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

[slimwadey]

I just bought a 120GB hdd from fleabay for £10 ! , this is getting hacked and put into an Elite casing for selling as my Elite did not come with a HDD !!
I have used this guide for 4 seperate HDd's including re hacking a 250gb that i messed up and it is a great guide
Top Job Nutter

 

[Bronco x]

I was just linked here from 7S. Great tutorial.

I just had one question. Is it possible for me to buy the new Xbox Slim without the hard drive and just take apart my 120GB drive and use it in the slim? Would a 20GB Xbox drive work in the slim as well?

 

[omegaman7]

Something curious. I upgraded my friends xbox, to the 250Gb WD BEVT drive. He just texted me that his saved game is gone. This is his question

"I turned my xbox on and my halo save is gone! : -( i dont know what to do lol!"

He's been using an Xbox 360 for quite some time now. He knows more about them than I do. I find this quite troubling. Could the hack of something to do with this? Or a possible update which "I" allowed? Immediately after connecting the ethernet cord, an update was available. I decided to allow it, to see just how good this hack was. Is it possible that M$ has already come up with a workaround?

 

[InsaneNutter]

I was just linked here from 7S. Great tutorial.

I just had one question. Is it possible for me to buy the new Xbox Slim without the hard drive and just take apart my 120GB drive and use it in the slim? Would a 20GB Xbox drive work in the slim as well?

Yes, any official or hacked drive will work in the slim, just take it out the enclosure and slot it in to the slim.

Something curious. I upgraded my friends xbox, to the 250Gb WD BEVT drive. He just texted me that his saved game is gone. This is his question

"I turned my xbox on and my halo save is gone! : -( i dont know what to do lol!"

He's been using an Xbox 360 for quite some time now. He knows more about them than I do. I find this quite troubling. Could the hack of something to do with this? Or a possible update which "I" allowed? Immediately after connecting the ethernet cord, an update was available. I decided to allow it, to see just how good this hack was. Is it possible that M$ has already come up with a workaround?

Save for which Halo game?

If its either Halo or Halo 2 the saves are located in Partition 3 > Compatibility. Maybe if you upgraded his drive you did not transfer the saves? Xbox 1 saves are not saved where 360 saves are.

Halo 3, ODST and Reach do not create save files, all progress is saved to the players profile.

It will not be anything to do with this hack anyway, so no need to worry in that regard.

 

[omegaman7]

He knew that when I started his drive fresh, that everything was gone. It is my understanding, that since he has gotten the drive, his saved game has disappeared. Any thoughts on that? Why would a saved game up and disappear? Western Digital makes really good drives, so I really don't think that faulty hardware has anything to do with this.

I did not transfer saves. I tried to, but the Native Fujitsu drive (120Gb) failed in the process. I heard nasty clicking, then no software would recognize the drive(Xplorer360/bios). Doomed drive. There is however another possibility. He hoped to recover his saves from xbox live. To his surprise, he was not able. I will try and get this critical information from him LOL!

 

[InsaneNutter]

If you play a game on the 360 thats been updated on live, then you play a non updated copy of the game it can erase your save depending on the game, some games even warn you about this. I can confirm this happens on Gears of War 2 and Need for Speed Undercover, not sure if that is the case with Halo.

If his hard drive still works its very unlikely anything is wrong with it, if that was the case he would have probably lost saves for everything else.

Halo 3, ODST and Reach dont create save files, the only files they save are replays and stuff like that. All other Halo data is saved to the profile so if his profile is still present that also confirms its nothing to do with the hard drive.

 

[omegaman7]

He's currently trying another game, but Halo 3 is confirmed to be his current problem. He says his saved games disappear. In which he has to start over. I told him what you've said. He seems insistent that something has changed...
He told me he hasn't recovered his profile from live yet. His house doesn't have internet service Halo 3 seems to be the only game doing it to him.

Thanks for your assistance

 

[the3dolla]

soooo..

I have a supported WD 120GB, I flashed the 120GB version of the hddss.bin - turned the computer off. Reconnected my Win7 hard drive (also changed it back to AHCI/Native - non-legacy mode) brought up Xplorer360, (all three partitions shown) restored partion 2 from the 170GB download in the OP, but it just sits there "Restoring Partition" The longest I've left it is about 20 minutes.. Anyone know what's up?

Thanks

 

[hharry]

Hi thanks for the great tut...Quick question, I didn`t do the xplorer bit to backup the Xbox 1 emulator. Now that i've changed my mind (after installing all my games,saves etc) Can't I just connect to live and insert an original xbox game and let it sort itself out?

Thanks

 

[InsaneNutter]

I have a supported WD 120GB, I flashed the 120GB version of the hddss.bin - turned the computer off. Reconnected my Win7 hard drive (also changed it back to AHCI/Native - non-legacy mode) brought up Xplorer360, (all three partitions shown) restored partion 2 from the 170GB download in the OP, but it just sits there "Restoring Partition" The longest I've left it is about 20 minutes.. Anyone know what's up?

Thanks

Try it again, Xplorer can be a bit of a buggy application at times.

Hi thanks for the great tut...Quick question, I didn`t do the xplorer bit to backup the Xbox 1 emulator. Now that i've changed my mind (after installing all my games,saves etc) Can't I just connect to live and insert an original xbox game and let it sort itself out?

Thanks

Nope thats exactly why you need to restore the emulator, it will fail to update the emulator without the original files there.
You can restore partition 2 without it erasing all your saves anyway.

 

[hharry]

Nope thats exactly why you need to restore the emulator, it will fail to update the emulator without the original files there.
You can restore partition 2 without it erasing all your saves anyway.[/QUOTE]


O.K. Thanks

 

[mamamamia88]

does the new 4gb 360 even come with the case to hold the harddrive? I broke down and traded in my old 360 and bought the 250gb slim but am curious as to whether or not it has the shell to hold it

 

[InsaneNutter]

does the new 4gb 360 even come with the case to hold the harddrive? I broke down and traded in my old 360 and bought the 250gb slim but am curious as to whether or not it has the shell to hold it

Nope it doesn't, however you can connect the drive without the shell as seen in the pics in the first post.
A few people have done that and had no problems.

 

[tortor]

thanks!!

Nutter, Thanks for the great guide!!

finally got my hdd casing today, hook it up with the hacked HDD (took me about 30mins for the installation, did not refer to any guide).

On the xbox, go to memory setting ... 228GB!!!!!!! yeah my arcade has converted to elite now!!!

thanks again!!!

 

[scientist]

Thanks for the tutorial, there is just one thing that i dont really understand, and maybe one of you can clarify the following.

After i finish flashing the western digital harddrive with hdhackr, can i just plug my new drive into my xbox360 slim? or do i have to do something else first before i plug it in? do i have to partition or format the drive first or will the xbox do it?

I have no other harddrive to transfer data from, i only own this one xbox360 slim 4GB system. All my data is on the 4gb built in flash on the 360 slim. So i do i just ignore the data transfer section?

Thanks in advance.

 

[omegaman7]

I had to do the same thing buddy. The flasher puts partitions 1, 2, 3 on the Hard drive. The xbox will see it and take it from there

If you play Halo 3 don't expect it to save your games though. Still not sure how to combat this. I'm hoping that my buddy can recover his profile, and take it from there...

 

[ray888]

Select Drive > Open > Harddrive or Memorycard

We are going to backup the Xbox 1 emulator so you will still be able to play Xbox 1 games on the 360.

To do this select Drive > Backup Partition 2 and save the backup.

If you want to backup your profiles, saves, arcade games, demos, dlc and videos you basically want to dump your Partition 3 > Content folder, I had to dump a few folders at the time because Xplorer 360 had random crashes for me.

Now shutdown windows, disconnect your original 360 drive and connect the hacked 250gb drive.

When windows has loaded up again load Xplorer 360 Extreme again, remembering to run it with administrator rights and select Drive > Restore Partition 2 and select the backup you made from your old 20gig drive.

It is important you just close Xplorer360 after that, massing about with anything else will corrupt Partition 3.

Now Download Xplorer 360 250gb Edition, this works fine with Partition 3 on 250gig drives, however trying to modify anything on partition 0 or 2 will just corrupt the drive!! Trust me save yourself some time and don’t do it.

Also don’t use Xplorer 250gig edition on any other sized drive either, it will just corrupt the drive.

If you do corrupt you drive just connect it to your Xbox 360 and format it.

After you have restored any content you can now shut your pc down and put the 250gig drive in your 360’s drive enclosure, it might be an idea to test everything is working correctly before re assembling the enclosure.

The hacked drive:

Sorry for being a noob but does "dumping" files mean dragging and dropping any folder from Partition 3 (in Xplorer 360 Extreme) of the original 20GB HDD into another folder on the PC? I tried "copy" and "paste" initially onto the PC folder but Windows tells me I cannot. ATM I'm in the process of dragging and dropping the Partition 3 folders. The content folder of 13.2Gb is taking over 15 mins to drag and drop into the PC folder. Hopefully I can then drag them back onto the new hacked 250GB HDD using Xplorer 360 250gb Edition. Lets see.

BTW I have an XBox transfer cable imported from HK (looks like the MS one) but when I connect it to the hacked 250GB HDD (in an imported casing) with the original 20GB HDD still on the console, no transfer instruction/box comes up when I power up the console. Why is that? Do I need the transfer CD disk with the software?

Thanks.

 

[InsaneNutter]

After i finish flashing the western digital harddrive with hdhackr, can i just plug my new drive into my xbox360 slim? or do i have to do something else first before i plug it in? do i have to partition or format the drive first or will the xbox do it?

Ideally you want to restore the data to partition 2 for the Xbox 1 emulator to work, however you dont have to do that.

If you play Halo 3 don't expect it to save your games though. Still not sure how to combat this. I'm hoping that my buddy can recover his profile, and take it from there...

Halo 3 saves on your profile, so if you transfer you profile across you have your Halo 3 save.
Replays and stuff are saved on the hard drive, I still have all my replays and stuff from the Halo 3 beta in 2007.
Your friend could have lost his Halo 3 progress for many reasons, i'm sure its not from transferring his profile from an old hard drive to a new one though.

Sorry for being a noob but does "dumping" files mean dragging and dropping any folder from Partition 3 (in Xplorer 360 Extreme) of the original 20GB HDD into another folder on the PC? I tried "copy" and "paste" initially onto the PC folder but Windows tells me I cannot. ATM I'm in the process of dragging and dropping the Partition 3 folders. The content folder of 13.2Gb is taking over 15 mins to drag and drop into the PC folder. Hopefully I can then drag them back onto the new hacked 250GB HDD using Xplorer 360 250gb Edition. Lets see.

BTW I have an XBox transfer cable imported from HK (looks like the MS one) but when I connect it to the hacked 250GB HDD (in an imported casing) with the original 20GB HDD still on the console, no transfer instruction/box comes up when I power up the console. Why is that? Do I need the transfer CD disk with the software?

Thanks.

Yes it means drag and drop to somewhere on your PC. I had to do a few folders at a time.
If your console has the latest 9199 dashboard you can go in to memory managment and your hard drive should appear there when connected with the transfer cable.

 

[omegaman7]

See thats just it nutter. I didn't transfer anything. The drive started completely fresh. Supposedly he can't locate anything. With Halo 3, he has to start over every time. I don't know anything about the xbox 360 or the profiles therein. I did this for him, because I'm an avid googler, and can generally figure much out. This halo thing sure is irritating. He still hasn't hooked it up to the net, to try and retrieve is profile. He seems to think that xbox live will make everything right...

 

[ray888]

Yes it means drag and drop to somewhere on your PC. I had to do a few folders at a time.
If your console has the latest 9199 dashboard you can go in to memory managment and your hard drive should appear there when connected with the transfer cable.

My Dashboard says 2.0.9199.0. That would be the latest?

When I plug the Transfer cable to the new 250GB HDD, with the old one still on the console, it shows up as a USB memory. Doesn't tell me how much memory left or the size of the HDD (when I use this drive on the console, it tells me there's 228GB free, of course without anything else oin it like profiles etc). Does that mean it is safe to transfer the original 20GB HDD to this new HDD using the cable? I hear that if its transferred using the transfer cable, the 20GB HDD is wiped clean. I just don't want to stuff up without any means of restoring the content of my 20GB HDD. If its safe, it would be great especially for noobs, save a lot of time instead of sitting infront of the PC making sure that transferring files via Xplorer360 doesn't stuff up, one file at a time.

ATM I'm using this transfer cable on the PC using Xplorer 360.