help upgrading a softmodded xbox's hard drive

[daskrabs]

It's really not that tough if you use IDE drives. I'd say buy a new WD on newegg. They're lockable. Softmod the existing hard drive, backup you eeprom, FTP the drive contents to a PC, use XBOXHDM to create an ISO with your hard drive image and eeprom on it, boot the ISO CD on a PC with the new drive attached, format the drive with your data from the CD, lock it, and install into xbox.

[alexis524]

There's quite a few guides out there on how to upgrade a HDD on a softmodded xbox, but I will tell you this. It's pretty hard. Make sure you read, re-read and then read again. Make a few backups of your eeprom, this is majorly important. If you lose that you'll face a non-functioning xbox. If you fuck up your files, you'll face a non-functioning xbox. Since Microsoft were super smart they put all the operating system on the HDD, so unlocking your HDD (required during this process) will mean that the only way you can get the system to boot again is via a boot disc, and then lock the HDD and reboot. It's a major pain in the arse.

It might have changed a bit since I did mine, so the process might have been streamlined a little, but it took me a couple of hours and I'm pretty good at hacking systems. I just went methodically through each step and it worked.

ugghhh, just when i was starting to feel OK about the upgrade...

if the project goes south, i always have my 250gb softmodded HD to fall back on. that's what i'm upgradding from, but hoping i can successfully upgrade. I'll just make sure
to set aside a quiet afternoon with no distractions to really research this and upgrade. Any other tips are appreciated, so please, keep them coming.

P.S. Jinn, if the HDD that's currently installed, which is 250 GB has been successfully softmodded with my current BIOS, would that lead me to believe that it'll support a much larger size???

[jinn]

All current BIOS support large HardDrive, however, there are only 2 BIOS that I know support 2TB or larger and that's X2 5035 and iND-BiOS 5003.
They support splitting the HDD into equal partitions, the rest of the BIOS will assign F with 137GB and the rest on G.
If you are using a 2TB HDD then F will formatted with 32kb cluster and G with 256kb cluster
If you split them evenly, then F and G are formatted with 128kb cluster.

[alexis524]

jinn,

trying to make sense of your post. So i can split my F&G (partition size) drives evenly?

[jinn]

to use a 2TB you will need F & G to be split evenly, then formatted with 128kb clusters.
The only BIOS that allow you to do it is X2 5035 and iND-BiOS 5003.
If you use any other BIOS it will not allow to split F & G evenly.
So you will get 137GB [32kb] in F and 1.8TB [256kb] in G.
The only reason you might want F with 137GB [32kb] and G with 1.8Tb [256kb] is if you are planing on using Xmugen or other homebrew that will not work properly with 64kb or higher cluster size.

[alexis524]

Jinn,

sounds like to know a good amount about my intended project. Can i ask for your help if i get stuck? Any additional pointers you can offer?

[jinn]

I would be glad to help you out if you have any more questions.
If you have a xbox v1.0-v1.5, I would recommend to flash the TSOP with a Hack BIOS.
It will make upgrading the HDD a lot easier and faster.

[alexis524]

thanks JInn,

i do have a version 1.0, and at this point, have my drive, adapter, hdm boot disk with stock c & e drives off of slayers disk, my eeprom as well (in linux folder) and printed out for reference. Hopefully tonite, i'll get the chance to go into my PC's BIOS to change the boot sequences to cd drive>HDD and i should be set to build the new drive.

i'd rather go that route instead of flashing since i have zero soldering skills.

this may sound very elementary, but can't i simply just "ghost" my existing 250GB drive that is softmodded to my new drive? In other words, can i just copy over the contents from the smaller drive onto the larger drive and install into my oxbox???

[gtmtnbiker]

this may sound very elementary, but can't i simply just "ghost" my existing 250GB drive that is softmodded to my new drive? In other words, can i just copy over the contents from the smaller drive onto the larger drive and install into my oxbox???

You really should try using google more. You can get most of your questions answered that way. Take me, 3 years ago I knew nothing about consoles having been out of gaming for a number of years. Using Google, I was able to install ViperExtreme into my Gamecube, install a modchip into my original xbox, upgrade the drive, install xbmc, etc. I also installed CFW onto my PSP.

I knew nothing. I googled and found lots of information which I studied. Yes, there's a lot of information and yes, some of it can be confusing. But like I said, I read things carefully and then was able to do everything on my own.

So to answer your question, I just typed in "can you ghost xbox drive" and one of the first hits was:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=559737

[Hatta]

If you have a 1.0, you should really replace the northbridge fan&heatsink while you're in there. It will fail eventually, and make a lot of noise. The ZM-NB32K is the recommended replacement IIRC.