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

I purchased a WD Scorpio Blue 320GB drive and follwed the instructions. The steps went well until the actual flash. I received a warning that the number of blocks was not normal for xBox. The flash proceeded, and indicated it was fine. However, I had to rerun hddhackr to apply the partitions. That wasn't part of the flashing. Is there a newer 320 bin file, or is this normal for the 320 flash?

 

If it works in the xbox 360 I guess that happens sometimes.

 

Cant get my 320GB drive recognized on my slim. Is there certain dashboard version needed?
WD3200BEVT

 

Nope. Try undoing the drive then use hddhackr again.

 

Thanks. Did it with my quite new PC with Asus MB and changed it to SATA mode to IDE.
Same thing with older PC. Might try again at work. Hope that drive if fully inserted to xbox, dont have any fixture.

 

Can you try it with sata mode enabled?
Undo the drive first and format it with windows to ntfs.Then try the hack again. If it still doesn't show you can use this program here to test the drive and to wipe the drive.
https://digiex.net/downloads/downlo...eguard-diagnostic-western-digital-drives.html

 

If SATA is on, drive is not visible. Nope didn´t work. Have to try that WD software later. Thanks anyway.

 

I need a little help. I have an Xbox 360 Slim. Just bought a brand new WD320BPVT (WE Scorpio Blue 320GB, manuf. Aug 14 2012). None of the tutorials seem to cover ALL the steps. For me, I just need to flash the drive and create the compatibility partition for Xbox 1 games. Are my steps correct? Can you clarify my questions?

1. Create a bootable USB stick with wdidle3, hddhackr, some correct version of explorer 360, the correct HDDSS.bin, and the hoffman partition 2
2. Unplug all my drives and plug in the new 320 with the machine off of course
3. Boot the machine and go to bios to disable AHCI
4. Boot again this time to the USB stick
5. Run wdidle3 /D to turn of the head parking on the drive (this seems to be critical and is mentioned nowhere I could find in this thread)
6. Run Hddhackr and flash the new 320GB security partition (HDDSS.bin). Is capitalization important either in naming the file or referring to it? Notice "bin" is lower case here.
7. Restore the canned compatibility partition to the new drive somehow. Apparently by putting my regular hard drive back, booting to windows, connecting the 320GB drive as my second drive, and copying the hoffman partition 2 to the new drive.
8. Put the new drive in the XBox 360. Format it?

So my questions are:

A. Which version of what software do I use to put the Xbox 1 compatibility partition on the drive? I see notes about a 250 version and a 320 version of XPlorer 360, but it is very confusing which to use because of all the warnings about corrupting partitions. I would think I should use the 320 version, but it seems from reading that this only works for partition 3 and I should use the 250 version for partition 2. Which is it?

B. When I plug the drive into the XBox, do I have to format it? If I format it, will that just destroy what I just did to put the compatibility partition on there? What is the proper order? Do I have to put the drive in the xbox right after running hddhackr and then put it back in the computer to put the compatibility partition on there?

C. In order to run Xplorer 360, I would need to have both my windows drive and the new XBox Drive in the same PC, right? So now I have to borrow or buy another SATA cable, right? Are there any jumper settings I should worry about either on my PC drive or the new WD320 drive?

D. A note said that if you "don't have Xbox live" they have the update file you can burn to CD and use that to get the latest update on the compatibility software. I don't have a paid XBox Live account, but I have an XBox free login and can see the things that are free. Is that good enough to get said update, or is this only for XBox Gold people and I have to do it manually with a CD?

E. I never had a hard drive on my slim, so what happens to the profiles, game saves, etc that are in memory on XBox? Do I just have more storage and everything in memory is still there and I just select where stuff is and where to store it? I don't have to copy anything from memory to the drive except for new games where I can say store on the drive? What's the best way to manage this?

Thanks!

 

You would need to rename the file 320gb file to hddss.bin

With the 320gb connected you use Xplorer 360 Extreme for transferring partition 2. Only use that for partition 2.
If you are hacking a 320gb drive then you want to use Xplorer 360 320gb Edition for partition 3.
Also don’t use Xplorer 250gig edition on any other sized drive either, it will just corrupt the drive, same with the 320gig edition.

I usually do this but it not required,run hddhackr, format with xbox 360, then transfer the compatibility partition.Formatting doesn't mess up the compatibility partition.

If your pc has a sata cable for the dvd drive you can use that. There are no jumper settings.

That is for people that have no connection to the internet on the xbox or if their console is banned. The update will auto download when you play an xbox 1 game.

Your current profiles,game saves,ect will be there still you can choose to move them if you want. You can choose where to store games. You can keep everything on the hard drive if you want.

 

So now I'm stopped on an error: "Warning: LBA size seems to be an unsupported XBOX360 value. Please contact the authors!". This is on a Gateway GT5414E PC. I could not find anything in the BIOS that seemed to list anything related to AHCI or Legacy or anything else. I turned off the head parking with Widle3, but am afraid to ignore this error since I see a lot of other people getting it and so far none of the threads gave me an answer as to how to go from here.

 

Seems to be working now

I ignored the LBA error. I searched all over and someone who seemed like they know what they were talking about said the program was never updated to recognize that LBA size. It seemed to "take". I did not add the partitions because the hddhackr version says it does that automatically. I unplugged the drive from the PC and put it in the XBOX. It recognized the drive but it was not formatted. I formatted it and it said it had 298GB free I believe. It was just under 300. I figured the missing size was in the other partitions and the security sectors and/or attributed to the math of a Kilobyte being 1024 bytes. Seems nominal.

I shutoff the XBOX, took out the drive, and put it back in the PC. I ran XPlorer 360 Extreme 2. It saw only partition 1. I just ignored that and said restore partition 2. I pointed to the Hoffman partition clone and restored it. It said I would have to reload the drive to see any changes. I reloaded and not it saw partition 2 and partition 3. I wondered about partition 1, but chose to ignore that. I plugged the drive into a slim case and stuck it in the XBOX. Going into the storage options I could still see the drive. So I tried to play an XBOX 1 game and it said it needed an update. Once it did that, things seem to work. I'll test a few other old XBOX 1 games and then play some 360 games and see if it lets me store the games on the drive. So far so good!

 

Update

Hello. Great guide, thanks.

I have an small problem though, so I decided to join and ask right here.

The 20GB HDD that came with the first console I bought back at 2005 or 2006 recently started to behave, giving me E68 errors and stuff like that. Went ahead and followed this guide, I successfully replaced the HDD.

The thing is, even though I moved all the contents of Partition 2 and 3 into the new HDD, everything Kinect related stopped working. No avatars and stuff like that. If I plug in my Kinect, it ask for update.

My console is modded so I can't just connect to Live. I tried googling but meh. So I'm asking for help.

 

excuse me, i have jasper elite with 120gb and RGH with freestyle dash
it seems 120gb too small, and i want to change it with a bigger hdd like 320GB or 500GB
i can use external hdd through usb connection on my xbox, but i want my desk neat
can i just change my existing 120GB to 320GB or 500GB?

do i have to buy a replacement hdd only with western digital brand?can i use another brand?
thanks in advance

 

hey i got a 320GB WD Scorpio Blue and i got the flash drive with set to boots the hddhackr and the hddsss.bin for a 320 GB, i tried doing it on a laptop but NO ATA PRESENT then i plugged it to my desktop changes some settings in the BIOS but no luck still no ATA, any ideas ? all i really need is room.

 

Try different settings.Maybe a bios update can fix it or add some options.

 

well i tried changing the setting from RAID to IDE and AHCI to see what happens and that didn't help on the desktop tried to do it on the laptop too but no luck so idk what to do and i can't find the bios update for my Gateway , SATA RAID DRIVER , Chipset Driver, Chipset Device Software the drivers are from 2010, Chipset is a Intel G33

 

From the faq.

 

ok well i will try to update the drivers i can and give it another go, the hdd itself should be in which format NTFS or FAT32 ? and what should the bios setting be for the HDD RAID , IDE , or AHCI ?