short of being brand new in box unopened you cannot be sure. there will be degradation on them the more they are used. in theory those that haven't been turned on will last a good long while.
no to the webstore. doing a TSOP bridge is very, very easy. the dvd drive always dies first, it's rare for the HDD to fail first. you can swap out any DVD from another xbox, but they are all kind of on their last legs. TSOP or hard modded xbox can use non xbox DVD drives.
There's a guy selling modded Xbox on eBay and saying "Note to buyers PLEASE READ, This box now comes with two controllers, upgraded HD Cables for HD graphics, 80 pin IDE cables instead of the standard 40 pin for higher data transfer rates (reduces lag/choppiness) I've also replaced the disc tray bands to avoid the sticky disc drive issue that ALL xboxes get (the original bands used by Microsoft stretched over time causing the stuck tray issue)"
in my experience the only DVD drive with stuck tray issues was the Samsung drives, and yes they did happen and it was relatively easy and not costly to replace the belts. They are something like $1 for 10 iirc. Greasing is more than likely referring to the rails, they have grease on them to lubricate the movement of the DVD drive's laser. HD cables you can get without an upgrade, there are component and S-video out boxes. Yes it makes a difference. Since most TVs don't do s-video anymore (shame) component is pretty much the way to go. From a gameplay perspective, few of the xbox games used 720, most top out at 480p. Still, the image is considerably sharper, even on s-video.
<p>in my experience the only DVD drive with stuck tray issues was the Samsung drives, and yes they did happen and it was relatively easy and not costly to replace the belts. They are something like $1 for 10 iirc. Greasing is more than likely referring to the rails, they have grease on them to lubricate the movement of the DVD drive's laser. HD cables you can get without an upgrade, there are component and S-video out boxes. Yes it makes a difference. Since most TVs don't do s-video anymore (shame) component is pretty much the way to go. From a gameplay perspective, few of the xbox games used 720, most top out at 480p. Still, the image is considerably sharper, even on s-video.</p> mcdvoice (https://mcdvoice.me/)