Hdd upgrade

[luke9511]

Hey all a couple of years ago I bought a Xbox and did a full update of the dash at the time and after that I soft modded my Xbox by hot swapping the drive and install unleashx and it's been working great, now I want to upgrade the hdd and was wondering what the best way to do it was.

I have a 80gig IDE hard drive that I pulled out of a spare pc I have, but don't know if I can lock it or not, I do remember reading a while back that there was two things you can do to where you don't have to lock it, one being a mod chip of course and the second one is something else involving flashing something on the Xbox if I remember correctly.

But either way what's the best thing to do, try this drive out and hope for the best or something else? Thanks in advance for any help and advice

 

[K3Nv2]

Yes you need a modchip forgot what it's called, heres a list to check lockable drives, you can still fit some 2tbs in it with ide to sata adapters I think caviar green supports it.

http://www.xbox-hq.com/html/modules.php?name=Xbox_HardDrives

 

[luke9511]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I could have sworn you can do it now with just a softmod

 

[K3Nv2]

I think there might be some sort of hotswap method you can do with another xbox to upgrade your hdd I dont remember exact stepps. Easier just to check if it's lockable and do the softmod again.

 

[DinohScene]

You can dump your HDD key and use XBoxHD Maker to build a new harddrive and lock it with your key ;]
I haven't done it in ages so I'm not really useful for it.

 

[TerryG]

I'm pretty sure flashing the TSOP will let you run unlocked drives.

 

[DinohScene]

Yes it does.
You'll have to select the correct hacked BIOS tho.
And you'll have to short 4 pads iirc.

 

[luke9511]

After googling the tsop thing I think I will try the hd maker instead and hope for the best also unleashx works fine no issues but the ms dash when I try to load it comes up with error 21 which don't really bother me since I have no use for it a all but will that cause my any issues trying to upgrade the hdd? Also how do I dump the key from the old drive?

 

[DinohScene]

Hum..
Dumping the key.....
(god this is a long time ago)
EEPROMmagic?
Something similar to that..
Idk anymore, you'll have to google it unfortunately.

Also, Dump your C and E drive and also burn those 2 to the CD (to keep your own dashboard, UnleashX and your savegames)

 

[luke9511]

Hum..
Dumping the key.....
(god this is a long time ago)
EEPROMmagic?
Something similar to that..
Idk anymore, you'll have to google it unfortunately.

Also, Dump your C and E drive and also burn those 2 to the CD (to keep your own dashboard, UnleashX and your savegames)

i don't have any save games so I'm not worried about that, I also checked and under system info in unleashx it shows a hdd key is that the correct one or do I need to still use config magic

 

[DinohScene]

Config magic!
That was the one.

You can try to encrypt the HDD with the key that UnleashX gives you, MAKE SURE YOU TYPE IT EXACTLY LIKE IT'S DISPLAYED!
The key is in Hex so it's 0 to F (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F)
Personally, I'd dump the key and encrypt it with that.

 

[luke9511]

Is it possible to run hdmaker and setup the new drive with virtual box if I have a USB ide cable?

 

[FAST6191]

No on at least two counts there -- the USB adapters tend not to support locking and unlocking drives. Similarly even if it was straight through IDE the IDE passthrough options of consumer end virtualisation are not as hot as they might be.

On a different note match up your EEPROM with the serial on the back of the xbox (liveinfo I believe was the program name that can tell you) -- depending upon the setup you did you might have done virtual-eeprom and shadow C so the dumps you might get from normal FTP might not be the ones the xbox actually uses. Autoinstaller deluxe/AID can cut through this.

Also you can test to see if a drive locks easily enough, if it does not lock then it does not lock and if it does then as long as you have the key you locked with (why
DinohScene encouraged safe practices) you can unlock it again. Testing is the surefire way to find out but in the meantime you could try looking it up on http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list

 

[luke9511]

darn ohwell i saw my hdd serial number on the page you listed, now i just need to find a computer with ide port im sure i have one in storage

 

[luke9511]

Ok I made the iso and burned it to a blank cd and put it in and it won't boot, is there a way of booting the iso from a USB thumb drive?

EDIT looks like i answered my own question http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/xbox/tools/xboxhdm22a-usb-edition/

 

[luke9511]

Well the pc I'm using is to old to boot for, USB so I'm back to square one any ideas on how to get it to boot from the cd?

 

[FAST6191]

"and it won't boot"
In what way will it not boot? Does it sit there trying to spin the disc up and then failing, does it just go right to the hard drive, does it boot any other discs?
If it has been sitting in a garage for a while it might be that the lens is covered in dust or the drive has otherwise died, I am assuming you know how to force a boot to another medium going by the other things you said but I have to mention it anyway.

If it has a floppy drive you can also do a jump boot from that and end up on USB.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822/boot-from-a-usb-drive-even-if-your-bios-wont-let-you/

 

[luke9511]

ok i got the drive formatted etc but i could not lock it cause it said the drive was frozen, i know how to fix this but the computer i used does not have the bios options to do it, so my question is this, is there a way i can hook up the new drive to my xbox and lock it using config magic?

 

[luke9511]

Everything is setup and working perfectly, I used chimp instead as a app on the Xbox itself and just cloned the drive and then I locked it with the motherboard option, but I do have a question, is there a way to have games on drive F instead of E since F has 68gigs of free space

 

[FAST6191]

Congrats on getting it all sorted.

Your FTP program should be able to select the F drive, do make sure to put it in a GAMES folder though otherwise you will end up having to navigate manually and that is no fun. If you are using QWIX or C-Xbox Tool you might have to go into the options menus (advanced I think it was on QWIX and options dropdown -> preferences -> FTP tab on C-Xbox Tool) to select the relevant drive.