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OG Xbox Forums => Hardware Forums => General Hardware/Technical Chat => Topic started by: dpderr on November 14, 2005, 02:06:00 PM

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: dpderr on November 14, 2005, 02:06:00 PM

I've done my fair share of XBox  mods  (I'd say I'm approaching 100) from mod chips, to TSOP flashing, and Soft Mods, so I'm no newbie.  I've done searches and read many posts, but I can't find a solution to my problem.

I have a 1.6 Xbox with the stock hard drive that I Soft Modded with Krayzie's Ndure kit for Splinter Cell.  No troubles, done it more time than I can count.

I decided to put a bigger hard drive in my 'box (80 GB Maxtor Diamond Max 16 - to be more specific).  I did the same thing I always do when adding a bigger hard drive for soft mod: I put the EEPROM that was in the backup folder of the E drive created by the Krayzie Ndure kit in the EEPROM folder of XboxHDM 1.9 and made a boot CD.  Booted my computer with the CD and locked the drive.  I put it in my XBox and got Error 6.  Okay, maybe I messed something up (highly unlikely), so I put the drive back in my PC, booted up the XBoxHDM and attemted to unlock the drive.  No dice!  What the heck gives?  I couldn't unlock the drive with the same CD (EEPROM) that I locked it with!  This has never, ever happened before!

I decided to try every other method of unlocking using utilities like atapwd, hdunlock, and hddisabl since I have the EEPROM and hddinfo.txt.  Again, no luck.

Has this happened to anyone before?

I've burned the CD again 4 times, just to make sure that isn't the problem.  I even formatted the stock drive to remove all traces of the soft mod like the shadow C drive and IMG, restored it to stock, copied my Splinter Cell save (the one I use for Raincoat TSOP flashing) back to it, backed up the EEPROM with Evox, FTPd the EEPROM  back to my PC and tried again.  I'm out of ideas.

I appreciate the responses and ideas from people.  But I ask, please don't make suggestions about checking my Master/Salve/Primary/Secondary settings and disabling the drive in my BIOS, etc.  Like I said, I've soft modded at least 20 Xboxs with larger hard drives using this exact method and have never had a problem before.

Thanks X-S members!

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: BigSteel on November 14, 2005, 02:49:00 PM

I must admit that has happened to me at least twice.  Boot up your xbox with the stock drive and check what the hdd key is using config magic or something like that.  And then check what code xboxhdm is using to lock/ unlock the drive (I know it won't work, but it will still show you the code that it is attempting to use).  See if there is a difference.

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: dpderr on November 14, 2005, 08:06:00 PM

I looked at the EEPROM using ConfigMagic on the stock hard drive/Soft Mod and compared it to the EEPROM I put on the CD using LiveInfo.  They were identical.  I think I have an 80 GB paperweight!  I'm not going to pay $50 on Repair Station 2.9 that may not even unlock the drive, when an 80 GB drive costs $50 anyway!

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: Code-Runner on November 14, 2005, 08:39:00 PM

QUOTE(dpderr @ Nov 14 2005, 07:37 PM)

I looked at the EEPROM using ConfigMagic on the stock hard drive/Soft Mod and compared it to the EEPROM I put on the CD using LiveInfo.  They were identical.  I think I have an 80 GB paperweight!  I'm not going to pay $50 on Repair Station 2.9 that may not even unlock the drive, when an 80 GB drive costs $50 anyway!

There is also the ability as a last resort, see if you can get a RMA for the drive.

For some reason I seem to have had one drive do the same thing in ConfigMagic but since it was a stock drive I ended up taking it apart for demonstration purposes. Sorry for not having a quick solution. What is the model number per chance?

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: dpderr on November 14, 2005, 08:54:00 PM

I appreciate the quick responses.  I went ahead and checked the warranty online at Maxtor.  Still good until 2007!  I'm going to do an advance RMA.  Thanks for the idea!

The drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 16
80 GB
7200 RPM
ATA/133
16 MB Buffer

Title: Never Seen Before Hard Drive Lock Problem
Post by: dpderr on November 16, 2005, 04:49:00 PM

I decided to call Maxtor yesterday.  I spoke with one of their representatives and asked if there was some sort of "Master" unlock code.  The guy told me that there was no such thing, and because they (Maxtor) had not locked it, there was nothing he could do.  But he did tell me that some of their drives used in DVRs, TIVOs, and such that were locked by TIVO, Scientific Atlanta, etc. have been successfully unlocked using a program from this site:

http://www.weaknees.com/maxtor_powermax.php

I tried it myself and it didn't work for me, but hopefully it can help other X-S members.