360 20GB trouble

Dark Scyth

Dark Scyth

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Mar 3, 2009
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I have a 20GB hard drive but I can't get it to format. I can get it to load up the 360 dashboard with the hard drive in but it literally takes over 2 minutes to boot the dashboard, the hard drive shows up and says how much memory is left but when I click on it, it temporarily freezes and after it finally loads is says 0KB has been used for anything. I've tried to format it but after a minute or so it says it can't be formatted. It's a Hitachi.

I also have another drive that just tries to spool up over and over but it doesn't get anywhere. This one is a Fujitsu.

Any ides on how to fix either of these problems?
 
If I were to do that wouldn't I have to write sector 16-24 to the disc drive? I'm not really sure how to do that. Also for formatting them, i'd have to run Windows 7 (in my case) from a flash drive or disc wouldn't I?
 
Do not format with windows or any formatting tools.Open it with xplorer360 and see if you can delete folders and files in the partition 3.
 
I can delete folders from partiton 3, I backed up all of the gamesaves and profiles and practically deleted everything in partition 3 but it's still horrifically slow, I tried to play Reach with the hard drive in and it literally took 3 minutes before the disc drive started even spinning, that is how slow the console is.
 
Lol i guess ive gotten lucky I've formatted a couple 360 HDD's with my laptop because I can never get xplorer360 to work (only 1 time ever has xplorer360 worked for me) the last 20gig hard drive i got with a RRoD console i bought for $25 I took it out of the Microsoft case and formatted it to WBFS (Wii format) then put it back in the Microsoft case and put it on my 360 and it can up with unreconised drive and asked me to format it and I did and that drive has worked perfect since then. I figure the xplorer360 hasn't worked for me because I have to put the HDD's in a external USB case to work on my laptop (I figure it has to do with the case controller card) I haven't tried to do anything with my HDD's since I built my home PC
 
Dark Scyth said:
I can delete folders from partiton 3, I backed up all of the gamesaves and profiles and practically deleted everything in partition 3 but it's still horrifically slow, I tried to play Reach with the hard drive in and it literally took 3 minutes before the disc drive started even spinning, that is how slow the console is.
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I think its time for a new drive,these 20gb drives are 3+ years old.You can either buy this Amazon.com: Xbox 360 Hard Drive 250GB - Not for Xbox Slim: Video Games or do the hddhackr on a new drive.
 
I suppose i'll give the WBFS a shot as I do already have WBFS manager and nothing else seems to work, it'll be interesting to find out. I was looking for 360 hard drives yesterday, i'll have to get one soon, it's sorta bullshit though that the only reason I need it is to play Firefight Matchmaking on Halo Reach, all the information is on the disc and 360 now utilizes 360 flash drives and such but it's still not good enough.
 
It's nice having a 250gb all games run faster and less risk of ruining a disk,installing each game takes 5-10 minutes.
 
I know about how long it is to install a game as I install them to my portable hard drive if I intend on playing them for long durations, oddly enough my portable hard drive gets better write/read speeds then my 360 hard drive. I probably will get a bigger hard drive sometime but as of the moment I can't afford a 250GB and i'm not going to buy a 20/60GB so i'll have to wait a little bit but i'll probably end up getting one soon.

Nevermind I actually fixed the drive. After I formatted the drive it still said it had 9.xGB left on the hard drive even though I formatted it, I thought this was pretty strange so I put it in the PC, which said it was about 16GB and stuffed it until it couldn't hold anything else onto the drive, after that I reformatted it to FAT32. Then I put it into the 360 and it said "Hard Drive: Unformatted Device," after that I formatted the device and it actually works correctly now.
 
Yes you can put the hard drive in the sata port with out installing windows 7 I've heard alot of people say you will fry the drive being a laptop drive only runs 5 volt and a Home PC uses 12 volt but it works just fine I just did that when I had to save everything off my laptop and it worked just fine and its because the sata power rail's on a power supply still have the 5 volt and 12 volt line the hard drive will only use the one that is needed
It could be the 360 has it be reflowed ive heard of the Sata controller having problems after being reflowed with a heat gun
 
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rick550 said:
i always thought it messed up the drive if you format in windows,i guess i was wrong.
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I may be wrong about this but I don't think that sector 16 - 24 gets modified when you format the drive and obviously the drive was intended for 360 in the first place. I'm not sure honestly if this is the reason why but it's just the best guess I can make.
 
I dont think it does anything to the sectors you may have to restore the xbox 1 partition (partition 2) if you want to play old games but all hard drives have the same sectors, At least that's what I've noticed at work and we wipe hard drives all day long, at work we recycle PC, TV's, and pretty much anything that has anything to do with electronics. And the hard drive wipe we do is better then the military wipe and we run it 3 times on all hard drives to make sure there is no personal information left on them
 
i think i messed up a 20gb by using xplorer360 250gb on it

i tried formatting the hd with windows to fat32 but it stays on the xbox 360 screen
 
i think i got it working again.i just used the trick with holding down the sync button and powering the console on,it says unformatted now

i did lose some space tho it says capacity 13.9gb
 
Thats normal, when formatted the 20gb is that size.

You will never get the advertised space on a hard drive, plus some space is used for other partitions which do not show up under memory management on the 360.
 
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