Installing Larger Hard drive on original Xbox

[msimplay]

Hmm I fixed my hard drive so that I can have backwards compatibility on it now.
It was about 6 months ago I got ripped on Ebay with a so called Official Xbox hard drive from Hong Kong.
Didn't realise until recently that it was an unofficial hard drive and took me ages to find the fix I needed partition 2 restored.

Anyways now that's all fixed I don't like the emulation on the 360 its kinda shitty.
Since I've got quite a few Xbox games I don't really feel like pulling out all of the games.
I'm thinking if I could upgrade the hard drive on my original Xbox and rip my games onto it and saved space.
It already has a modchip in it but I can't remember which one although I do remember it was the best one at the time.

Anyone got any ideas on how to upgrade my original to maybe a 320 or 500gb hard drive.
Should be enough for some emulators and my whole collection of Xbox games

[Niode]

If you have a Xenium, SmartXX or Xecuter3 chip you can just swap the hard drive. No other steps are required. All the mod-chips that I know of allow you to use a standard IDE hard drive in the xbox. You don't need to lock it.

If you could tell us what mod-chip it uses we can give a 100% definite answer.

[Ziggy]

Oh wow. I've been looking into getting an oXbox for emulation. I was getting confused with all this "locking the hard drive" stuff and didn't realize that a chip will allow you to just swap it.

[Niode]

Yeah, if you install a Xenium, Xecutor3, or SmartXX and upgrade to latest BIOS. You need LBA48 hack for it to work with hard drives larger than 137GB, Which, AFAIK is included in the latest versions of those 3 chips. They're the three most popular chips anyway.

[Ziggy]

Yeah, I was gonna go with an Xecuter 3 chip.

[Niode]

Yep, just a backup (obviously) required with that chip. Just pop your new hard drive in and then format it with the bios. Copy your files back over via FTP. Don't get a drive bigger than 500GB. AFAIK it is impossible to address the space (with the LBA48 hack it formats your drive into 137GB chunks).

[Ziggy]

When you say copy the files back over to the new drive, is that necessary? Is there necessary files on the Xbox's original drive, or are we just talking about save files and whatnot? Because I don't own an Xbox (yet) so if I pick one up I could care less what the previous owner had on the drive.

Yeah, normally I wouldn't worry about the hard drive size as emulators and old school ROMs are small in size. But I found out that the PC Engine emulator will not allow you to play burned copies, only originals. You have to put copied games on the hard drive, kind of lame. So Dracula X for example is about 500MB. Not a lot, but multiple games add up quickly. I'll probably pick up an 80~120GB drive.

[gtmtnbiker]

Yeah, I was gonna go with an Xecuter 3 chip.

How much does the chip go for?

Personally, my buddy and I went with the Duo X2 chip for $15. It works great. No flashing the BIOS needed since the oXbox has been dead for awhile. You can get it here:
http://www.eurasia.nu/shop/product_info.php?cPath=47&products_id=270
It has the BIOS support for larger drives.

Here's what the XBMC's wiki says about larger drives http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Xbox_hardware_modifications

Harddisk drive replacement

The original Xbox™ only has a 8GB harddrive and many people choose to replace it with a faster and larger harddisk drive.
Limitations and information to know before you start
The two recommended harddrive brands that run cool and quiet in the Xbox are Samsung and Seagate.
You do not get more speed out of a 5400rpm than a 7200rpm harddrive, 5400rpm runs cooler and quiter.
Neither do you get a speed increase out of more harddrive cache so save money and get one with less.
Up to 2TB (2048GB) in size. Upgrading your harddrive will also speedup Xbox loading and boot-up times.
Note: XBMC only supports F: and G: partitions for harddrives and 512GB per partition!
If you want to install a harddrive larger than 137GB then you need a LBA48 compatible Xbox 'hacked' BIOS.
If a partition is larger than 256GB, the harddrive needs to be formatted with 32k clusters, use XBpartitioner.
XBpartitioner is used to partition extra partitions such as F: and G: (not the default C:, E:, X:, Y: and Z:)
Largest partition supported by a LBA48 BIOS and 32k clusters is 512GB, so 512GB+ need G: partition.
If you want to continue to play on Microsoft Xbox Live online-gaming service then you must lock the harddrive.

[Niode]

When you say copy the files back over to the new drive, is that necessary? Is there necessary files on the Xbox's original drive, or are we just talking about save files and whatnot? Because I don't own an Xbox (yet) so if I pick one up I could care less what the previous owner had on the drive.

Yeah, normally I wouldn't worry about the hard drive size as emulators and old school ROMs are small in size. But I found out that the PC Engine emulator will not allow you to play burned copies, only originals. You have to put copied games on the hard drive, kind of lame. So Dracula X for example is about 500MB. Not a lot, but multiple games add up quickly. I'll probably pick up an 80~120GB drive.

Yeah I just meant for saves/dlc etc. It's not really essential to backup your eprom if it has a hard mod since you can always boot/flash from the chip. It's only essential on a softmod, since you're pretty fucked if you do something dumb without an eprom backup.

[msimplay]

I think I'll have to pull my original xbox out the loft and check what chip I have installed.
I remember everyone at the time it was a genuine blah chip