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[TheSpecialist]

Doesn't anybody who has a 360 already know somebody who also has one, so that they could swap drives ? I'd be VERY interested to see if this would work. I don't think it will, because I think that the HD's will be encrypted with keys that are different on every XBOX. However, swapping drives would learn us a lot about this.

This post has been edited by TheSpecialist: Nov 25 2005, 02:53 AM

[Justinx89x]

QUOTE(TheSpecialist @ Nov 25 2005, 02:15 AM)

Doesn't anybody who has a 360 already know somebody who also has one, so that they could swap drives ? I'd be VERY interested to see if this would work. I don't think it will, because I think that the HD's will be encrypted with keys that are different on every XBOX. However, swapping drives would learn us a lot about this.

onolche just said that he swapped hard drives with a friend and it worked fine. So it has been confirmed.

[TheSpecialist]

QUOTE(Justinx89x @ Nov 25 2005, 02:32 AM)

onolche just said that he swapped hard drives with a friend and it worked fine. So it has been confirmed.

Wow, that would be great news !

Something else: Since partition magic recognizes the HD, isn't there some software that can read it at low level ? Some tool that could read every bit and make a dump of the HD contents ? I'd really love to know if such dump would contain unencrypted ASCII contents like directory contents etc.

Something like this:
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

QUOTE

5.1 Supported filesystems

One of the questions arising a lot is "what filesystems does g4u support". The answer is: "all of them". g4u reads the disk bit by bit, starting from byte #0 to the end. It includes any MBR, boot record, partition table and the partitions themselves without further investigating the structure of the data stored in these partitions.

Can someone try something like this ? It would (hopefully) give us great insight in the filestructure, which could eventually lead to the development of software to read (and write) it on a 'higher' level.

This post has been edited by TheSpecialist: Nov 25 2005, 03:37 AM

[TheSpecialist]

Note: this g4u software creates its own bootdisk, you don't need a specific OS to run it.

This post has been edited by TheSpecialist: Nov 25 2005, 04:56 AM

[cyd0g]

this is called "sector copy" and can be done with nearly every imaging programm

like norton ghost etc..

you can try this when starting ghost from cammand line with the switch   "IR"

for example ghostPE.exe /IR

[Rustmonkey]

Just to let you know... if you can get another SATA laptop drive hooked up, I've noticed theres an option for the 360 to format the HDD....  Also, noticed that at least seven gig is used probabley for emulation of the orignial xbox cache files... at least that would make since, as the X360 is only able to use 13 of the 20 gig on the stock HDD...

This post has been edited by Rustmonkey: Nov 25 2005, 09:48 AM

[v8azlin]

i would like to see if the Retail Harddrive has anything at all on it...then we would be able to see if we are able to just plug in a Laptop Drive and go for it.

[seedyrom2003]

Itd be nice to see what happens with this how long did it take for the eboots to be cracked for the psp.. im assuming theres a similar structure, SATA hard drive.. this cant be that hard.. Is there any ETA on the bigger drives MS was talking about releasing?

[TheSpecialist]

QUOTE(cyd0g @ Nov 25 2005, 08:16 AM)

this is called "sector copy" and can be done with nearly every imaging programm

like norton ghost etc..

you can try this when starting ghost from cammand line with the switch   "IR"

for example ghostPE.exe /IR

That is simply not true. Like topic starter says:

QUOTE(thejt @ Nov 24 2005, 05:24 AM)

Norton Ghost recognizes the 20gb 360 drive but cannot clone or work with the partition. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)  

Most of these 'cloning' programs try to interpret the information on disk somehow and therfore only work with 'supported filesystems'. Topic starter couldn't clone his HD with Northon Ghost, I'm 95% sure that it's possible with this software (only make sure that your hardware is recognized by the bootlloader CD, not every SATA controller is supported for example)

This post has been edited by TheSpecialist: Nov 25 2005, 02:52 PM

[Dark_Neo]

I think someone with a 360 hard drive (I would but no 360 yet ) should connect the drive under Linux, then use: hexdump /dev/{360 drive node} /mnt/{mounted drive}/dump.bin
Then try compressing it, if it's small enough to send over the internet try sending it to me and I'll see what I can make of it.

Not to sound too cocky but I know a lot about filesystems, I fixed a corrupted fatx drive with a hex editor before lol so I might be able to provide insight into the filesystem.

[copper7op]

Yea, its doable with a hex editior for sure, but heres the issue we're going to have that we didnt have with xbox's. Drive Cost. 120gb drives are about 200 bucks, as opposed to ATA drives which we can get 300gb for 130 bucks

[TheSpecialist]

So, anyone did a HD dump already ? The scene is waiting for it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[thejt]

Good point someone brought up about the fat32 support.  It is true that you can only CREATE partitions up to 32GB with XP or 2k but they CAN read and write to larger volumes. Im curious to know if Xp and 2k can read and write to fat32 partitions all the way to 2TB.  Or at least 400gb .  If this is the case I will have my 400GB drive running on my 360 this weekend.

As far as Ghost goes.  Like I said, Ghost DOES recognize the partition, its size and other information so the controller and drive is recognized by ghost.  But unfortunately it will not work with the partition.

I am becoming more and more less interested in replacing that actual stock drive that comes with the 360 because of the fact that you cannot get your own content on the thing anyway.. unless you rip your CD's which I will not do out of spite.  I think USB drives are going to be my personal method until until we have some means of doing this.

I am going to give g4u a shot here this weekend.. wish me luck.  Thank god I have two 360's.. one to mess with and one to play.  COD2 is so tight that if I didnt have two I would be playing right now instead of dabbling with the hardware!

[TheSpecialist]

QUOTE(thejt @ Nov 25 2005, 10:24 PM)

As far as Ghost goes.  Like I said, Ghost DOES recognize the partition, its size and other information so the controller and drive is recognized by ghost.  But unfortunately it will not work with the partition.

That's good news ! Northon probably won't work with the partition because it doesn't understand the disc structure, so you need some other program that really doesn't try to analyse the disk structure (like g4u indeed).

QUOTE

I am going to give g4u a shot here this weekend.. wish me luck.  

Cool ! I tried booting up the g4u boot disk: on my P4 system it crashes (i really don't know why, but it certainly has problems with some of my hardware), but it boots correctly on my AMD system. Still, it recognizes only a limited set of SATA controllers (promise150 for example), so I hope it works with yours. Would be really cool if someone could upload a zipped version of the dump somewhere.

QUOTE

Thank god I have two 360's.. one to mess with and one to play.  COD2 is so tight that if I didnt have two I would be playing right now instead of dabbling with the hardware!

hehe, but hacking around is SO much more fun   Good luck !

[Alkane]

We know that files downloaded from Xbox Live are encrypted (sent over normal unencrypted HTTP).  Its possible that the hard drive contents is encrypted.  Maybe encrypted to the hard drive as well (against its serial and using a public key sceme).  This would make using nonMS prepared drives impossible (at least for now).

I think someone should dump the contents of their Xbox 360 hard drive with a hex editor such as WinHex and try copying to a second hard drive (an off the shelf, then try copying to another Xbox 360's hard drive) 1:1.  See if the Xbox 360 recognizes it, etc.  This will at least give us a bit more insight into what protections they're using.

EDIT: Also if you decide to play with the emulator update file, remember that the file mentions what boot source its suppost to use (...CD-ROM).  The file is probabbly signed.  So even if the Xbox 360 were to allow you to run an executable from a flash device, it wouldn't launch the update file as it is currently written.  Also trying to get that same file to run from the hard drive somewhere would suffer from the same problem.

Also of course, see how well the hard drive dump compresses and see if you can find any file/directory strings

I'm no engineer or software hacker, just laying out what I know ; p

This post has been edited by Alkane: Nov 26 2005, 09:22 AM