I have a 360 E Console that does not have a hard drive in it, and I also have one of the old style 20 GB hard drives as was used on the earlier xbox consoles. It is the type that mounted externally on top of the console box. Does that drive case have a SATA drive in it that can be removed and used in the drive bay on the 360 E Console? Or if I remove it and find that is does have a SATA drive, will it be likely to work? Thanks for any help... Jack
I opened the case on the 20GB drive and found a SATA drive. I put it into my 360 E Console and it does not see it as being there. I'm sure the drive was fitted right and making contact, tried it two times, and still don't see it. My console has the 4GB of built in storage and that is still there and working fine but the 20GB drive did not show up. I have a Western Digital 160GB hard drive that is of the right type for use in a xbox, but it was not sold as a M$ drive and has never been in an xbox before. Can I prep that for use in the E Console? This thread implies that I can but it does not mention the 160GB drive. But I think if I repartition and format the 160gb drive as a 120gb drive it might work. Can I Add a Hard Drive To The Xbox 360 4GB Model? - Microsoft Console - Neowin Forums Jack
The 20gb drive should work in the Xbox 360 E, are you sure you have pushed the drive right in and the sata / power connectors have made contact correctly. You can hack the 160gb hard drive you have with hddhackr to work in your Xbox 360 E, you can however only use the 120gb security sector though, meaning only 120gb space will be available.
Thanks for the reply and help. I see that the link I referred to above is linking to another one of your really helpful posts, thanks for that too. I will try to see if maybe the 20GB is not showing up because it is a bad drive. The 20GB would probably be big enough for my simple needs but the 160 used at a 120 would be better of course. Do you have an opinion on the Party Buffalo Drive Explorer software? As far as if it will work as well as hddhacker? As a newbie, I read a thread on using that and it seemed to be an option for looking at drives set up for the xbox. Jack
Party Buffalo Drive Explorer will show anything stored on the 20gb drive and allow you to extract it. If you can see content on the drive it likely works. Maybe try it in an old Phat console if you have access to one.
OK and thanks again. I don't have one of the old xboxes, just the 360E. So I'll give the Party Buffalo a try. Jack
I connected the 20GB drive to a PC running XP and ran the Party Buffalo Explorer (for short, PBE). That is a pretty nice app to have! When I looked for the drive with XP Drive Management app, it saw the drive as 18.62GB, unallocated, and not initialized as seen in the second image. When I ran PBE if found the drive and showed me the files and folders as seen in the first image. So I assumed I had a healthy drive and gave another try at connecting to the xbox 360E console. The drive is uncased so I had to kind of play around to make sure it was in the SATA socket. I guess I had missed the socket the first times I tried because this time the xbox found it. It reported it as having 13.6GB of available space and a little less than 500mb in use. Would it be a good idea to transfer the content from the memory unit to the 20GB drive so as to update anything that migght be there? Like maybe something left from a previous use? I'll move on to your nice thread on how to up size drives now and I'll eventually get that 120GB drive installed... The console is marked (some numbers masked for privacy): 2013-10-02 :MFR DATE 0480162xxxx erial Number 058524320480162xxxx roduct ID Here is the System Info on what I have now Console Serial Number 0480162xxxx Console ID: 3288399xxxxx System Info Dashboard: 2.0.17150.0 IP: 76.179.141.xxx.xxxx D:2.017150.0 - K:2.0.17150.0 (BK:2.0.18.0) E:0944-C124-85AE-8BA0 P:0944-C124-85AE-8BA0 X:8D12-FA86-7B2E-DBB6 S:5A1-4ADF-EAD3-1440 K:00:00:00:01:00.00.0000.00:00000000000 Hard Drive = 13.6GB free, System Items = 151MB Memory Unit = 2.5 GB free, games and apps = 440MB, profiles = 328 KB, system items = 496 KB Thanks again for the help! Jack
The drive is working fine then! What ever you do never format / partition or do anything with it from within the Windows Disk Management, you will render the drive unusable in the Xbox 360 if you do. You can move any content to the 20gb drive if you wish, i would personally do that as any content stored on the internal memory will be lost if the Xbox 360 ever fails. Where as you can back content up from the physical hard drive and transfer it to another console if required.
Yesterday I took the 160GB drive and followed the process in the "Hack a 250gb, etc." thread. The drive I started the process with had a FAT 32 format on it and there was a couple of folders and some files on the drive and it could be seen via Drive Management as I started the process. I ran made the USB boot drive, got booted from it successfully, ran hddhackr, loaded the 120GB_HDSS.bin file (renamed to hdss.bin) and went though the process and got the pronouncement of having the firmware flashed successfully. But I don't remember if when it did that if it said that the partitions had been created or not. I normalled up the PC and booted to windows, just out of curiousity I connected the drive and looked at it with Windows Explorer. And I was a little surprised to see that all the FAT 32 folders and files were still there on the 160GB drive. But when I ran Partition Buddy Extreme and it did not see any drives as available. So I was a little confused as to what had happened or if it had gone right. I put the 160GB (now actually a 120GB drive) drive in the xbox and the xbox reported it as present and as being 113.6GB in size and as not having any categories of contents on it. So I formatted the drive from the xbox and then could see the normal categories of info, all of which were empty except the system category. I then transferred the contents of the 4GB memory (this is on a 360 E Console with 4GB of built in memory) to the hard drive. And that went successfully. I was able to see the content I had had in memory (two video apps and one profile) and it logged the profile on at start as I had it set up to do. I had to redo the network and wi fi connections and restart my wi fi router to refresh the connection to xbox live and get it working (I am connecting to the internet via a nearby cisco/linksys wired and wireless router). So I have a working 113.6GB drive in the xbox. But if I put the drive back on a PC when I look at the drive with PBE I do not see the three partitions that I expected to see. The attached screen shot is the 160GB (now 113.6GB) drive as it is now and working. I'm a little confused with the process and new to all of this, I may have missed something here and may have some of the details wrong. I do claim the old geezer "poor memory" rights as to some of the details... But I have a console with a large amount of storage and that is what I wanted... And I sure appreciate the help I've gotten here! Jack
It appears you successfully hacked the drive, however the partitions were not created. When you formatted the drive in the Xbox 360 it simply created partition 3. You can use the drive as it is, however Xbox Classic backwards comparability will not work. If you wish to use Xbox Classic games on the 360 then you need to run Hddhackr again and let it create the required partitions, this will erase everything off the drive though. If you wish to create the partitions simply load Hddhackr as you did when hacking the drive, however this time at the dos prompt type "hddhackr c" without the quotes, this will create partitions 0/2/3.
If its a winchester you cannot rgh it.. And if its a corona.. You can find mny videos on YouTube that can help you