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[SimplexPL]

QUOTE(Spark @ Sep 28 2008, 05:56 PM)

Thanks for the great guide, none of the hexing is required anymore by the way, at least I didn't have to do any of it anyway.

On saturday I succesfully converted bevs into xbox360 compatible drive. I also thought that hexing wont be possible, but it turned out I had to do it - neither xplorer360 beta 6 nor extreme 2 would work without those hex magic.

[Mach1024]

QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Sep 29 2008, 02:00 AM)

On saturday I succesfully converted bevs into xbox360 compatible drive. I also thought that hexing wont be possible, but it turned out I had to do it - neither xplorer360 beta 6 nor extreme 2 would work without those hex magic.

I went about it a bit differently.  After running the hddhack and formatting the 120 GB drive, I had off loaded my 20 GB drives files when I decided that I could live without my game saves.  So after playing with the drive a bit by downloading a few games and arcade titles I owned, I read about the backwards compatibility problem with these drives.  So I tested out some xbox titles and lo and behold they did not work.  I tried the Xbox 2007 update from Microsoft, but that did not resolve the issue.

So, I plugged the 120GB back into my comp and continued with the procedure by looking at the 80000 byte offset but found that it had already been updated with a string slightly different from the one described on the guide (Don't ask me what it was, I didn't write it down).  I used xplorer360 extreme 2 to copy the files (I used the extreme 2 version exclusively through out) and restored the partition 2.  Then I plugged the drive back in the 360 and, in addition to having all my game saves and downloaded content, the backwards compatibility was now working again.

So, I guess that the official drives from Microsoft have backwards compatibility files that cannot be installed via the 360 backwards compatibility update.  I wonder if the 360 formatting of official drives skips the backwards compatibility portions of the drive or if formatted drives lose backwards compatibility?  Of if just copying the "compatibility" folder of my old drive to the new drive would have worked as well?

[SimplexPL]

I succesfully converted a bevs and it was visible in Xbox360 dashboard as unformatted. I formatted it, created a hdd gamertag profile, played a game and made savagame. So I figured - if xbox360 saved a game on a disk, then partition 3 must exist, right? Wrong, at least for xplorer360 xtreme 2- it did not see this partition, neither partition two, so it was impossible to copy over the files extracted from 20gb dusk. And xplorer 360 beta 6 would not even got that far - it hanged as soon as I tried opening the disk.
This forced me to edit hdd partition with hexedit the way it is described in the tutorial. After that partition 3 appeared under xplorer360 xtreme 2 and it was also possible to restore partition 2, too.

[speedle]

i didnt need to do any hex editing on my usto bevs drive, simply put it in formatted it, then copied all my saves to memeory card and transfered them to the new drive, ive downloaded lots of content again and loaded saves etc all working without a hitch. i didnt bother using xplorer360 the memory card option was far quicker and easier.

[pigboy306]

QUOTE(speedle @ Sep 25 2008, 03:35 PM)

sorry to here that chap.

the new drive will have to be flashed with the hddss.bin before loading it into the xbox. id recommend you do a quick format of it before flashing (this is what i did). once its in the xbox it should show as unformatted and you'll need to let the box format it to its own XFAT file system. once thats done it should be happy days!

re: your now broken 120gb drive, did hddhackr see it initially and now its not seeing it at all? have you tried using the undo option to restore the drive or is it not responding at all?

Bios wouldn't 'see' the drive so i guess it is fried, slight smell of burning from the mainboard so i figure it shorted... sent it back to the supplier as duff...if i get a new one great if not i am in same position as now

[ubiman]

QUOTE(bbking67 @ Sep 28 2008, 08:48 PM)

I followed this guide and successfully upgraded to a 22UST0 BEVS drive (120GB).  I used a copy of HDDSS.BIN found on the usual public places.  The BIN I flashed turned out to be from a Fujitsu drive (according to HDDHACKR), but everything seems okay.

One thing I did not do was the winhex/hex studio mods... i used the newer versio0n of xplorer360 so i was hoping this was unnecessary (the instructions for this part are a bit sketchy).

I have a small DRM issue on my xbox that I can't seem to figure out.  I have a few games from the marketplace that were purchased.  Now these still work fine with the gamertag they were bought under, but they no longer function for the other two xbox live accounts on the xbox.  i deleted the drm database and I even tried the new drm transfer tool with no luck.  Even free demo videos from the marketplace have suffered the same fate.

I am going to try re-downloading some of the content to see what happens, but I am on a very slow internet link (live in the country so i have to suffer with throttles fixed wireless).

Thanks for this thread!  I just save over $100!

What is a 22UST0 BEVS drive?

Fujitsu bin? I thought this was for WD drives?

[SimplexPL]

QUOTE(ubiman @ Oct 3 2008, 08:39 AM)

What is a 22UST0 BEVS drive?

This is simply particular 'subtype' of WD12000BEVS drive - "22UST0" moniker changes depending on date of production. All BEVS drives can be converted, provided you hook them up to compatible SATA controller (Intel ICH9 did not work for me, external VIA 6421 controller worked)

QUOTE

Fujitsu bin? I thought this was for WD drives?

Try to read and understand what you are reading, no offence.
The .bin file contains information taken from a genuine original 120gb xbox360 disk - as it happens Microsoft uses Fujitsu HDDs - so after successful flash of the WD drive it will be visible as Fujitsu disk, to fool the console.

My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.

This post has been edited by SimplexPL: Oct 3 2008, 02:34 PM

[pigboy306]

The company i ordered from sent me a new drive today so will have another go... anyhow i have a case and a dff 20gb drive, so have nothing to move or convert can i just stop at the format stage ( without the hex editing and backing up as i have nothing to copy??

[Xbox-Warrior]

QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Oct 3 2008, 06:06 AM)

My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.

Yes each drive has its own serial number. But I really don't think MS will ban people for having modded hard drives. I mean the PS3 owners are also able to upgrade their drives by themselves without flashing the firmware either. I also think they know that $180 for a 120G drive is really stupid. I paid $45 for my BEVS 120G drive.

Now if you have a modded dvd firmware that's a different story and you better buy a different book if you don't like bad endings. Its only a matter of time before you get caught. I have been caught during the Halo 3 Beta period. I would also suggest flashing back your dvd firmware before applying the fall update or any update as far as that goes.

This coming Monday Xbox Live will be down 24 hours for this reason they are coming with the fall update to be realeased later on down the line.

So everyone tread softly in the coming months. You have been warned. No BS. I expect the update to also have with it the new Ban Hammer.  

   

[Mach1024]

QUOTE(SimplexPL @ Oct 3 2008, 08:06 AM)

My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.

My opinion is that they could do three things:

One is ban a particular hard drive serial number.  That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update.  Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken).  From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials.

Two, they could ban the consoles from Live running the drive.  Suddenly their are now drives that ban consoles connected to Live. People would unload their drives on unsuspecting buyers on ebay/craigslist/etc and then more consoles would be banned.  The users would complain about how they just bought a used drive and MS would have to explain why their drive is violating copyright, is bad for the user (in MS's point of view).  And would they unban the console?  Wouldn't the user just resell the drive?  Copyright laws vary from country to country, so such drives might be perfectly legit even with the serial in certain countries and Microsoft would probably have only it service agreement to rely on.

Three, they could ban the gamer tag from Live if caught using a banned serial multiple times.  They would have to weigh the costs of live subscription revenue vs the lost hard drive revenue.  And the legalities of this would probably be messy as with point two.

As an aside, I've noticed that the 360 drives from Hong Kong don't seem to be listed on ebay anymore.  Perhaps those were using the same mod we've used on our drives.

This post has been edited by Mach1024: Oct 4 2008, 11:15 AM

[speedle]

i think with the release of the 60gb drive as standard now people are less likely to go through the hassle of upping it to 120gb, bottom line is 20gb is not enough these days. if i had a 60gb i wouldnt have bothered...

thing that gets me is that you can buy a core console in the uk now for £129.99 rrp but the 120gb drives are still upwards of £119!!! i mean WTF! M$ need to bring down the price of these drives ASAP, theyre shooting themselves in the foot.

as for bans, i can understand M$ banning people for hacking the DVD firmware as it allows the user to copy games and of course this costs the industry a huge amount of money. i doubt very much that M$ will ban us for using modded drives. i mean we are using offcial firmware (technically ) on these updated drives not hacked firmware (although i apprciate that the BIN files are copywrighted). but you could just claim ignorance and say you bought it second hand like that...

the most likely consiquece is as mach said above;

"One is ban a particular hard drive serial number. That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update. Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken). From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials."

but here's hoping! i dont want to get banned! i use live almost every night. id be expecting my yearly memebership costs refunded if they did ban me! damn you Gates!!!

[usvelt]

Hi Folks
I registered on this forum just to say a big thanks for the tutorial
Worked an absolute treat ( I had to use a hex editor on my drive) but all worked well.
Superb.
Many thanks.

[DrGremlin]

Great tutorial, worked on the first try, but now i got a problem with several savegames which are now corrupted
They are working on my 20gb hdd but not on the 120gb.

I heard something that they have to be resigned, but i dont have a clue how to do that.
Any ideas?

[cyanides]

QUOTE(jerri blank @ Sep 21 2008, 11:46 PM)

I'm sorry if this is a n00b question, but the search function of the site doesn't work for me.  Is it true that I can't work on the 360 drives by connecting them to my laptop's USB port with an SATA cable adapter?  I have to actually connect them to the hard drive controller in a desktop computer, right?

Thanks for a great tutorial.

I didn't see this question answered and I too was wondering if it is possible to do this mod using a laptop.

QUOTE(thr4773r @ Sep 10 2008, 07:31 PM)

Also, when trying to restore partition 2 to the newly formatted drive, I ran into problems where the program(xplorer360) just hung. I bypassed this by just restoring a whole 20GB image to the 120GB drive. The only issue with this is the freespace remaining following. I end up with an 107GB drive, but 13GB free space. A format takes care of that and shows the whole 120GB drive.

I'm thinking that there may need to be files copied over to the drive first so that you can simply restore the partition 2 without using an image of the whole 20GB drive. If you and others have had success with this, then there may be hope.

I have not done this yet so I may be miss understanding what you did.  The way I understand it you put a 20gb drive image to the 120 gb drive, formatted in the xbox360 and it was then recognized as a 120 gb drive.  Why not put a 20gb image on a 250 gb drive, put in xbox360 and format?  If after formatting it recognized your drive as a 120 wouldn't the same technique work on a larger hd?

Thanks,
Marc

[thr4773r]

QUOTE(cyanides @ Oct 22 2008, 01:37 AM)

I didn't see this question answered and I too was wondering if it is possible to do this mod using a laptop.
I have not done this yet so I may be miss understanding what you did.  The way I understand it you put a 20gb drive image to the 120 gb drive, formatted in the xbox360 and it was then recognized as a 120 gb drive.  Why not put a 20gb image on a 250 gb drive, put in xbox360 and format?  If after formatting it recognized your drive as a 120 wouldn't the same technique work on a larger hd?

Thanks,
Marc

My putting of the 20GB image on the newly formatted 120GB hard drive was done after using hddhackr and getting a working(recognized in 360)hard drive. It is a way to get around having to hexedit your hard drive to get the other partitions (0, 2). You still have to use a legit 120GB hddss.bin to prep your hard drive and have it recognized in your 360.

The requirements are that you have the Specialist version of xplorer360 and that you have a image of your 20GB hard drive backed up. I know its a pain, takes up 18.6 Gb, but its a 100% way to get your hard drive working correctly.

Once you have a hackr'd drive flashed and working, if you look in it with xplorer360, you will only have 1 partition. Original games won't work because the emulator partition is not there. Like I said above, restoring a 20GB image to your 120GB drive will eliminate the need to hex-edit your drive. You don't even need to let it completely restore, because that can take some time. Let it run about 3 or 4 minutes and then stop xplorer360's restore function. When you close and reopen the drive in xplorer360, you'll see all the partitions that should be there. At that point, you can install the hard drive in your 360 and run the emulation update disk to get the latest emulation software loaded. If for some reason, you let the restore go too long, or just let it finish restoring the 20 GB image to your drive, you'll see something like
total space 107 GB
free space 13GB
or something like that.

One other note. You may have to put the drive back in your pc for a quick hddhackr -u, followed by a reboot and a hddhackr -f to get the drive recognized by the 360 again after you restore the image to the hard drive. If you have to flash it again, do not make another undo.bin. The first one you made the first time you flashed is fine.

I've had it happen where immediately the drive is usable, but only 13gb free(solved with another format) and also having to undo with hddhackr and redo again to get it visible again.
As long as you have these pieces of software, the correct hard drive, a valid hddss.bin, and a compatible sata port, you can get the drive working very quickly.