A couple months ago games I was playing started crashing with the "Disc is Unreadable" error. I've got an "internal" 3.5 hard drive mod hooked up to the 360. I actually converted my HD-DVD Drive in an external enclosure for the HDD. The HD-DVD case, has a "Sata to E-sata port" stuffed in side it and cut into the back. Then I use an E-sata cable to go from my external enclosure to the 360, which has an E-sata port soldered directly to the motherboard. Power for the HDD used the PCB board from the HD-DVD drive and it's power cable. Because it was using external power, even when the 360 was turned off the HDD (or at least the HD-DVD drive fan) was running 24/7.
When I started getting the Disc Unreadable errors, I would restart the 360. When I would power it up again, half the time it didn't detect my hard drive at all. Naturally I assumed the drive was failing after running 24/7 for a year+. I bought a new 500 GB drive (damn Thailand tsunami jacking up HDD prices). But I got greedy, I realized in my parent's company computer server there was a 1TB drive. I ended up putting my new 500 GB drive into my parent's computer and taking their 1TB drive. Now, this was a company server and this Hard Drive also has been running 24/7 for a year+. I Zeroed out both my original 750GB 360 Hard drive and my "new" 1TB Hard drive, and ran the Western Digital Diagnostics for DOS Extended Test. Both passed with no errors/warnings. So I though, hmm, maybe my old drive is still good and wasn't failing after all.
Anyway I finished restoring my 360 backup to the "new" 1TB drive. I also, opened my 360 again and soldered a new power cable from a 12v supply (from the 360's power supply) and ground (from the power cable). Now my hard drive only turns on and runs when I power up the 360 obviously, which I'm i like more, thinking it will make my HDD last longer.
But I just started getting the same "Disc is Unreadable" error. Now since both drives Zeroed out fine, and passed the Extended test, I'm wondering if there's another problem. Would I get this error if my Sata cable I soldered to the mother board was Unshielded (insulated) for too long a distance? Now I had used this same setup for a year with no problems. Maybe it's my 360 failing? I suggest that because one time last night after the Disc Unreadable error, it threw me back to NXE (instead of dash launch returning me to FSD) and when I tried to go back to FSD, the colors were mad screwed up and parts of the UI were missing.
Sorry that got to be so long, anyone have any suggestions? thanks
This post has been edited by EvanVanVan: Feb 5 2012, 01:15 PM