I've been wanting to flash my 360 for a while now but I'm not going to crack open my Laptop. I've heard that a Sata to USB cable would work but I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm this working?
are you doing the flash as per KingBurns post?? that actually goes into so much detail with regards to flashing your xbox?? EDIT: My bad, i meant HOFFMAN, anyway heres the link, check this out, should help you quite alot!!!https://digiex.net/consoles-homebre...-firmware-flashing-tutorial-2008-edition.html
It's possible, but is very drive dependant, some drives require complex SATA commands be sent, that sometimes can't be sent over USB. Best thing to do is open your xbox first and find out what drive you've got in there then decide based on that. These USB adapters can be pretty expensive though, you should reconsider the laptop part, take the hard drive out, shouldn't take long and see if it's SATA, if it is, you can use one of the boot off CD or USB dongle methods to do it without having to buy a USB adapter.
Its also worth mentioning the guide posted up is a now a bit out dated, you can still flash any drive covered in that guide. Since the guide was created. A windows based application called Jungle Flasher has been developed. This lets you do all the flashing in windows without booting linux live cd’s and such. It does support some drives connected via usb, although it is a lot easier and cheaper doing it over sata. See: http://jungleflasher.net/files/JungleFlasher.pdf