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

Got the cable.... was hoping for an answer when I got home LOL, haven't checked back here all day. Oh well.

 

I really would like to be able to perform this to upgrade from my old as dirt 20gb HD to a 250gb HD but I don't have the exact tools called for and am not exactly sure what I would need.

First off, I have 3 computers: iMac (2008), ASUS Laptop, and an old Dell with no SATA capabilities. I was thinking of using the laptop for this tutorial. My plan was to take out the internal HD and put in the 250gb HD that would be modified for my Xbox 360, boot from my thumb drive, and flash the drive through DOS. That step would not present any problems as far as I can tell.

After that is where it gets a little complicated and I am not so sure what my options are. I would need to put back the laptop's system HD to boot into Windows to be able to use Xplorer360. I was thinking I could possibly use an external 2.5" USB enclosure for the backup of the original 20gb HD and restoration of the modified 250gb HD, but I don't know if Xplorer360 would recognize it via that method. While I am on that subject, is taking out my system HD in the first place even necessary for flashing, or could flashing be accomplished via the external enclosure? I don't know if DOS has that capability.

What is a route you would take? Would it be worth looking into buying a SATA card for my old Dell or a SATA Cardbus for my laptop? I would appreciate any guidance or information that could be provided on my situation.

 

First of all GREAT GUIDE! So, after looking at this thread for a while and seeing what errors people have been encountering and weighing the pros and cons, I decided to give this a try. I bought a scropio blue drive 250 GB made in OCT 2010.
I went through the hddhackr flash process but with it gets to the end instead of say congratulations....etc, I get a error message "Bad/Wrong Modelnumber offset!"
How can I fix this, I feel like I am really close to successfully finishing this so any help would be appreciated

Thanks

 

Help guys. This is as far as I can get

Screen shot was taken off my older hp laptop which gave me the upper and lower error lines. When trying to flash from my desktop I keep getting the lower error only. Desktop is running a asus p5kpl-cm motherboard with intel g31 chipset . Have searched thoroughly through both bios on laptop and desktop and found no turn offs like you suggested in your tutorial. And have tried to turn off anything I thought might be relative. At a loss and need some advice.

 

I have the same problem as You. Disk production date: 15 OCT 2010...



In HDDHackr

 

Yea , man I've looked every where for a answer, but I can not figure it out everything is fine until that last sentence bad/wrong modelnumber offset. I tried on three different sytems ranging from my new i7 p55 chipset to a 2004 systems and I keep getting the same result and this point it seems any drives made recently are not working with the program and hddss.bin. I'm about to give up, I've spent to much time on this, I'd rather pay 300 for nice new system than go through this agony lol.

 

I have the same issue. My drive was manufactured on Oct 19, 2010. WD2500BEVT. I get the same message every time. Bad/Wrong Modelnumber offset! Would I be better off, returning this drive and trying to get an older one? thoughts? Thanks guys!

 

Over at the "official" place where hddhackr is hosted others have also written about this and the author requested the undo.bins from these new HDDs for research.
That post was made today, so we will probably see an updated hddhackr soon.

 

The author has fixed the Bad/Wrong Modelnumber issue for the new drives in HddHackr_v1.25_Build_20101114. Damn good work by him. Sorted in less than a day!!

His notes:

* Extended Modelnumber String detection
(new hard drives have two Modelnumber strings)

 

You can download it here. Great work by him!

HDDHackr v1.25 Build 20101114

 

Ok, After failing with a BEVT (MAR 2010 drive) and getting nothing but a e68 error over and over, I decided to get a BPVT 250gb. I am getting the SAME DAMN ERROR!! I am using the latest HDDHACKR v1.25 Build 20101114 and the latest 250gb hddss.bin. Everything goes fine in the flash process, but when I connect the drive, I get an e68 error. If I try to reflash, it tells me that the drive is already ready for xbox 360. It's all exactly the same as my BEVT 250gb. I tried unplugging all USB devices, I've tried using HDMI instead of VGA. I connected the drive and Xplorer360 opened it fine. I used an ECS 945g-m3 motherboard to flash the drives. The chipset it has is Intel® 945G & ICH7. Is the cable bad? Any suggestions?

here is a link to the motherboard ECS Web Site

I just reverted the BPVT back to the original firmware, reflashed it with HDDHACKR v1.25 Build 20101114 and once it was done and it said to turn off the pc and plug it into the xbox, I turned off the pc, disconnected the sata and power cable and plugged it into the xbox hard drive adapter and didnt bother putting it in the case(as usual) and tried it again. Same e68 error.

 

I have made sure the cables are connected properly. I've tried the hard drive and adapter on a friends xbox, but I have not tried his hard drive on mine(he is afraid I'll damage it or something, he's weird). I ordered a new hard drive case from buy.com and will give it a shot once I get it. My xbox is a newly refurbed one, so I am guessing they tested this thing before they sent it back.

 

thanks for the tutorial. i tried looking thru the slew of posts, but theres more than 50 pagtes, so i think my same error has been talked about before.

so i created the thumb drive, used a 2 gig pny. got the files n stuff as instructed. got the 250 gig scropio blue 2500bevt, as said that the type will work.
so i boot off the thumb drive, and type hddhackr and hit enter
it freezes right there
perhasp i cannot set the mode right with my netbook. an acer aspire, model one. i can disable ACHI or whatever them 4 lettets are, that enables ide. theres no bios options for the memory. so i have it to boot ot the thumb drive. the boot order is easy. but it hangs right after i type hddhackr. the red led on the thumb drive blinks 4 times. i have let this sit over an hour in hopes that it was 'thinking'.

im using hddhacker 1.25 build 20101114 and the hddss 250 gig bin. i flashed my netbook bios to the latest bios. this had no effect. its the only machine that has sata, i guess i could get an sata card, will that work? i dont want to spend another 25 bucks if i dont have to.

 

Got the new hard drive case and both the BEVT and BPVT work flawlessly on my xbox. I guess the last case had a faulty connector. I bought this new one on buy.com from the seller sunvalleytek. I forgot who I got the original from, but it had to be a different seller because the two cases are different colors and came in different boxes.

 

wow i can't even get past the first part, im lost at choose the USB Drive Boot Files\MS-DOS folder as the location. Can't get past that part, it choose the drive but it says There are no valid DOS system files at the specified location. pls help thought i knew a descent amount about comps but I guess not.

 

Where do i get the MS-DOS files at?

 

I'm very interested in doing this, as I have a new 4GB XBOX Slim on its way. I just had two questions.

1.) Would I see any significant increases by going with a 16MB, 7200RPM drive or a 32MB, 5400RPM drive, or is the drive in the tutorial (8MB, 5400RPM) the best choice?

2.) If I don't care about playing XBOX 1 games, do I need to be concerned with the Partition 2 stuff mentioned in the tutorial?

Thanks!

 

Regarding missing ms-dos files, actually, it comes with Bootable USB drive creator tool after you unzip. I got same error says the no ms-dos file. even i copied the ms-dos file to the USB drive. I don't think that tool works as no matter whether you choose to run Quick Format or not, the creator will always format the USB drive, so the just copied the ms-dos folder will always be deleted before creating bootable usb drive. I think it is a bug in this tool.

does anyone have other alternative tool for creating bootable usb drive creator ?

thanks,