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

battleponcho said:
A few technical questions for thread and flashing

1. Can I flash it from desktop? (desktop won't boot from USB)
2. is the official 250gb hdd, raw data or usable data?
3. When i flash my 320gb wd black, will it see it as a 250gb therefore only 230gb (est) be usable. (ya i get it that I can't use 320gb since no official hdd exists, question is will the os take the space it needs from 320gb and let me use 250gb.)
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1. No it has to be from dos, you could use a Windows 95, 98, ME disc to boot in to dos then load hddhackr / the files from a floppy disk. (or even download some dos boot disk / cd)
2. Not sure what you mean? its usable when you get it yes.
3.When you flash it the OS will see it as a 250gig drive, the extra space will just not be seen.

Tercero said:
Hopefully the threads still active. I just wanted to say thanks for the guide. I saw a video on this on Youtube, and decided to give it a try (after doing some research in Google). I bought a 250 gb Scorpio Blue at FutureShop (Best Buy) here in Canada. Got it at a better price than NewEgg or TigerDirect. I also bought a Xbox 360 S Hard Drive enclosure on ebay for $1. It encloses the drive and makes it fit perfectly into the 360 slim without having to shim the drive in a careless manner. My question is about VMPlayer. I built a .vmx image using Dos 6.22. Can I use this to do the rest of the apps with? Anyone try it that way instead of using the USB (or floppy) boot? Thanks, J.
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You can not flash the security sector using a virtual machine, you have to boot your PC in to Dos to do that.
 
Damn. I'm actually working on the vmx image right now. Didn't have a 1.44 floppy, and the flp/img (in vm) for dos doesn't work worth a crap. I guess I can save myself the hassle of trying to get it to work now. I'll just make a boot floppy and go from there. Thanks for the quick reply. Gives me something to work on for a couple of hours. TTYL. J.
 
InsaneNutter

Raw data is when a hdd is advertised as 500gb (raw data), but roughly 480gb can actually be used, so once you install OS you have 470gb usable data.

I guess i'll try with a cd boot. thx.
 
battleponcho said:
InsaneNutter

Raw data is when a hdd is advertised as 500gb (raw data), but roughly 480gb can actually be used, so once you install OS you have 470gb usable data.

I guess i'll try with a cd boot. thx.
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After the drive is partitioned and formatted for the Xbox 360 you should have about 228gb to use.
 
All went well InsaneNutter. I see that not all the games will play (are supported), not a big problem though. I'll just have to comb through the list of what's compatible and what isn't. Again thanks. Great guide. Straight forward. Easy to follow. J.
 
OK, I checked the list against the XBOX (1) games that won't work and it's down to 9. Not a big deal. Thanks for the link to wiki. Any word on jtag for the slim or is that just not a possiblity.
 
The only original Xbox game I would like to work that doesn't is Midtown Madness 3, I mainly wanted to play it on live... but as live for original Xbox games is no more its not really that big of a deal now.

Nothing is impossible, however I really would not hold my breath about another hack like that happing any time soon.
 
Is it possible to connect the WD hdd to a desktop instead of a laptop, because the only laptop that i have is an ibook g4 which is ide, but i have a sata desktop
 
Followed your instruction and used a 160GB WD HDD and it works as a 120GB hdd! Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I have learned much! :D
 
jfluehr said:
Is it possible to connect the WD hdd to a desktop instead of a laptop, because the only laptop that i have is an ibook g4 which is ide, but i have a sata desktop
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Yup i presumed most people would use a desktop anyway, go for it.
 
Thanks for an excellent tutorial, my xbox 360 successfully dectects the drive but when I try to play Shenmue2 (burned game) I get an error message that this original game is not supported on your xbox. An update may solve this issue (something like that). I do get Xbox1 logo before getting this error message which means I have properly recovered partition2. Has anyone tried Shemnue2 or get the same error? I would appreciate if someone can help me fix this.
 
It could be a problem with your burned game or drive firmware, pirated Xbox 1 games do not work with all drive firmwares from what i remember. Do you have an original Xbox game that is not pirated to verify everything works correctly?

You might also need the latest backwards compatibility update from here: Update the console software for your Xbox 360 console
 
Unfortunately I don't have any original Xbox game but my Xbox-360 recognize Shenmue2 game and was given an error regarding the compatibility issue. Do you still think it's a problem of bad burn.

Also by firmware of drive you mean DVD-ROM or hard drive. Referring to your provided link, it's a general update from microsoft (nothing related to backward compatibility or they are providing single package for all). Should I connect to Xbox-live to automatically for update?
 
The link i provided is for the last backwards compatibility update released, i presume as your Xbox can read the backup of the game it should play it. The update you get from live will be the same as the one linked to.
 
I got a question that may or may not have been answered: I used the software to create a bootable USB. Before I used this program I did that the hard way, through command line or whatever it is called. However, when I start the program I don't get to choose FAT, only FAT32. Does it really matter? Or must I use FAT as a file system?

By the way, the USB pen I use is a Kingston 4 GB.
 
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Okay, got the USB-thingy to work. Now, I got the USB booted into DOS it seems it can't detect the hard drive I got connected to my computer. I have turned on on legacy or something. But my problem is that I can only choose between IDE, RAID and AHCI. There's no option for ATA or SATA. Any fix or solutions for this?
 
Got it working. Thanks for your help. All I had to do was changing the bootsequence and the cable I used. I hooked it up so that the hard drive became secondary. Heh. Finally, after 5 different computers, 3 which had the same bios, 1 with another type of hard drive and my own stationary computer I got it through. Thanks for a great tutorial, and BigRod for suggestions/help. :)

Now, got to get the partition 2 to work so that I can finally play Crash Bandicoot and Halo for Xbox for the very first time. Next time I rather buy the official hard drive from MS. x) Made a mistake during restoring. Forgot to run the program as admin. Anyway, thanks for the help I received and thanks for the tutorial, again. :p :)
 
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