Gaming Flashing Xbox 360 Lite-On Drive

[FAST6191]

Many people who do this just swap hard drives between their online and offline 360 but there are those who want to use an arrangement like yours.

360 gamertags are tied to live (that is to say you can get the info back if you lose it- see recovering gamertag) but I am not sure exactly how this will work for you.

Most people who go this route have one solely for offline (usually an old banned one) and one that is online.
This USB stuff from the last update did change a few things in as much as you can dodge the "move only" nature of the memory card more easily (copying profiles could not be done with a memory card and nothing else which could get annoying) by simply cloning the USB drive/files on it in between shifting 360s.
I have not really kept up with USB hacking (they use a nominally different format to the regular 360 formats/those your 360 uses internally) but there are tools http://www.xboxhacker.org/index.php?topic=14850.0 and the underlying logic is the same.
Equally I have a JTAG box so I am afforded a few more luxuries than a stock setup (although you could just get/make a drive reader or open it up and plug it into the sata and do the same thing) in that I can put any files anywhere I like.


Otherwise you are just facing a minor variation on the age old problem of having two machines and wanting to do some work on both of them except without the ability to say ahhh screw it and easily use a fileshare of some form.

The more elaborate form would come in that of profile editing to create "best of both worlds" profiles out of the two machines but that is a decidedly more risky option if you care about Live (they really really do not like profile editing).

Suffice it to say you can easily trade profiles between consoles, achievements seem a bit of a boring use for the effort (save games on the other hand.....) but the theory holds.

Finally if you find yourself editing a drive then http://360.kingla.com/ and http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/topic/4008...ning-explained/ are worth a read/knowing about.

 

[Livin in a box]

I would of course like to be able to just swap HDD's but that's just not possible with the new 360 S not using the same HDD type.

I've been thinking about it more but I'm still a little bit confused. Say, I don't transfer anything between the 2 consoles; would I get a ban or anything? Would they even notice? I suppose it'll be a bit easier to understand when I've got 2 consoles with me.

 

[jonesman99]

I dont mean to intrude on your post but, I have an arcade 360 that i bought in May 2008, does anyone know what type of drive it has and if it is softmoddable?

 

[FAST6191]

Is it just a case of a different connector but same underlying drive format (I know that might well be a question directed at me)- if it is just sata then that might be an easier way to go.

"arcade 360 that i bought in May 2008"- it is not purchase date so much as build date. One that old might just be a liteon (they appeared in April 2008) but more likely to be a BenQ and as such flashable with just a compatible sata chipset (Nvidia 3 or later and via 6421 mainly- common enough on motherboards to be worth a look).

Softmod does not exist on the 360- if you have not updated it since August the 11th last year (by game, live or USB) then you can use JTAG (no live* but homebrew, XBLA and DLC as well as USB loading) but otherwise you are limited to DVD drive hacking (just retail games from DL discs).

*there is a nice system link option for JTAG boxes as of a few days back.

 

[Livin in a box]

@FAST: What do you mean...? What would be the best way to go?

 

[FAST6191]

Electronics/software companies have a nasty habit of changing nothing about the underlying hardware but the "new" version is little more than a new proprietary connector.
The original 360 hard drive is nothing more than a sata laptop grade hard drive- you can rip them apart and use your PC sata ports to fiddle with them and others have change the 360 connector to be the sata + power port it really is.

If indeed the new slim 360 hard drive is just this but with a different wrapper then things could go from there (rip that apart and stick it on your PC).

The "if" parts though are the hangups- a quick scan of xboxhacker has nothing on it in the hard drive section so we will probably have to leave it to know more.

 

[Livin in a box]

I do think it's a SATA inside the the new 360, but opening the case will ruin it totally as it's all clips and stuff, and I don't really want to be doing that with my brand new console. I'll be getting the new one on Friday, but I'm on holiday from Saturday so I won't have time to play around with it until the week after, unfortunately.

 

[Livin in a box]

I've just bought a probe and received it, so now next on the list is a SATA card. Then it's DVD burner and DVD DL+R discs...So for the SATA card, I've seen this and for the burner, this. I'm assuming that they will both work together, as the current DVD drive is (I'm guessing) IDE?

EDIT: And then these DVD discs? You might say I'm a cheapo and...you'd be correct, but at £7.89, or £7.90 from another company who look more trustworthy, you just can't beat it.

 

[FAST6191]

sata- fine
DVD- fine, that one is sata and yeah the sata card itself is an OK card and will add workable SATA to a machine.

discs- verbatim are the chosen brand for most of us around here (memorex are good too and a bit cheaper) and that price is in line with amazon and other sellers that most of us use (DL in real is a bit like buying an SD card in real life- dire circumstances or if you are feeling a bit flush only). The do not do cheap discs thing applies even more when it comes to DL discs.

 

[Livin in a box]

sata- fine
DVD- fine, that one is sata and yeah the sata card itself is an OK card and will add workable SATA to a machine.

discs- verbatim are the chosen brand for most of us around here (memorex are good too and a bit cheaper) and that price is in line with amazon and other sellers that most of us use (DL in real is a bit like buying an SD card in real life- dire circumstances or if you are feeling a bit flush only). The do not do cheap discs thing applies even more when it comes to DL discs.

Sooo are those discs cheap and crappy?

 

[FAST6191]

Those discs, if indeed they are verbatim (that might just be my ebay= always a scam mindset), are the best you will get in normal circles (not sure if there are any super tough discs for DL). We could debate this one for a while but the rough order is

Verbatim- top of the line (and you will pay for it- not as bad now prices are below £1 a disc).
Memorex- nowadays probably as good as verbatim and usually costs a bit less as well.
Everything else- do not do it to yourself as the risk is too high; there might be a good deal in there somewhere but it is too much hassle. If you can not find the two mentioned you are probably at a bad seller.

Similarly be careful and make sure you are not buying printable discs or something, they look pretty but there is more to life than that.

 

[Livin in a box]

Yeah don't worry, I'm not a Lightscribe kinda guy. The sellers that are selling these discs are top sellers so I think I can trust them.

I don't know if there's anything else... don't think I'm going to be taking my flashed 360 online until after Halo: Reach to see who gets banned and stuff; see if anyone gets avoided.

Oh, there is one more thing- I've got Red Dead Redemption. Opened the RAR up, there's an AUDIO and VIDEO folder and a folder '$System Update'. If I run this through abgx360 and Splitvid will I be good to go with it?

 

[Livin in a box]

OK, I'm getting majorly p***** off now. I'm trying to flash it but it's just not working at all- JungleFlasher keeps on freezing when I extract the key, resulting in...nothing. I'm using the latest version but have tried older versions and they require me to install the PortIO32 driver manually, which is impossible for me to do on Windows 7. It installs the driver immediately when I start up the computer which can't be stopped and I then can't update the driver through device manager because Windows says that the installed driver is the best one to use.

So what do I do now? It's recognising the drive and JungleFlasher is starting up by using PortIO but it just won't flash. And the standard Windows driver for the card is disabled.

 

[FAST6191]

As a rule we usually say drop down to XP for this sort of thing- vista and 7 can do it but trying to troubleshoot is a nightmare. Indeed I am probably not the person to ask for this one as I use/keep XP or linux handy for hacking purposes.
If it is just a matter of unsigned drivers is something like http://www.blogsdna.com/2775/install-unsig...t-overrider.htm not possible?

I am not sure where they are at right now (and more importantly how well they work for this sort of thing) as I usually roll my own but some of cut down versions of XP are only a few hundred megs- stick it on a small partition or an old drive if you have one. Even if you only have an old OEM XP disc http://www.nliteos.com/ will have you covered.

Equally I am not sure if it will work but there are other options for liteon drives including dos but let us not go there just yet (any other drive or reflashing when you have a key by all means use dos but for key extraction we will try and get windows working. Before you throw things at a wall you can try dosflash (which does have a windows option if you want to try that), NFO http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1728.nfo and litetool/firmtool http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1730.nfo and http://xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1688.nfo if you need to make the firmware in DOS.

I will say now though by and large this first time can be tricky, what took me many hours first time around I now do nearly on autopilot.

 

[Livin in a box]

DosFlash32 isn't working either, saying the drive isn't responding and the DVD-Key is invalid.

EDIT: I've just found a Windows 98 OEM CD, will that be of any use anywhere?

Also got a driver CD with the VIA card, was thinking maybe I could install that then try to update it to PortIO32 through device manager?

EDIT2: OK, now JungleFlasher isn't seeing the drive at all. FFS

EDIT3: Downloading XP SP2 and will install that on my PC on a partition. I was looking for my OEM disc for ages and thought downloading would take an age, but thankfully it didn't...and it's the Dell one too. At least my luck is beginning to turn : p

 

[Livin in a box]

Ahh, managed to flash it. Installed XP (though dual booting has failed but that's another thing) and managed to get it to work by using a specific VIA port. Hoorah! Got it flashed with 1.6NS too BTW.

Now all I need is the layer break I need to set when burning 360 games, and that should be all! Thanks a lot to everyone who helped me here!

You know what we should do? Set up a flashing thread so people who don't/can't do it themselves can send their DVD drive to someone else and do it for them. I'd be willing to do it seeing as I now know how to do it properly! : p

 

[Chanser]

Normally the layer break is in the .dvd file.

 

[Livin in a box]

Yeah, I've just found that out. Looks like I'm sorted then- just need my DVD burner and discs to arrive on Friday...then I'll be set.

But one other thing- I moved everything over from flashed 360 to new, it now everything has gone from my old (flashed) 360. Is there any way I can recover my gamertag? I know I can go online, but will this mess up my new 360? And will I get banned in the 10 minutes it'll take to get gamertag info?

 

[FAST6191]

Congrats on the flashed 360.

The only people to be banned in that sort of timeframe are JTAG users. Flashed DVD users tend to only get hit during banwaves and unless you get into save editing/online sharing things are usually OK.

MS do not like you to have the same profile on multiple machines and will not afford you any real options to do it. Indeed as part of recovery the old profile will probably get dropped.

I am slightly confused as to what was done though (I know we did this earlier in this thread but it looks like you might have changed something).
2 360s (offline and flashed along with another that is online and stock), both with hard drives. No memory cards (you can run a profile from them and for many is the easiest way of sharing between a console, not sure about USB with the latest updates) and no hard drive reading capability beyond pulling it apart, wiring it up to the sata of your machine and using 360 xplorer or something.

Your best bet for your current setup if running from a memory card/USB is not an option is to update both 360s (offline methods available: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemus...stemupdates.htm ) to the newest kernel/version transfer the save data to a 360 formatted USB drive, image the drive with your chosen program (there are hundreds so pick pretty much any you like from a freeware programs site- sector level is better but file level will probably do too), transfer it back to a drive (which courtesy of the way the 360 works will delete it from the USB drive) and then just restore your image to the USB drive and transfer to the other 360.

Keeping everything up to date once you start down this path is a different matter.

 

[Livin in a box]

I used a memory stick to transfer profiles from offline 360 to online, but I also recovered my profile on the new 360 before copying over my info from offline.

I don't really know what you mean with restoring...you mean copy everything to USB and copy it back, because...gah, I'm confused.