360 Hard Drive Upgrading

[Sazime]

Alright, here's the deal. I have this spare HD case (from a failed 360 HD) sitting around. With the coming update and the ability to copy games to my HD, I'll be wanting to have a nice, high capacity drive available. I've read before that I can buy my own 120GB HD and toss it in there (with some modification, of course) but I don't know where to start.

Anyone do this? Got some resources? I just want to buy my own vanilla 120GB drive and do the proper mod to make the 360 recognize it. Help!

[Rogue_hunter]

All I know is that it's a notebook sized SATA drive. Don't really know the specifics, just what was told to us retailers back when the 360 was announced and getting launch info.

Initially, it was going to be just an enclosure that you would buy and could put any notebook SATA drive in, but apparently now it's a specific model, and some weird tweak has been done to the drive. At least, that's what I've heard.

[Stoke]

From what I gathered from a quick look at this article, it's a specific drive. You can't just slap any old drive in there. HDDHackr (http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox360-tools/HDDHackr.php)

[Sazime]

I have been reading it has to be a "lockable" drive in some places. It's the software and imaging tweaks that are getting me.

[Sazime]

From what I gathered from a quick look at this article, it's a specific drive. You can't just slap any old drive in there. HDDHackr (http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox360-tools/HDDHackr.php)
Oh-god-finally, some that's fairly straightforward. Thanks!

[Sazime]

Ok, the HDDHackr article is decent, but I know I've seen tutorials on getting a 120GB drive to work... now to find one of those...

EDIT: And I'm dumb. It's there. Yeesh. Thanks again!

[J3DI]

Ok, the HDDHackr article is decent, but I know I've seen tutorials on getting a 120GB drive to work... now to find one of those...

EDIT: And I'm dumb. It's there. Yeesh. Thanks again!

I want updates on your progress.

[muddi900]

I had explored that possibility but HDDHacks only allows 20GB drives.

[Sazime]

I want updates on your progress.
Here's update #1: a 120GB WD-BEV drive is on its way from Newegg for $65 (with tax). :D

[Jboy001]

Please keep the updates coming!

This thread has me thinking about doing this too, also has anyone tried explorer360 to browse and backup their existing HDD?
I don't want to lose my exisiting data and would like to be able to move the data to a new drive if I attempt to install my own 120gb drive.

[LiquidRain]

Wondering how this all works too. :)

[Press Ninja]

I thought they had specific firmware on the hard drives that were essential to reading the drive or some bullhockery?

[Sazime]

Ok, so far, no good.

Got an WD BEV drive, but hddhackr does not like it. I have a VAT drive (newest revision) while others have been using older revisions. Reading to forums, some folks have no issues, others have all kinds. Gonna try it tomorrow on a different SATA controller. Grrr....

[EternalGamer]

You guys are going to make the MS gods angry.

[Gormanimal]

You guys are going to make the MS gods angry.
I see no problem with that.

[Sazime]

Ok, took it to work and tried it on an older controller. Seemed to flash.... but when checking I was getting an odd error. We'll see if that's normal tonight when I attached the drive again.

[Sazime]

Alright folks, here it is! My final results. I now have a working 120GB HD in my 360. What I'll give you is my impressions and results, along with the links to the articles I used on X-Box Scene (http://www.xbox-scene.com/).

First off, thanks to Stoke for pointing out HDDHackr.

WD BEVS Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136072)
HDDHackr (http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox360-tools/HDDHackr.php)
Hackr Thread (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=601813)
User Walkthrough (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=660096)

HDDHackr

Of all the tools I used, this one was the most straightforward. Everything you see on the article is all you really need. That being said, you need to have a boot disk available to get you into DOS (I had a helluva time with this), a WD BEVS drive (this tool ONLY works with a BEVS drive) and a SATA chipset that will cooperate.

The easiest thing to do is boot from a floppy with all the necessary software. In order for HDDHackr to work, you NEED medium that can be written back to. Floppy is just the easiest.

The BEVS drive is pretty easy to find. I linked the one I bought from NewEgg, although dozens of other retailers sell the same HD. I thought I was having an issue because of the revision of my drive, (it was a VAT, I saw folks using the UST and RST drives) but in fact it had to do with my last item with Hackr...

The SATA chipset. My first chipset was an older Adaptec card. It would see the drive, but did not think it was valid. Next, I tried a news SATA controller that could be used as a RAID device. Even when it was not set up to be used as RAID in the BIOS, the drive was not recognized. Last item? Older Intel P4 chipset with a basic SATA controller. Worked like a charm. Go simple kids, much less painful.

Xplorer2 Extreme

The last article (the walkthrough) uses two versions of Xplorer to access and backup an old 360 drive and get things onto a new drive. If you are replacing a drive with one of the same size (or you have a friend's 120GB to get the hddss.bin and backup files from) then you're set. Backup, restore, done. But if you're not...

You're going to be copying some files piecemeal. As great as XBE Extreme works, you'll get stuck when copying some files over. Not to worry, going in groups works fine. I would just recommend offloading save games to a memory card and getting rid of any content before backing up the old drive. It will save time and heartache.

I had issues getting Windows Vista to see the 360 drive right off the SATA controller, but using an external adapter I had to problem. In fact, I used a Thermaltake BlacX (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066). Sick fucking toy. Love this little bastard.

As far as the crazy hex editing down the line? Necassary on the drive, not with Xplorer (at least if you're using Extreme). Essentially what he's doing is editing the MBR to partition the drive into 2 parts (0 and 3) and then having you restore partition 2 to the empty space using Xplorer (I believe). Works great, but those who are scared of Hex should get some help. I like hex and I had a hulluva time trying to use the tools he linked to.

After everything was set, restore was easy. Xplorer Xtreme gets Partition 2 back just fine. I just had to create the root folders for Partition 3 to get my Content, Cache and SystemUpdate files back to normal. Plugged that bad boy in, and I'm 100GB richer. :)

Of note, I did not hurt either drive by running these tools. Some folks on the forums had issues, but it may have been with a different version of Xplorer. I have to idea. I was fine.

[Gormanimal]

Wow, well done. I didn't think you were going to get it going with the hardware you purchased. Very tempting....I don't even think I'm going to try and fight the urge this time.

[Sazime]

Wow, well done. I didn't think you were going to get it going with the hardware you purchased. Very tempting....I don't even think I'm going to try and fight the urge this time.
It ain't easy with some hardware setups, but if you have access to multiple machines and you have $120 of time to kill, go for it. :D

[Gormanimal]

It ain't easy with some hardware setups, but if you have access to multiple machines and you have $120 of time to kill, go for it. :D

Forget time required. This is worth it just to avoid the feeling of taking it up the ass from Microsoft for their overpriced drives.

[Sazime]

Forget time required. This is worth it just to avoid the feeling of taking it up the ass from Microsoft for their overpriced drives.
I just have fun with this type of stuff. I don't think I'd ever spend more money on a 360 HD to begin with, but this was just a hoot for me to play with.

Of course, so is any mod. Takes a lot of work, but it's just fun. :)

[Jboy001]

ordered the drive, wish me luck!
what broke me was the article showing game footprints when installed:
http://www.bingegamer.net/2008/so-how-much-time-are-you-saving-xbox-360-nxe-hard-drive-install-chart/

I plan on finally finishing blue dragon and lost odyssey, dirty disc errors kept me from finishing them
I've also been gettin dirty disc errors in GoW2, been driving me nuts

[Sazime]

Another thing of not, some saved games cannot be copied to the new drive. For instance, some GoW stuff as well as Fable 2.

[Jboy001]

any reason why? are they somehow tied to the drive?

[LiquidRain]

Some saves are, I believe. I know you can't copy Rock Band game data between memory card/hard drive, you need to fire up the game, load, save it to memory card.

[Sazime]

Some saves are, I believe. I know you can't copy Rock Band game data between memory card/hard drive, you need to fire up the game, load, save it to memory card.
Rock Band seemed fine. I think a good test is to go to the Dashboard and see if you can copy the files to a Memory Card from the HD.

[Stoke]

Wow, awesome that you got this up and running. Here's to hoping you don't get banned for firmware hacking! :p

[Sazime]

Wow, awesome that you got this up and running. Here's to hoping you don't get banned for firmware hacking! :p
Aside from tracking me down in a gaming forum, I don't think they can. As far as I've been able to tell, the 360 is the only thing that shares information with the drive. Live just wants a device that the 360 accepts.

I could be wrong, but that's my thinking on it.

[MalReynolds]

needs a 120gb now

[Jboy001]

Went home early today to get the hard drive and start working on this... sadly the UPS man isn't here yet...
Every time I'm not home for the UPS guy he shows up at 2:45... of course now that im waiting on him its 4pm and still no HDD :mad:

I have my PC ready to take the drive and I'm hoping my pc sees the drive with no issues... can't wait to find out!

edit: 4:45 and I have it, now whenever the 20gb partition 3 finishes backing up I can get started :)

[Jboy001]

All done, everything went smooth except I had to hex edit hddhackr with my SATA addresses, after i did that it found my drive and i was on my way.

I now have 100 free gigs and I'm ready for the NXE :)

[Sazime]

All done, everything went smooth except I had to hex edit hddhackr with my SATA addresses, after i did that it found my drive and i was on my way.

I now have 100 free gigs and I'm ready for the NXE :)
Boo-ya!

Sorry I wasn't around the other day to answer whatever question you had. Glad to hear you got it working! That hex bit is probably the most unusual part of it.

[Jboy001]

Yea it was a little intimidating to hex edit the program, that was the point I IM'd you in hopes you could verify what numbers I was putting in, but I just went ahead, edited the program and made sure every other drive was disconnected when running hddhackr and it worked.

Anytime a hex editor is involved I get nervous simply because you can royally bork something up. Luckily all is well and I think my friend wants me to help him upgrade now.

Again, thanks for paving the way on this, feels good to save $100

[divinechaos]

Damn, I'm gonna have to give this a try but I'm always weary or things like these. Mainly because my computer is kinda old and I'm very good with PCs either. I'll read your walkthrough and see if my brain is capable of making sense out of it.

[Jboy001]

Damn, I'm gonna have to give this a try but I'm always weary or things like these. Mainly because my computer is kinda old and I'm very good with PCs either. I'll read your walkthrough and see if my brain is capable of making sense out of it.

I see you're in nova, if you dont think you can do it I can probably help you out.

[Veregon]

My drive should be here early next week, hopefully by Thanksgiving I'll be ready to go! My only concern is losing my RB2 data but unlocking the songs and recreating my band shouldn't be too hard, just time consuming.

[Jboy001]

I didn't have any problems copying my save data
The only file that didn't want to copy was a 0kb file in the compatability folder, the same one the guide talked about on xbox-scene.

You might not lose any data at all

[Veregon]

Do you play RB2? I've heard people specifically mention that as a game that doesn't like the transfer.

[Sazime]

Do you play RB2? I've heard people specifically mention that as a game that doesn't like the transfer.
I don't, but I did have problems with Fable 2.

[divinechaos]

I see you're in nova, if you dont think you can do it I can probably help you out.

Oh shit, awesomeness! I don't exactly what I need to buy though and if the Rock Band data disappears I would kill myself.

[Kelegacy]

Damn it I would love to do this. Not just to stick it to Microsoft and their bloated, insulting fees on HDDs, but because I cannot afford to pay their prices on HDDs and my measly 20gb (or 12-13gb if you want to get precise) is in dire need of upgrading. You guys have impressed me greatly.

But I'm dumb and don't think I'd have the patience to do this. But if I could, I would in a heartbeat. Thanks for the successful experiment though, it's been a great read!

[Veregon]

I forgot to update this when I completed the mod last week. I had problems getting HDDHacker to see my SATA controller but it worked fine on my friend's machine. We didn't have to do any of the hex editing, once we put the partition 2 image on the new drive the other partitions showed up.

Rock Band 2 does not want to load my save data, I'm going to try copying it to a memory card to see if that works, I'll report back when I borrow my friend's card.

Also, I have Too Human rented from Gamefly and I lost my save data for that game as well. I wasn't too far in so I started from scratch, I imagine if the copy to memory card works for RB2 it'll work for other games as wel.

[Sazime]

Yeah, RB does not like it's old save data. I'm gonna grab it from the other drive tonight, as a matter of fact. :)

[Veregon]

Ok, one final update for everyone.

If you use a Memory Card and move your RB2 saved game to the memory card and then back to the hard drive, it will work correctly. Do this from the Memory section of the System menu.

[divinechaos]

I finally found this thread again. Now I'm gonna give this a try.

[Xydarc]

Seems like a lot of work for an HDD upgrade.

[LiquidRain]

Seems like a lot of work for an HDD upgrade.
It really is. I still did it though.

[Xydarc]

It really is. I still did it though.
More HDD space is usually worth it. I'm glad I did it with my PS3.