Hack a 250gb, 320gb or 500gb Sata harddrive to work in the Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Slim

This tutorial will teach you how to hack a standard Western Digital 2.5" Sata hard drive so it can be used by the Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Slim. Normally you can only use Microsoft approved hard drives which are significantly more expensive, costing up to 3x the price of a normal 2.5" SATA hard drive.

This tutorial focuses on hacking a 250gb drive, which was the largest drive possible in 2009 when i created this tutorial, however it is now possible to hack drives of the following sizes: 500gb, 320gb, 250gb, 120gb, 60gb and 20gb. Simply follow this tutorial and download the security sector that matches the size of the hard drive you wish to hack.

• 500GB security sector added on 04/03/2014
• 320GB security sector added on 20/09/2011

The Backstory:

After having a 20gb drive for the last 4 years and getting annoyed about having to constantly delete stuff I did something about it. I purchased a nice 250gb laptop hard drive for £30 and used hddhackr on it to enable the 360 to use it.

I think doing your own drive is the way to go as Microsoft charge £89.99 just for the 120gig drive here in the UK, at that price I could make 3x 250gig drives for the same price!

This guide will show you how I did that, its worth mentioning that you can also hack a 20gb, 60gb and 120gb, 250gb, 320gb and 500gb drives, however when creating this tutorial 250gb was the largest drive possible to hack. I personally think hacking a 500gb drive is now best value for money.

Note to Xbox 360 Slim owners:

If you have an Xbox 360 slim you can also hack a hard drive using this guide and connect it directly to the console, have a look at the end of the guide for information on how to connect your hacked drive to an Xbox 360 slim.

Lets hack an Xbox 360 hard drive:

Ok lets get started, first you will need to buy a hard drive to use in the Xbox 360.

Hddhackr 1.40 will only work with the following Western Digital drive series: BEAS/BEVS/BEVT/BPVT/LPVT/BEKT/BJKT/BPKT/BUDT/HLFS/BLFS/BPVX/LPCX

Tested drives:

Spoiler

- WD Scorpio Series BEAS/BEVS
WD600BEAS - 60GB
WD800BEAS - 80GB
WD1000BEAS - 100GB
WD1200BEAS - 120GB
WD1600BEAS - 160GB
WD2000BEAS - 200GB
WD2500BEAS - 250GB
WD600BEVS - 60GB
WD800BEVS - 80GB
WD1000BEVS - 100GB
WD1200BEVS - 120GB
WD1600BEVS - 160GB
WD2000BEVS - 200GB
WD2500BEVS - 250GB

- WD Scorpio Blue Series BEVS/BEVT/BPVT/LPVT/LPVX/BPVX/LPCX
WD3200BEVS - 320GB
WD600BEVT - 60GB
WD800BEVT - 80GB
WD1200BEVT - 120GB
WD1600BEVT - 160GB
WD2000BEVT - 200GB
WD2500BEVT - 250GB
WD3200BEVT - 320GB
WD4000BEVT - 400GB
WD5000BEVT - 500GB
WD6400BEVT - 640GB
WD1600BPVT - 160GB
WD2500BPVT - 250GB
WD3200BPVT - 320GB
WD5000BPVT - 500GB
WD6400BPVT - 640GB
WD7500BPVT - 750GB
WD2500LPVT - 250GB
WD3200LPVT - 320GB
WD5000LPVT - 500GB
WD5000LPVX - 500GB
WD5000BPVX - 500GB
WD5000LPCX - 500GB
WDBMYH5000ANC-NRSN - 500GB [Retial Boxed]
WD10TPVT - 1TB

- WD Scorpio Black Series BEKT/BJKT/BPKT/LPLX
WD800BEKT - 80GB
WD1200BEKT - 120GB
WD1600BEKT - 160GB
WD2500BEKT - 250GB
WD3200BEKT - 320GB
WD5000BEKT - 500GB
WD800BJKT - 80GB
WD1200BJKT - 120GB
WD1600BJKT - 160GB
WD3200BJKT - 320GB
WD5000BJKT - 500GB
WD3200BPKT - 320GB
WD5000BPKT - 500GB
WD7500BPKT - 750GB
WD5000LPLX - 500GB
WD5000BPKX - 500GB

- WD AV-25 Series BUDT
WD1600BUDT - 160GB
WD2500BUDT - 250GB
WD3200BUDT - 320GB
WD5000BUDT - 500GB

- WD VelociRaptor Series HLFS/BLFS
WD1500HLFS - 150GB
WD1600HLFS - 160GB
WD3000HLFS - 300GB
WD1500BLFS - 150GB
WD1600BLFS - 160GB
WD3000BLFS - 300GB

Many years later in 2020 a lot of people seem to be having issues with WD500LPLX drives, these flash ok however never show up on the Xbox 360. We recommend you not to buy these drives with the intention of hacking them for Xbox 360 use.

You can not use another make of hard drive for this hack, it has to be one of the supported Western Digital drives.

I purchased a 250gb WD Scorpio Blue Series drive (WD2500BEVT) for around £30 at Ebuyer
For those of you who live in the States, you can get the same drive for around $47 at Newegg.

I would highly recommend you also purchase a Western Digital Scorpio Blue Drive, you have nothing to gain by buying a more expensive drive.



Creating a bootable USB Drive:

The first thing you will want to do is create a bootable USB drive, for this I used a tool called Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool.

Download Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool

Unzip and load the program, be sure to right click and run as an administrator.

• Select your USB drive
• Set the file system as FAT
• Tick quick format and Create bootable drive
• Select the box with 3 dots and choose the USB Drive Boot Files\MS-DOS folder as the location.
• Hit start and you will have a bootable usb drive within a few seconds.

Now download the sucurity sector that matches the size of the hard drive you wish to hack

Download Xbox 360 500GB Hard Drive Security Sector
Download Xbox 360 320GB Hard Drive Security Sector
Download Xbox 360 250GB Hard Drive Security Sector
Download Xbox 360 120GB Hard Drive Security Sector
Download Xbox 360 60GB Hard Drive Security Sector
Download Xbox 360 20GB Hard Drive Security Sector

You will also need to Download HddHackr v1.40 Build 20130303

Unzip both to the USB drive you just made bootable

Be sure to rename the HDDSS_250GB.BIN to HDDSS.BIN if you are hacking a 250gb drive or HDDSS320.bin to HDDSS.BIN if you are hacking a 320gb drive.

The end result should be something like this, don’t worry you will not have an UNDO.BIN yet.



Hacking the Western Digital hard drive to work in the Xbox 360:

You will need to shut down your pc now, I would advise you disconnect all the other hard drive in your computer just to stop you accidently hacking the wrong drive!

Now connect the hard drive you want to hack to your computer:



Power your computer back on, before you carry on it might be an idea to enter you bios configuration and ensure the SATA operation mode is set to ATA or disable AHCI depending on the options you have. On some motherboards this can also be called legacy or enhanced, if you are presented with this you want to set it to legacy. This will vary depending on your motherboard / bios.

The above appears to be the most common cause for people not been able to flash there drives.

Now tell your computer to to boot from the usb drive, this will be different depending on your motherboard, on my pc I have to press F11 then select the drive I wish to boot from.

You will find yourself at a dosprompt, type hddhackr and press enter.



All been well hddhackr will have listed all the drives in your system, in my case the drive I want to hack is number 5.



After entering the number you will be asked if you want to dump, flash or restore the firmware, select F to flash.

Type in the name of the security sector you want to flash, this will be HDDSS.BIN if you have followed this tutorial.

You will get a message saying that the information in file HDDSS.BIN does not match the drive’s firmware info. Do you want to flash the Xbox 360 compatible firmware.

Say yes to this:



You will then be asked if you also want to create partition 0/2/3 (HddHackr_v1.30 will not display any message about partitioning, this is normal)

Again say yes to this, you drive should now be hacked, congratulations!



An UNDO.BIN will have been saved on your USB drive, keep this safe as you will need it for if you ever want to restore the drive back to normal.

Opening the 360 drive enclosure:

Now you need to open your Xbox 360 hard drive, you will need a Torx T6 screwdriver to do this.



You can now remove the top, the mechanism to lock/unlock the HDD-bay on your Xbox 360 console might fall out… don’t worry it’s easy enough its put back together, just look how it is in my photo below.

Now you have 4 more screws to remove, these require a Torx T10 screwdriver, you can then remove the metal case.



Now you can unplug the power and sata cable from the drive, then slide it out pulling the drive gentily up as you do so.



You should now have your original drive



Restoring the Xbox Classic Emulator and User Content:

If you want to restore the Xbox 1 emulator to your newly hacked drive or your save games you will need to connect your old 360 drive to your computer and boot windows.

If you dont have an old hard drive or simply want to save some time you can download a copy of Hoffmans partition 2 which he uploaded here

Download Xplorer 360 Extreme 2.

Now unzip and right click and run it as administrator.

Select Drive > Open > Harddrive or Memorycard



We are going to backup the Xbox 1 emulator so you will still be able to play Xbox 1 games on the 360.

To do this select Drive > Backup Partition 2 and save the backup.



If you want to backup your profiles, saves, arcade games, demos, dlc and videos you basically want to dump your Partition 3 > Content folder, I had to dump a few folders at the time because Xplorer 360 had random crashes for me.



Now shutdown windows, disconnect your original 360 drive and connect the hacked 250gb drive.

When windows has loaded up again load Xplorer 360 Extreme again, remembering to run it with administrator rights and select Drive > Restore Partition 2 and select the backup you made from your old 20gig drive.



It is important you just close Xplorer360 after that, massing about with anything else will corrupt Partition 3.

Now download Party Buffalo Drive Explorer, it can manage data on all size Xbox 360 hard drives

After you have restored any content you can now shut your pc down and put the hard drive drive in your 360’s drive enclosure, it might be an idea to test everything is working correctly before re assembling the enclosure.

The hacked drive:



Connecting to the Xbox 360 slim:

It is also possible to use your hacked drive in the new Xbox 360 slim, with the slim you are not required to insert the hard drive in any enclosure, you can simply connect it to the console.

If you want to buy an enclosure for it have a look on Deal Extreme at the HDD Hard Disk Drive Case for Xbox 360 Slim, if not just read below and connect the drive directly to your 360 slim.

First open the panel at the side, the entry way is on the right side as you look at the Xbox. If you look towards the end of the right side of the Xbox you can see 3 vents you can pull to remove the cover.



If you have the 4gb model, there will be no hard drive in this area. This is the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250gb hard drive inside the Xbox. Be sure to make sure it’s seated. It may take some time to get it perfectly fit.



The Sata and power connections inside the slim you need to connect the drive to



A Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250gb installed in a 4gb Xbox 360 Slim:



The new 4gb Xbox 360 slim with a nice 250gb hacked drive installed:



Credit to Digiex member Nsab3001for the slim information and photos.

Hopefully I have covered everything you should need to know to do this hack yourself, if not feel free to ask and I will try and help.

FAQ:

HDDHackr doesn't work for me:
99% of problems are caused by the SATA chipset on your motherboard or BIOS configurations such as Legacy IDE not been enabled, AHCI been enabled or Raid been active.

If you still have problems try using another computer with a different SATA chipset..

I flashed my drive and it doesn't show in the xbox 360.
Use this tool in this thread to test/wipe the drive. Data Lifeguard Diagnostic For Western Digital Drives

Some of my save games no longer work:
The easy solution to this is to move the save game on to the memory card from the old hard drive, if it will let you. Not all saves let you move them between storage devices.

DrDrrae has posted a solution that doesn't require a memory card, Link.

I have attached CONcept and Hash Block Calculator which he says are required. Ive not tested that myself as all my game saves appear to work, fine however people have stated it works perfectly.

I restored my data back however the Xbox 360 doesn't see it?

Have a look at my post here, that explains where your files likley ended up and a solution to get them in to the folder you want.

I want to be able to drag and drop files with Xplorer 360

UAC has to be switched off for this to work, simply running the program with admin rights doesn't work.
To do this in Windows 7 go to Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts and select "Change user account settings" Now slide down to never notify and hit ok. You might need to re start your pc for the changes to take effect. Remember to enable UAC again when you are finished.

I lost my undo.bin, do you have one i can use?

Using an Undo.bin from someone else is very risky, your drive must be the exact same as the drive the undo.bin is from, otherwise you risk bricking it. Rick has also created a thread aimed at collecting people's undo.bin files here. Hddhackr Undo Files Downloads & Uploads Please contribute your undo.bin if you can, Thanks.

Have success with flashing your drive?
Post your computer model & motherboard version here: Compatable Motherboards / Laptops for HddHackr

 

Same here, I taught that i would just to able to copy the files from partition 2 to my pc, then back to the new drive but that wasn't the case.

I thought the part with hddhackr would be the hardest bit yet it ended up been one of the easiest parts of the process.

Hopefully this guide will make it as easy as possible for anyone considering the hack!

 

How does what you see differ from my screenshot?

You didn't actually say what the problem was, I need to have some idea about what is going on to try and help you.

 

Can you post a screenshot of what is on the usb drive you are using to load hddhackr from, just want to ensure you have everything you need on it.

The Xplorer 360 app is very buggy, it works under Windows 7 x64, you have to run the program as an Administrator if you have UAC enabled. Your not the only person to have trouble with it.

Xplorer 360 Xtreme works well with 20 and 120gig drives, it will also restore partition 2 to a 250gb drive, touching partition 3 on a 250gig drive just corrupts it so be careful not to.

Xplorer 360 250gb edition will only work on Partition 3 of a 250gig drive, touching anything else also corrupts the drive.

Good idea with the transfer kit, glad you got your hacked drive working 100%

 

I got that when selected D and not F by mistake, also have you ensured AHCI is disabled in your bios? that can cause a lot of problems.

 

Ok so Hddhackr detects your drive which is good, looking at your second screenshot it appears you are running hddhackr in a virtual machine? or you look a photograph of a photograph?

What exactly is displayed at the bottom after you have typed f? thats cut out the photo!

 

You can just format the drive in your Xbox 360 I believe, if you cant format it I would imagine you could fix the drive like this as hddhackr will re create partition 0,2 and 3

 

You must connect it to an internal sata port for hddhackr to recognize the drive.