Hacking External hard drive active after Xbox shutdown [RGH Trinity Slim]

[HandOfReason]

So I've only recently gotten into RGH and the slim Xboxes. Before I had an old Xenon and had it JTAGed back when you needed the old blades dashboard. I was content with it for years until it finally died and I upgraded to a Trinity Slim.

Everything is exactly as it was with the previous Xbox except one problem that's been bothering me; everytime I turn off the Xbox 360, the hard drive stays "active" and makes a clicking noise that sounds dangerously like a failing hard drive. I've been disconnecting it and done a small amount of research on what might be causing this. I've seen phrases like "head parking" and "Load cycle count" and blah blah... I don't mean to sound like I'm ignoring this but I just don't want to get into any unecessary stuff if this isn't the problem. Overall, it sounds like the Xbox Slims continue to power the drive after it is off but the drive itself isn't reading anything so it just kind of loops. At worst this sounds like it may do damage to the hard drive, but at best it's putting unecessary wear and tear on the drive, which I certainly do not prefer.

I've tried three different Western Digital drives (all passports, different generations) and they all do the same thing. The old phat Xboxes don't have this problem and I was hoping someone on here might have had a similar experience, and may be able to shed some light on how to stop the drive from doing this. I don't imagine any solutions involving the 360 itself, but most likely some program to turn off some feature in the hard drive firmware that I need to run from my PC.

Any information at all would be helpful, and honestly, thank you for your time.

 

[godreborn]

the 360 itself isn't off persay, but it's in standby when u tell it shutdown. that is y power is still getting to the hdd. there may be a dashlaunch option to cease powering the usb ports when u shutdown the console, but I'm not exactly sure. my suggestion is to buy an hdd shell (powered) with a toggle switch, so u can turn off the drive manually.

 

[HandOfReason]

the 360 itself isn't off persay, but it's in standby when u tell it shutdown. that is y power is still getting to the hdd. there may be a dashlaunch option to cease powering the usb ports when u shutdown the console, but I'm not exactly sure. my suggestion is to buy an hdd shell (powered) with a toggle switch, so u can turn off the drive manually.

Hmm okay I'll have a look in dashlaunch and see what settings I see. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[DinohScene]

Afaik there isn't a dashlaunch plug in for that.

Besides it's not that difficult to pull the USB out of the 360.


Also.
Are you using a Dual NAND?
If not, why not use the internal drive.
It's quicker then an external since it's SATA instead of USB.

 

[HandOfReason]

Also.
Are you using a Dual NAND?
If not, why not use the internal drive.
It's quicker then an external since it's SATA instead of USB.

I'm not on dual nand, no. I have two Xboxes, and basically I use the RGH Trinity for anything that isn't multiplayer. I have a 120GB in the Slim right now and I do use it for the necessary stuff, like DLC. However, I prefer to use an external because of the simplicity of adding content to it. I have about 5 TB of Xbox 360 games on my PC, along with nearly all XBLA titles, so I don't even bother trying to load up hundreds of games at a time to the RGH. I load up a few dozen or so, run through them, then delete them, add more, etc. As such, there's a fair bit of back and forth from the Xbox to my PC depending on what game I'm in the mood to play. I've yet to find a quicker or simpler way of doing it. However, if you know of a better way, do tell!

I suppose I've gotten a little spoiled using a phat 360 for so long, as it apparently didn't go into any kind of standby mode because I could leave the external connected to that Xenon all day and when the Xbox turned off, the hard drive went with it. It is certainly not a hassle to simply unplug the USB drive, but if there is a way, then it would be one less thing to worry about. Thanks again for the fast responses.

And I didn't see any options that would suggest cutting power to the USB in dashlaunch. Hmm... maybe in a future update?

 

[DinohScene]

5 TB of games.

You really need that much games?


Anyways.
You know that you can FTP into your 360?
it's the method I use to transfer stuff I have downloaded ;]

Pretty quick to.


Lol
Seems like it yes.

I think it's a Slim issue since my Falcon RGH does cut power to the USBs.

 

[Rasas]

I don't think it is a slim issue since my seagate loses power after a while when I turn the 360 off. I guess you can try it with a USB stick and see if the same problem occurs.

5 Terrabytes seems excessive but as long as you like it.

 

[HandOfReason]

@[member='Rasas']: That's a good idea, I'll try a slim stick and see what happens. It could be just Western Digitals, which hopefully means there's something I can do firmware-wise. I am aware that I can FTP but I've honestly never tried because I figured the speeds would, by defnition, be slower than plugging up USB. I'll try it though because using an internal drive is sounding more and more appealing, for aesthetics and, as mentioned earlier, speed.

@[member='DinohScene']: Need? No absolutely not, haha. I just started getting games and didn't want to delete them in case I wanted to play them again, or in some cases, I didn't have time at that moment to play them so I kept them around for later. Eventually, the ISOs started piling up and, well, I have a close to complete collection of Xbox 360 games (NTSC anyway).

 

[DinohScene]

Lol fair enough.

 

[HandOfReason]

Alright well it seems the problem resolved itself and I'm not sure how, lol. But for the sake of anyone else looking for answers, here's what happened:

Okay so as I mentioned I have this Xbox Slim that's RGHed, and I have an external 500GB hard drive connected to it (a Western Digital Passport) and when I turn the Xbox off, the external hard drive stays active but also makes this kind of clicking noise. In retrospect, it makes sense that it was clicking because it turns out my power supply for the Xbox was failing. A little after my previous response, I was playing through a game and the Xbox just shut off! D:

Naturally, I try and turn it on again and nothing happens. It makes the distinct two-tone sound when I press the power button, and it also made the single-tone sound when I press the eject button, but the tray won't eject, and the thing never actually powers on. Unplugging it entirely and plugging it back in would only serve to make the green power light flicker on for about a second and then go off, still doing nothing. You can see from the top grate that the CoolRunner is receiving power (it glows red), but that was about the only indication of any life in the thing. I unplug it and leave it alone for 24 hours, try it again and the same results. So I'm sad, and I take it to a buddy of mine that did the hack in the first place. His best guess over the phone was my recent updating of dashlaunch, which may have flashed a bad NAND.

I take it over to him, he plugs it up and it just powers on like nothing was wrong. What a classic scenario, right? I spent two days trying to eliminate any possible faulty equipment including the surge protector, HDMI cable, the wall I plugged it into, I tried different TVs--the only thing I was unable to replace was the power supply because it's the only Slim brick I had--and the stupid thing powers up no problem after I drive like 40 miles in traffic to get to my friend's house.

I replace the power supply and yep, it all works just fine. I hook everything back up, including the external hard drive, and get back to playing. I stop playing, turn off the system, my TV, etc. and go do some other stuff. I come back later that night and boot it back up, play some more, get sleepy and as I'm turning everything off, it dawned on me that I hadn't been unplugging the hard drive since I got the system back! So I'm like, "shit the stupid thing has probably been clicking all night" and to my surprise, it isn't clicking. It's powered on, but it isn't active and it's just kind of standing by (the way it should have been working).

Now it all makes sense. The drive was clicking because, with the system off, it was underpowered because of a failing power supply, and the noise it was making was the sound if it trying to click on. I've had a similar issue when I tried replacing the included USB cable with a cheaper, thinner one that didn't transmit enough juice; The Xbox power supply showed a steady orange, however, so I'm not sure what the problem with it was. Comparing the two, the new one has a more vibrant orange light but you'd think the bad one would have shown red if it was messing up. Oh well. Problem fixed itself in a rather roundabout way.
Anyway, case closed and thanks for the replies. I appreciate the feedback and information from those who have posted. Thanks again.

 

[DinohScene]

Strange but glad that it is solved!

Also I wouldn't replace the USB cable with a cheap thinner one.
It's best to use a somewhat thicker high quality one.

It allows for more stable higher speeds as well.