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

[InsaneNutter]

Well, tried it on a mates PC and i CAN alter the BIOS, but the damn PC keeps saying "No ATA drives detected".... sems like 2 steps forward 4 steps back!

You could try getting a VIA VT6421 sata controller, people used to use those to flash Xbox 360 DVD drives back in the day, they worked well with hard drives from what I remember too. Obviously these days spending additional money on hardware to flash a hard drive is no where near as cost effective as it used to be. Back in 2009 when I created this tutorial official 120gb drives for the 360 were around £120, yet you could make a 250gb for around £30! even if you added the cost of a SATA controller back then you had still saved 50% on the official product and got more space!

Sometimes motherboards with a lot of SATA ports have more than one SATA controller, one can be compatible even though the other isn't. Might be worth checking in device manager when in windows on the off chance. Sometimes one might be intel for example and another might be a different manufacturer:

 

[chrispovoas]

You could try getting a VIA VT6421 sata controller, people used to use those to flash Xbox 360 DVD drives back in the day, they worked well with hard drives from what I remember too. Obviously these days spending additional money on hardware to flash a hard drive is no where near as cost effective as it used to be. Back in 2009 when I created this tutorial official 120gb drives for the 360 were around £120, yet you could make a 250gb for around £30! even if you added the cost of a SATA controller back then you had still saved 50% on the official product and got more space!

Sometimes motherboards with a lot of SATA ports have more than one SATA controller, one can be compatible even though the other isn't. Might be worth checking in device manager when in windows on the off chance. Sometimes one might be intel for example and another might be a different manufacturer:

[/QUOTE


Know what you mean! back in the day I had a ZX81 with 16kb of ram!!!!! Replacement HD for Xbox are around 80 quid here, but my mate cant afford to replace so i said ill give it a crack!

So ill check as you mentioned but what should i do from there? I actually just unplugged the leads from the PC's HDD (so it recognises that), and plugged it into mt drive but it doesnt recognise.. Does the new HDD need to be "prepared / formatted" in any particular way before hand?

 

[InsaneNutter]

When using hddhackr it is easier to unplug all the drives in the PC except the drive your hacking. If the PC has multiple different sata controllers you can read the motherboards manual to work out which sata port is connected to controller, or just try each sata part on the PC and see if hddhackr will work.

As I mentioned though I had no luck with multiple modern PC's, where as I had no issues at all on Core2Duo era PC's we had a few years ago. So fingers crossed you have better luck!

 

[Dauntless]

In case anybody is wondering I successfully flashed the newer LPLX series drives. It worked with the 500GB WD Black 7mm Slim drives. Model number WD5000LPLX.

 

[InsaneNutter]

In case anybody is wondering I successfully flashed the newer LPLX series drives. It worked with the 500GB WD Black 7mm Slim drives. Model number WD5000LPLX.

Thank you for the feedback, I've added the drive to the compatibility post on the first page. Cheers!

 

[dimax]

Hello,
I hope you can help me with one little problem.
I used HDDHACKR.exe to flash the firmware of an Western Digital WD7500BPVT Blue 750GB HDD with the security sector 500 GB.
No I wanted to bring back the hole 750 GB of space, but I haven't saved the old firmware of the HDD.
Does anyone have the firmware of my HDD?

Hope you know what I mean.
Greetings from Germany

Write me a PM if you still need it.

 

[Yaniv]

Can i play burnd xbox original games on my lt3 xbox 360?

 

[Codename_Falcon]

I want to report that I was able to successfully flash the Western Digital WD5000BPKX without any problem. Please add it to the compatibility list.

 

[Master_Platinum]

Hello,
I hacked the 500GB Blue WDBMYH5000ANC-NRSN and it worked perfectly..

You can add the drive to the compatibility list ..

BTW, I hope theses Desktop drive will last longer.. I read somewhere that desktop drive are not optimized for intensive work like a game console or intense use...

OEM Hard Drives by Microsoft (AV Models) like the Seagate one are models LD25.1 LD25.2 that are optimized for game console, PVR, DVR or intense use...

Sorry about the external link.. just want to share you something about the OEM one... http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_ld25_2.pdf

 

[InsaneNutter]

I want to report that I was able to successfully flash the Western Digital WD5000BPKX without any problem. Please add it to the compatibility list.

Thank you, I have added the drive to the list.

Hello,
I hacked the 500GB Blue WDBMYH5000ANC-NRSN and it worked perfectly..

You can add the drive to the compatibility list ..

BTW, I hope theses Desktop drive will last longer.. I read somewhere that desktop drive are not optimized for intensive work like a game console or intense use...

OEM Hard Drives by Microsoft (AV Models) like the Seagate one are models LD25.1 LD25.2 that are optimized for game console, PVR, DVR or intense use...

Sorry about the external link.. just want to share you something about the OEM one... http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_ld25_2.pdf

Thank you, I have also added the drive to the list.

You will be fine, the WD Blue drive I hacked 6 and a half years ago still works great today, and that Xbox 360 used to get a lot of use.

 

[laputacake]

Hello, after digging out my Xbox 360 S I decided to play some old games but remembered that a while ago I decided to use the hard drive for storage and so it is no longer recognized by the Xbox. I made sure the sata connection was good and cleaned some dust out the xbox. I tried the guide but hddhackr won't recognize the hard drive and my Asus P9x79 doesn't have an option for legacy only AHCI, RAID and IDE. Any idea on how to proccedd as it's the original hard drive just formatted in windows and so it isn't being recognized by the Xbox.

 

[InsaneNutter]

it's the original hard drive just formatted in windows and so it isn't being recognized by the Xbox.

Hddhackr can't hack original hard drives as their not Western Digital drives. I've not heard of people been able to use a 360 hard drive again once its formatted in Windows unfortunately.

 

[mustanggx]

Hi,

I followed the tutorial and was able to make a 500GB Dell WD branded disk visible to the XBOX 360 Slim.
I then went to format it. Asked for the console serial number and once completed, I noticed that the disk's size in empty.
The format failed with no error.

I used the bin file for the 500GB and as far as I can see the disk in compatible.

Any idea what is going on ?

 

[InsaneNutter]

Dell drives might have a different firmware on which makes them behave slightly differently to a normal drive, i know large OEM's like Dell sometimes do this for certain hardware. You could try hacking it again and see what happens.

 

[Arcadio Morello]

Hello.
I want to buy WD500LPVX 500GB hard drive and on the first page it's metioned that Hddhackr 1.40 will only work with the following Western Digital drive series: BEAS/BEVS/BEVT/BPVT/LPVT/BEKT/BJKT/BPKT/BUDT/HLFS/BLFS
Hddhackr 1.40 will work with Western Digital LPVX series or no?
Regards

 

[BELDAM]

Hi All,

New here but I have been following a few of the posts.

It’s getting hard to locate the old models these days, so I went out and bought a new WD5000LPCX after reading that some people have had success with this model on various posts that I came across on the net, so I can create a new 500Gb x360 drive for more storage.

I’m using HDDHackr_v1.40_Build_20130303 which I believe this is the latest version.

If anyone can help explain what’s going on, it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the back-story:

1. Successfully hacked a WD5000BEVT drive with the 500GB HDDSS.BIN for the HITACHI - HTS547550A9E384 model. All cool.

2. Successfully hacked a WD3200LPVX drive with the 320GB HDDSS.BIN for the SEAGATE - ST9320325AS model. All cool.

Here’s where it gets weird.

Hacked the WD5000LPCX drive with the 500GB HDDSS.BIN for the SEAGATE / SAMSUNG - ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB model with strange results:

a) The drive was flashed successfully and an UNDO.BIN was created.

b) Partitions 0/2/3 were created successfully.

At this stage I thought the hack was a success but not so because when I connected the drive to the x360 (A Black Elite Phat with the Falcon guts) in an original Phat enclosure, the drive would not show up as storage.

However, when I connected the drive to the x360 via an official MS USB transfer cable, the drive was there. I could transfer files back and forth with no problems but I couldn’t format the drive on the console. (PS: the game I tested still worked after being transferred back to the console drive).

At the end of the day, I figured that I failed to hack the WD5000LPCX drive, so I went back and tried to restore the UNDO.BIN so I can use the drive as portable storage BUT I get an “UNDO.BIN is WRONG SIZE” message and I can’t restore it back to it’s original state. I used both methods, auto & manual with the same result.

ALSO:
LBA = 976773168, before and after flashing. I think this is standard for a 500GB drive, correct me if I’m wrong. According to the original drive’s specifications, this is correct.

Q1. Could it be the HDDSS.BIN file I’m using? It’s from one of the newer drives / models because I didn’t want to use the same HITACHI Security Sector.
I got the new BIN file here:
"team-xecuter.com/forums/threads/147502-500GB-Hard-Drive-SS-BIN-from-the-new-Winchester-Model-Xbox-360"
OR
".acidmods.com/forum/index.php?topic=43548.0"
FIle Link: ".speedyshare.com/ezcdY/500GB-360.zip"

Q2: Is it OK to try Re-Flashing and Re-formatting the drive using HDDHACKR with the HDDSS.BIN again?

Q3. Can I overwrite sectors 16-22 on the drive with the info from the UNDO.BIN using a HEX editor in WXP to get the drive back if all else fails or will this brick the drive and leave me with a $65 paper weight?

Thanking everyone on advance.

PS: If I can get to format the drive on the console, I’d be happy to make it a dedicated x360 storage drive.

Cheers.
BELDAM.

 

[InsaneNutter]

1. The bin file should be fine unless it's some how got corrupted when you downloaded it, it shouldn't have though if it unzips ok.
2. I think all you can do is try re flashing / formatting it again.
3. I dont know about this, you would have to try that at your own risk.

It's certainly a strange one from what you have said, i can't really suggest anything else that might help you unfortunately. I presume you have used the same PC to hack all the drives?

You can however use 2TB USB drives with the Xbox 360 now if all else fails. That could well be the better value for money solution in 2016. However that hasn't been an option until recently which is why so many people hacked internal hard drives.

 

[BELDAM]

Doing my head in.

3. I dont know about this, you would have to try that at your own risk.

Any idea why I can't restore the UNDO.BIN with HDDHACKR?
Could the UNDO.BIN be corrupt or did HDDHACKR just failed to flash the drive and create the backup file properly?
Mind you, I haven't tries to restore the other drives although I still have their respective UNDO.BIN files.
It's possible they could give me the same problem if I try to restore them. Just a thought.

You can however use 2TB USB drives with the Xbox 360 now...

I thought the limit was 32Gb via USB interface OR have they removed that limitation and I'm not aware of it?
How do I go about achieving this?

I presume you have used the same PC to hack all the drives?

That is correct. The BIOS enables me to set the SATA interface as "LEGACY" of "NATIVE - IDE".
I believe I've always set it to "LEGACY" or doesn't this make a difference?

Anyhow, I re-flashed the drive and re-created the partitions with HDDHACKR last night using the "SEAGATE / SAMSUNG - ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB 500GB HDDSS.BIN" again but I got the same result.
The XBOX sees the drive via USB Transfer cable but will not see it when connected via the proper Phat enclosure.

Doing it again tonight but this time I'm using the "HITACHI - HTS547550A9E384 500GB HDDSS.BIN" I've used before to see if it makes a difference and report back.

Cheers for now.

 

[BELDAM]

Success.

Doing it again tonight but this time I'm using the "HITACHI - HTS547550A9E384 500GB HDDSS.BIN" I've used before to see if it makes a difference and report back.

Happy to report that it was a complete success.

Here are the parameters specific to this hack:
1. BIOS in LEGACY mode.
2. Used HDDHackr_v1.40_Build_20130303 and the 500GB HITACHI Security Sector to hack the WD5000LPCX-00VHAT0 drive.
3. Flashed the drive and created Partitions 0/2/3 successfully.
4. My XBOX-360 ELITE recognized and successfully formatted the hacked LPCX drive.
5.Took the drive back to the PC and under WXP, successfully restored the Xbox Classic Emulator with Xplorer 360 Extreme 2.
6.Tested the drives Xbox Classic Emulator with a Classic Xbox game and it all worked fine.

CONCLUSION:
1. There must be something wrong with the 500GB HDDSS.BIN for the SEAGATE / SAMSUNG - ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB model from "team-xecuter.com/forums/threads/147502-500GB-Hard-Drive-SS-BIN-from-the-new-Winchester-Model-Xbox-360".
2. Confirmation that the new WD5000LPCX drives can be successfully hacked using the tutorial posted by InsaneNutter at the start of this thread.

 

[BELDAM]

Hddhackr 1.40 should work with Western Digital LPVX series.

Hddhackr 1.40 will work with Western Digital LPVX series or no?

Nothing in life is certain but I have successfully hacked a WD3200LPVX drive with the 320GB HDDSS.BIN for the SEAGATE - ST9320325AS model and managed to successfully hack a WD5000LPCX drive with the 500GB HDDSS.BIN for the HITACHI - HTS547550A9E384 model. Both HDDSS.BIN files provided by InsaneNutter at the start of this thread.

If you can get a WD500LPVX 500GB hard drive and you do it right, I believe it should work. It may be helpful to have a read through #2996 and #2999.

Hope that helps and wish you the best of luck.