Post by: twistedsymphony on June 30, 2008, 06:57:00 AM
Basically the console wouldn't boot at all, as if it wasn't plugged in and he was worried that he would lose the dozens of CD he had ripped to the hard drive, more important because he had lost most of these CDs in a robbery so now they only existed on the Xbox.
This is a completely unmodified v1.0 console, the guy's son left it when he moved out so he started using it as a MP3 jukebox with the built in player.
I fixed a weak solder joint on the PSU and and within 5 minutes had the console powering up again... but there was still a problem After going through the blob boot sequence the console hangs for about 15 seconds and then displays error code 16 ( dashboard - Clock cannot be set.)
error code 16 usually means that dash needs to be reinstalled or some settings changed but considering this is a bone stock unmodified console I'm guessing the hard drive is toast and unable to launch the dashboard. In a situation like this I'd typically replace or at least reformat the drive, but the most important thing here is the data thats on the drive...
My question to the community
I told the guy the hard drive was junk and he was heartbroken because of all the music he had on there. I figured I'd poll the community for ideas on how this could possibly be salvaged if at all before completely throwing in the towel.
I've got stacks of stock 8gb hard drives that I could use to replace it, so the key is being able to extract the music off of the locked drive... any ideas are welcome.
Thanks
Post by: 4real*leb on June 30, 2008, 08:21:00 AM
Can it cold boot discs at least?
Do you know if the xbox is unloicking the hard drive first before giving out the error?
If the hard drive is unlocked upon boot then you need to simply hotswap the hard drive and use xboxhdm to clone the drive onto another one. This should show you the data and, maybe be able to revive the hard drive.
Post by: Bomb Bloke on June 30, 2008, 08:26:00 AM
First off, how easy is it for you to get the console booting off one of those other drives? Say you do that, you can then set the time; plug the "dead" drive back in, and you should get a more instructive error code.
If that's more trouble then it's worth, plug the drive into your PC like any other and boot up. Does the system at least recognise the thing is there? If so, then that's a good sign; sure, it'll probably be locked so you can't get a good look at it, but if the computer will boot and spot the drive then you can at least say it's doing something.
Next up, take a read through this thread, paying close attention to this post here in particular. Reckon it applies to you? Then let us know what brand the drive is and we'll try something along those lines.
If you don't have a Seagate or a Western Digital drive on your hands (and if you don't, please say what it is, I'm starting to suspect there ARE no other models out there), you may have to hotswap or build an EEPROM reader to unlock the drive.
Post by: twistedsymphony on June 30, 2008, 09:19:00 AM
To answer some of your questions...
no, it can't cold boot discs... gives me the same error
I'm not all to familiar with how the drive locking works since I usually just trash the junked drive and throw a big unlocked one on there.
I think I might as well throw a chip header on the mobo... after I told him the HDD was junk he didn't seem at all interested in getting it back or having me install a new HDD so if it doesn't work out I might end up with this thing anyway.
Post by: Chancer on June 30, 2008, 03:20:00 PM
You could go down the hotswap route and hotswap the drive into the PC to access it and replace the files. it can work on error 16 but is hit and miss and can cause damage.
Post by: lordvader129 on June 30, 2008, 04:04:00 PM
Post by: twistedsymphony on July 04, 2008, 01:34:00 PM
I fit a pin header on it and then pulled an X3* and an unlocked drive from a different known working modded Xbox 1 I had laying around.
with the X3 and different hard drive it booted right up with no problems. It booted into XBMC, and I launched the Xbox dash from there and set the clock properly.
I then swapped out the unlocked drive for the original damaged drive...
It took a while to boot up but I ended up in the X3 menu... Xecuter recognized the HDD, displayed me the key and was giving me options to format it but it wouldn't launch the dashboard. it gave me the option to clear the cache so I did and it seemed to clear it ok...
I pulled the chip and rebooted to see if it would throw and error on me and now I'm getting Error 13
The real kicker is that the console still wont boot from Disc either, I tried originals and backups and even swapped out the Tompson for a known working Samsung. I was hoping if it booted a disc i could overwrite the dashboard fresh but no such luck... if I try it boot a disc with the working unlocked drive attached it will boot the disc just fine.
*I should note that the X3 installation manual is completely vacant from the internet, everywhere simply links to the Xecuter website which they no longer host the tutorials for their old Xbox 1 chips... someone who happens to have the Xecutuer install guide should seriously consider uploading it to XS for future reference. They D0 header had 3 wires and I had no idea which one went where so I simply grounded D0 and luckily it worked.
----------------------
so where I am now...
Is it safe to use the X3 config menu to unlock this HDD? Will I be able to lock it again though this interface after the fact?
Then once it's unlocked I can simply use Xplorer360 to extract the files through my PC and then rebuild it on a fresh hard drive correct?
Post by: run088 on July 04, 2008, 02:51:00 PM
I do have a modded xbox that was acting just like this but the problem was not the hdd. I think its problem is somehow related to the xboxes ability to read from the IDE.If I booted from any x2 based bios I would get an error13 if I booted from an m8 bios it would go to an error 16 and m8 uses the ms error screen where as x2 uses superfro.I will assume the results are similar on any other bios that use these error setup screens.
I wonder if the xbox is seeing the hdd or not.If you flash a linux bios on the chip and boot linux it will do a run down on the hardware and list it.I wonder if it list it correctly.
If you find the hdd is toast you can try to run this program on it.
ontrack easyrecovery professional.
Post by: twistedsymphony on July 04, 2008, 03:32:00 PM
putting the new drive on the broken xbox It booted right up with the X3 and I Was able to get into the evox dash that was on the new drive. I even used the X3 to lock the drive to the broken xbox and it still worked great.
now that I know the X3 lock/unlock tool worked I used it on the broken drive to unlock it.
the X3 menu showed the drive as unlocked, it even showed me the partition table and serial number of the drive... nothing here would lead you to believe that there was anything wrong with the drive at all.
burning an Xbox HDM Linux disc I put the broken (and now unlocked) drive in my PC and booted Xbox HDM
Xbox HDM sees the drive and recognizes that it is unlocked but says that it does not have a valid partition table
(and yes it's reading the right drive, I unpluged all the other drives, the xbox drive is the only one hooked up)
so it wouldn't let me rebuild the c partition because it couldn't find it.
this is somewhat odd because the X3 chip was able to read the partition table just fine. I even pulled the broken drive off of my PC and back onto the Xbox and X3 again confirmed that it was unlocked and that the partition table was good.
so with Xbox HDM I have the option to re-write the partition table... will this blow away all the data in the process? ... I suppose it's worth a shot unless anyone else has any ideas?
Post by: run088 on July 04, 2008, 04:45:00 PM
If not get the program I suggested or one like it.As long as the pc can see the drive it should be able to ghost all the data.Ive used it several times and salvaged 500gig hdds with it.It is something like the fbi uses to see what has been on peoples hdds that they have deleted.
It is easy to use just remember you will have to have the same amount of space empty on your pc as the size of the hdd you will be ghosting to get all the data properly.
This program will even pick up old info from drives that have been zeroed out or repartitioned some of the data may be corrupted but avi files and music files come back pretty good which is what you are most interested in anyway.
On one 500g sata that I had went down and on it I had in excess of 400 avi and music files.I repartitioned the drive and then stumbled on this program and retrieved all but about 30 avi files that had become corrupted.
If it is the data that your interested in this is going to be your best bet to get it.
Post by: ldotsfan on July 04, 2008, 07:50:00 PM
dd if=/dev/hdc of=4.raw skip=5501 count=9790 bs=512k
so 5501*1024 gives the start LBA sector, 5501*1024 + 9790*1000 gives the end sector. Once you have an image of E drive , xplorer360 can work with FATX image file.
Post by: Bomb Bloke on July 04, 2008, 10:55:00 PM
Post by: run088 on July 04, 2008, 11:04:00 PM
But when I looked a month or 2 ago it was not in the usual places only an nfo or something.
I will double check but I believe it was the build designed for ftp access.I was very interested in finding it one time or another but was unsuccessful.Hope you have better luck with that.
Thats it I just checked I still got the nfo for a reminder.
This would be a nice bios to have regardless of its size for the ability for repairs.