 120GB for $37!
thanks a lot man.. this was very helpful
and also thanks to TheSpecialiest and everyone involved in making this possible
Post by: Uber-Dude on May 25, 2009, 09:52:00 PM
- Joshu
Post by: ravihpa on May 26, 2009, 03:54:00 PM
I have a WD 1600BEVT Blue Series HDD, and when I try to flash it with the hddss.bin that I got from *ahem* source, it says...
"LBA size does not match"
Can you guys please help me out with this.
I am using Hddhackr 1.00, and it does detect the BEVT, and then I select "Flash" and it asks me for the hddss.bin and then shows information of the BEVT drive and the info in the hddss.bin, which is a 120 gb Fujitsu hddss.Then it says something like info does not match in Sector 16, do you want to Flash ? I click Yes, and then it shows that message "LBA size does not match"
Any help in this regards will be greatly appreciated. Thanx a lot in advance.
PS: I also tried hddhackr 0.91, and it doesn't even detect my WD drive
It says, "No drives detected in Enhanced mode, Now searching in Legacy Mode" and then shows me something like....put nr number from 1 to 4 (x for exit) or something like that. Tried pressing from 1 to 4, but nothing happens, and then ultimately had to press x to exit.
Guys, please help me out
Post by: Rad0x on May 30, 2009, 09:12:00 AM
I have just had success with a 7200RPM drive, the WD1600BEKT 160GB Scorpio Black. At first, I tried flashing it with hddhackr v1.00, but that one was nagging about "LBA Size does not match" and simply didn't flash. Then I tried hddhackr v0.91-even though it doesn't officially support my drive-and it flashed correctly! My xbox just formatted the drive and it seems to work flawlessly. I wonder if i'm gonna notice the 7200RPM over the original 5400RPM.
The exact drive model is WD1600BEKT-00F3T0, I used a VIA SATA controller to connect it to my pc. So if you want to try this yourself, make sure to get that model!
Post by: crowmo on May 30, 2009, 10:08:00 AM
Today I tried my WD2500BEVS-00lot0 using hddhackr v.0.91 and I had success. Firs i tried with Intel X48/ICH9R SATA controler hdd was detected flashed, but on second flash I didnt got msg that drive may work with xbox360 but hddhackr wanna flash it again, even serial and everything was same (not like first time).
Pluged in xbox360 and also no go.
Good that i select Y when hddhackr asked about dump. I flashded that 250gb hdd with dump using Intel X48/ICH9R.
Then i took VIA Sata controler to (same old i used to flash DVDROM), and flashed again and woala second try i sow msg that Drive may work with xbox360. And yea xbox360 recognized it and formated
).Now i am looking for a working way to backup old 20gb and transfer it to 120gb one (gamesaves gamers tags etc). Trying with Xplorer360..
Post by: torakkus on June 03, 2009, 03:55:00 PM
Post by: jmspike on June 11, 2009, 12:07:00 PM
First, thanks for all the work.
Well, my problem is weird ...
I did all and it worked ... My XBOX reconize the HD, my saves and profiles ... I didn´t have any problems even with the Arcade games (SSF2THD) ...
BUT ... I can't install any games on the HD ... It always give me a error. But I can install in the 20G HD flawless ... Did I do soething wrong??? My Resident Evil 5 not even begin the installation and give the Dirty disc error in the 120G HD, but in my 20G, install without problems ...
Anyone can help me with this???
Thanks!
Post by: crangy on June 24, 2009, 11:42:00 PM
I have an Abit IP35-E motherboard, and it is not letting me flash my WD BEVS disk.
I suspect it is because of some kind of IDE emulation mode enforced by the BIOS, it shows in Hddhackr like this:
0) 0xF900 IDE PRI MASTER WDC[the rest of the model number of the BEVS drive, didn't write it down]
[...]
8) 0xDF00 SATA PRI MASTER NONE
I've tried all four of the SATA sockets on the motherboard, but none of them connect to number 8, they all connect to numbers 0-7 which are in some kind of IDE emulation mode.
I am sure the BEVS drive is SATA, and that it is connected to a SATA socket with a SATA cable.
Anyone have any ideas on how to turn this emulation off to get things working?
Thanks,
Crangy
Post by: Kangaroo128 on June 25, 2009, 12:22:00 AM
I started everything off at around 1pm this afternoon and things went quickly downhill. First I excitedly took apart my hard drive casing and took the new BEVS drive out of the wrapper. I then found the tutorials I wanted to follow and got started. My first real problem came when I tried to create a dos bootable flash drive. I'm still not sure whether the actual flash drive model itself was the problem or if it was my motherboard/BIOS giving me issues. But for some reason I couldn't get any of the methods shown in the tutorials to work so that I could boot the pc from the flash drive. I would either get errors when trying to run the HP flash drive tool on the drive or when actually restarting the pc and attempting to boot. It took me easily 3-4 hours to FINALLY get through this step. I ended up using a method I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. It can be found here:
http://www.aetherwid...20070530-1.html
This in effect fools your pc into thinking that your flash drive is a floppy, and allows you to use your MS-DOS system files already on your computer instead of having to search for other versions. This ended up working great for me and finally got me through the worst part of this project.
I then moved on into more trouble. I have an n-force motherboard so my upgrade required me to do some hex editing. I had never done anything like that before so this step took me another hour or so to look up all of the information needed and make sure I wasn't editing something I wasn't supposed to. Because I was cautious, I got this step right on the first try and kept pushing forward.
At this point, my 360 was recognizing the drive and formatting, and I had dumped all of the information from the old drive. My next real problem was when I went to copy all of the dumped memory to the new drive. Upon plugging the BEVS drive back up to Xplorer360, I only had 1 partition showing. Because I wasn't prepared for this to happen, I ignorantly loaded the Partition 2 image up to the BEVS drive and nerfed everything. Once I had done this, the BEVS drive showed Partitions 2 & 3, but didn't include a 0. 2 & 3 obviously weren't set up correctly either as the 360 no longer recognized the new drive. NOW, I had to go searching for how to undo all of the steps I had done and start over with a new flash of the BEVS drive. This didn't take too long, as I found out about the hddhackr -u function and ran that to fix everything. But the backtracking had already pushed this project over the 6 hour mark easily.
I ended up using the full image backup method found here to solve my problems:
http://www.devilsps3...60/xbox360/130/
I honestly don't know why this method isn't recommended by everyone, as I found it much easier and it requires no further hex editing. If you aren't comfortable with hex editing or just want a quicker step, I recommend anyone else doing this mod to go that route. After I found that tutorial, I had the drive up and running in no time at all.
After all was said and done, this project took me an entire day. I started at 1pm and wasn't on live playing some 1vs100 until around 11pm. I took a lot of breaks in between to eat, shower, all that good stuff, but this still took a REALLY long time. I wanted to post this in case anyone else needs some other good resources to check out in case they get stuck as well.
Post by: hakzo on July 09, 2009, 02:13:00 PM
Post by: hakzo on July 09, 2009, 02:34:00 PM
it looks like its going through the same folders over and over. When I noticed it I quickly took a screenshot, and then quickly once it showed up again.
(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v724/hakz/Untitled-1.jpg)
and it just shows teh busy sign when i place cursor over the application, I held the mouse pressed on the cancel button and moved it away, doesn't look like the app is responding. Don't know what to do, seems to be running...
This post has been edited by hakzo: Jul 9 2009, 09:38 PM
Post by: 40_ounce on July 09, 2009, 05:50:00 PM
QUOTE(hakzo @ Jul 9 2009, 01:34 PM)
also (sorry, didn't let me edit last post)
it looks like its going through the same folders over and over. When I noticed it I quickly took a screenshot, and then quickly once it showed up again.
and it just shows teh busy sign when i place cursor over the application, I held the mouse pressed on the cancel button and moved it away, doesn't look like the app is responding. Don't know what to do, seems to be running...
That also happend to me. What I did was drag and drop the one file at a time.
Post by: hakzo on July 09, 2009, 06:26:00 PM
Anyway, I had to do some hexing to restore partition 0 and 3 from partition 1. A new file has appeared in partition 3 called name.txt. Should I delete this?
I am trying to inject the folders however, it says its injecting but when it finishes, nothing appears in the partition. I have to manually add the files after creating the subfolders, this is going to take huge amount of time. What can I do to fix this?
Post by: hakzo on July 09, 2009, 08:14:00 PM
For example, if you want to inject the "Content" folder to the new hard drive, what you do is instead of just injecting the folder onto partition 3, right click partition 3 first and click add folder. Then rename the new folder to the same as the one you want to inject, i.e Content. Afterwards, do not access that folder, just right click the window and do insert folder, choose the one with the same name as the folder you just created. It will ask you if you want to overwrite, click yes. Should work.
Post by: huntermc on July 15, 2009, 11:45:00 PM
I got to the point where I've finally copied all the files from my computer over to the 120 gig drive, but when I go plug it into the xbox and go to system/memory, it does not recognize that any HDD is attached. The xbox recognized the drive when I formatted it, so why won't it do it now? Xplorer 360 recognizes the drive fine and will let me copy and delete files from it. I don't think it's a problem with the SATA cable on the xbox because I can plug in the 20 gig drive and it still works.
I've tried re-flashing the drive in hddhackr, but I get an error saying "Some SATA devices responded... File access error, could not save data!" So hddhackr and the xbox both apparently do not recognize the drive, but xplorer does.
So is there a way to delete the xbox partitions and return the drive to its original state? I've got windows disk partition & formatting tools, but they don't recognize that there is any partition there to delete to begin with.
Any help would be appreciated!
Post by: njmbb8 on July 18, 2009, 08:15:00 AM
Post by: Hybrid13 on August 01, 2009, 03:38:00 PM
Post by: shoutin420 on September 08, 2009, 07:13:00 PM
I used hddhackr to flash my drive and now it thinks it is a Fujitsu. I was able to get my drive recognized by the 360 and then formatted it. Everything was working fine.
Then, I think I messed something up when trying to use winhex. Now neither my original 360 drive or the 120 GB Drive are seen by my 360. The PC sees them fine and I even formatted the 120 GB to NTFS and it shows up as 111GB. But my 360 still wont see it. What can I do to get my 360 to see the drive again. It just says "No storage devices found."
I tried a friend's drive in my console and it showed up fine.
Please help.
This post has been edited by shoutin420: Sep 9 2009, 02:14 AM
Post by: Hierophant on September 17, 2009, 08:22:00 PM
The only thing I think it should be added is that you need to make a bootable device BEFORE inserting the files on the flash drive and you should check the I/O of your device before so if it does says the NR error thingy you already have written down, it took me hours and hours of reading the forums to get that.
By the way, if anyone has problems:
Making a bootable DOS flash drive:
http://www.thepcspy....usb_flash_drive
Solving the type the nr error *no drive found* on hddhacker
Read the readme that comes with it, also check this thread:
http://forums.xbox-s...howtopic=514126
Most people seem to get this by themselves, but some not so bright like me might have some problems.
Thanks again.
Post by: cenders on October 01, 2009, 08:14:00 PM
Are there other compatible drives?
Post by: Antman1 on October 02, 2009, 06:25:00 AM
Post by: walleballr on October 11, 2009, 12:32:00 PM
Post by: ZiG on October 25, 2009, 02:39:00 PM
Just for reference, the problems I had along the way were:
-Couldn't get my pc to read the drive no matter what I did. Solution: use a different PC
-Had some trouble with the hex editor, editing that one part of the drive. First thing I did wrong was go to sector 400 (decimal) instead of 400 hex. Then I wasn't sure if I should fill in just the first row with those numbers or all the rows. Turns out that just doing the first row worked. After that I wasn't seeing the changes in winhex, but I was running the winhex exe without installing the program. Once I installed the proggy and ran it, I saw the changes.
And an interesting side note: After putting in the new drive, I had to do a system update, as well as update all my games while on XBL. Interesting.
Post by: Yamikotai on October 30, 2009, 01:24:00 PM
Thanks for the tutorial, looks very clear. However, does the drive model have to be 'WD1200BEVS'? I'm in the UK and the only drive I can find is the 'WD1200BEVT'. They seem identical, but would there be any problem if I bought the BEVT model instead of the BEVS model?
Thanks,
Yami
Edit: Ah, had a closer look and the only difference between them is SATAI and SATAII respectively. So the BEVT will probably work. Now to get me a 250GB WD2500BEVT
Post by: danthaman673 on November 07, 2009, 11:04:00 PM
QUOTE(ravihpa @ May 27 2009, 07:24 AM)
Hi guys,
I have a WD 1600BEVT Blue Series HDD, and when I try to flash it with the hddss.bin that I got from *ahem* source, it says...
"LBA size does not match"
Can you guys please help me out with this.
I am using Hddhackr 1.00, and it does detect the BEVT, and then I select "Flash" and it asks me for the hddss.bin and then shows information of the BEVT drive and the info in the hddss.bin, which is a 120 gb Fujitsu hddss.Then it says something like info does not match in Sector 16, do you want to Flash ? I click Yes, and then it shows that message "LBA size does not match"
Any help in this regards will be greatly appreciated. Thanx a lot in advance.
PS: I also tried hddhackr 0.91, and it doesn't even detect my WD drive
It says, "No drives detected in Enhanced mode, Now searching in Legacy Mode" and then shows me something like....put nr number from 1 to 4 (x for exit) or something like that. Tried pressing from 1 to 4, but nothing happens, and then ultimately had to press x to exit.
Guys, please help me out
Anyone else having this problem, it can be solved without drastic harware etc.. changes. Just use the latest version of HDDhackr v1.22 Changelog indicates it's been upgraded to cope with '09 scorpios
Can anyone tell me if there is a way I can change my hacked 120gb drive (hddss.bin from torrent) to identify as my orginal legit 20gb (I've heard they're busting/banning ppl with modded drives) I've looked at earlier tuts in this forum but they're a bit confusing to say they least eg flash drive (unspecified) with hddss.bin (which one???) and then undo (why flash to undo immediately??) etc..
Please Help I don't wan't my hard earned to go down the tubes as I'm too poor :-)
Post by: danthaman673 on November 08, 2009, 11:52:00 AM
QUOTE(Pishposh @ Jan 8 2009, 06:41 AM)
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.
O.K questions:
Step 1: Which hddss.bin? I asume you mean one ripped from a 120gb
Steps 2-10: I'm using HDDhackr 1.22 so it makes tall the partitions for me. I'm also using XPORT 2.08 instead of xplorer as it can copy the cache w/o crashing and seems more stable over-all
Step 11:The bit that says then create hddss.bin from 20gb do you mean in xplorer or in dos??
Step 12: this step has a lot going on and is VERY confusing. When ity says undo flash which flash are you undoing? with what? and if possible ... why? When you 're-flash' is that with the 120gb hddss.bin??
Is this method safe to use on live (assuming you DL'ed you hddss.bin from a torrent) if not is there a way to re-sign my 20gb hddss.bin with oh let us say... sigggyyyy or something similar so live sees 20gb drive even though you have 120gb??
Thanks adn ANY help would be appreciated
Post by: ssidewinder on November 15, 2009, 09:06:00 AM
Here's a simpler tutorial.
tutorial
I think this thread has served its useful purpose and should either be updated or closed.
Post by: Constellation on November 18, 2009, 11:49:00 AM