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

Going by what others have said in the past you will have no luck trying to hack an official Microsoft drive, this only works with Western Digital hard drives.
 
InsaneNutter said:
Going by what others have said in the past you will have no luck trying to hack an official Microsoft drive, this only works with Western Digital hard drives.
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So there is nothing I can do? Well damn. I have a free 250GB HDD laying around. I could probably sell it but it's of no use since it's not going to work on an Xbox. Thanks for the help.
 
Thank you for this guide. I had a few hiccups hacking my drive, but I think everything went ok. I wanted to share my experience and ask a few questions.

My biggest problem came from misinterpreting the "Creating a bootable USB drive" section. I had placed the hard drive I intended to hack in a USB enclosure and assumed that this was the "bootable USB drive" we were creating. Now after going through the whole process, I realize you likely meant using a separate USB flash drive to create the bootable drive, and NOT the hard drive to be hacked. So I ended up with a bootable hard drive plugged into my SATA port trying to hack itself (and nothing plugged into USB); hddhackr still seemed to flash the firmware from hdds.bin successfully (but as I realized later, it it wouldn't format the drive or create partitions). Xplorer360 wouldn't recognize the drive, so I ended up putting the drive in my xbox, which said it was unformatted; I formatted it, and then Xplorer360 would recognize it, but it didn't show any Partition 0/2/3 listed. Trying to restore Partition 2 from my backup did create a Partition 2 and 3, but there was no Partition 0. After researching this a bit, I ended up creating a bootable USB flash drive with the above instructions and went through hddhackr again. It let me create Partition 0/2/3 and everything seems ok now.

One problem that arose from this is that I lost my undo.bin when I put the drive in my xbox and formatted it. I think I found the file I would need on the page you referenced with people's uploaded undo.bin files. Thanks for that.

So my thoughts/questions:
- Clarifying the "Creating a bootable USB drive" section would be helpful so that other people don't do the same thing I did. Maybe just a line saying that the bootable drive is a separate drive from the hard drive we are hacking and should be a USB flash drive, etc. When I initially read through the guide, I was very confused whether there were times that I needed to plug in my hard drive via USB vs SATA. It all makes sense now, but I would have saved a lot of time and avoided some mistakes if this was more clear.
-Does my story above sound like my drive is ok to use in the xbox? I was worried the first time through when there was no Partition 0, so I want to make sure I don't screw everything up. I've plugged it in and it seems to work, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.
-I have an xbox transfer cable and an extra xbox hard drive case. Is there any advantage to transferring data from my old hard drive via Windows and Xplorer360 vs using the transfer cable and letting the xbox do it? The guide mentions errors when transferring Partition 3 data via Xplorer360, so I wasn't sure if doing it via the xbox transfer cable was less error prone?

Anyway, thanks for the guide. I'm new to the xbox DIY scene, and as I've seen here, I've just barely scratched the surface. ;)
 
The drive should be fine. Transferring using the xbox is faster. Only use a microsoft branded xbox 360 transfer cable.Any other cable wont work(only works on pc).
 
I'm hoping you guys can help me out here, I'm at a loss. I'm trying to hack a WD VelociRaptor 300GB HDD (WD3000BLFS) and format it as a 250GB Xbox 360 HDD. So I extracted HDDHackr v1.40 and the 250GB security sector to my flash drive, hooked up my HDD directly to my PC's motherboard, made sure it was set to IDE in the BIOS, booted to my flash drive and flashed my HDD as instructed in the tutorial. Didn't run into any error messages, it looked like everything was successful. So I shut off my PC and threw the HDD in my Xbox 360S and for some reason my Xbox won't detect the HDD. I know it was seated properly, I could feel and hear the HDD spinning up when I turned on the Xbox, but when I check storage devices I can't find it. I have two of these exact same HDD's, so I tried the same process with the second HDD and got the same result. So I restored the original firmware and ran the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool, did a full scan followed by a full erase, then tried the exact same process of flashing the HDD. Still nothing. I thought maybe it was the PC I was using since it's pretty old, so I restored the original firmware to the HDD again and hooked it up to a different PC that is much newer. Made sure the drive wasn't set to AHCI in the BIOS, flashed the 250GB security sector without a problem, and yet my Xbox still won't recognize the HDD. Any tips on where I might be going wrong? I really don't want to shell out for a Xbox 360 HDD when I have two 10k WD VelociRaptors, either of which should work just fine.
 
Try creating the 3 partitions using hddhackr. If it still doesnt detect it you might need to use an external power source and a sata cable as those drives use more power than 5400 / 7200 rpm drives.
 
Western Digital Velociraptor hard drives require a 12v power source in addition to the 5v power most laptop sized hard drives and SSD's require. Your hard drive likely isn't even spinning up. You will likely need to use another drive, or manually wire up the 12v power line to your cable and possibly inside the 360.
 
Hi everybody, just bought my WD5000LPVX-08V0T 500gb yesterday and it doesn't work.

First of all i do was flash it, then when i see xbox 360 doesn't recognize i tried making partitions and nothing, this is a bit frustrating.

I've read all pages of this forum talking about this HDD and i think that some older models are recognized but the newest like 08V0T not.

Sorry for my bad english.
 
leomessi10 said:
Hi everybody, just bought my WD5000LPVX-08V0T 500gb yesterday and it doesn't work.

First of all i do was flash it, then when i see xbox 360 doesn't recognize i tried making partitions and nothing, this is a bit frustrating.

I've read all pages of this forum talking about this HDD and i think that some older models are recognized but the newest like 08V0T not.

Sorry for my bad english.
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I don't think this is a problem with your drive. I succeeded with the 320gb LPVX. I had a simlar problem to you when following this procedure. It is not very clear from the instruction for using hddhackr, but you need to run this program twice on your new drive. Run it once to flash the drive, then run it a second time to create the partitions. Then follow the rest of the instructions to set up the partition data.
 
Dubie said:
I don't think this is a problem with your drive. I succeeded with the 320gb LPVX. I had a simlar problem to you when following this procedure. It is not very clear from the instruction for using hddhackr, but you need to run this program twice on your new drive. Run it once to flash the drive, then run it a second time to create the partitions. Then follow the rest of the instructions to set up the partition data.
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I've already done, and still not working.


Mine LPVX was made in 11/2014, and it's 500gb, i think the HDDSS.bin is out of date, needs to be updated to run the latest HDD coming to shops.
 
santoscordon said:
So, I worked all day but finally got my 300gb velociraptor to be seen as a 250GB drive. Works nicely...ish.
Note: hddhackr does NOT work on an HP ENVY14.  Be warned. Had to dig up and use an older lenovo to flash.
So, for those that want to try this, you should know that the older Xboxes (not sure about the new ones) do not send enough power to the harddrive for the velociraptor to run. When I first plugged it in, I was giddy with excitement until I saw that the xbox thought there was no harddrive in there. I was thinking of soldering (Saw another post where someone did that) but didn't feel like opening my xbox and taking on the risk of soldering. So instead I did the following:
1. Took out the old 20GB HDD form the xbox enclosure
2. Drilled a little of the enclosure so that I could expose the sata connector from the outside.
3. Put my flashed velociraptor in a separate enclosure (which supplies 12V)
4. Feed a SATA cable from the separate enclosure and plug it in to the exposed connector on the xbox.

View attachment 7941
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I'm doing a mod for my velociraptor as well, but I wonder do you have to turn on the hard drive enclosure separately? do you turn it on before you turn on the xbox itself? whats your procedure?
I'm almost done with my mod, just need to run a 12 volt line..: https://digiex.net/guides-reviews/c...0-phat-falcon-mod-show-tell-pseudo-guide.html
 
Could someone help I used HDDhackr got my Western digital drive WD5000LPVX flashed not a problem its a Xbox 360 S 4GB there was no other HDD installed this one is the first so after I flashed I put it in the xbox it recongizes the HDD at the storage screen as unformatted on the left side and the word Microsoft on the right I went to my options for the drive on the xbox to format it when I did that the next screen is asking for a serial number is it the actual western digital SN on the sticker of the drive or after it got flashed to a hitachi is it looking for that serial number or is it the xbox 360 serial number.It is hooked up through xbox live I should mention.

edit
never mind post # 10 I seen its the serial number for the xbox I'll try that
 
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1. Is the boot process likely to work in a laptop if I simply pull the laptop drive and replace with this new drive to boot hddhackr? I have a ton of HDDs in my main rig that I hate to mess with and an SATA hotswap, so I figured I could do the windows part with the hotswap, then stick the drive in my old Acer laptop to boot for the 2nd part. My main reason for doing this is I despise MS for using these damn 5400RPM drives. I might not be able to use an SSD, but I at least want 7200RPM. I'll take any little advantage I can get for access.

2. Also, the guide didn't seem very specific on connecting a regular 2.5 drive in a slim console. Do they fit correctly without the shell the 360 ones use?

3. Is this detectable by MS? I'm guessing it's not, but I had to ask.

p.s. It's 2015 and it's still not possible to do something like this without booting an old school ms-dos program? REALLY? It should be possible in linux at least, if not windows.

 
1. It should work on a laptop, i did my second 500gb drive on an old MSI Wind netbook.
2. It will fit in without a case / caddy / shell, its just a biy tricky to do, however its possible.
3. If it is they have never done anything about it in the 7+ years people have been doing this.
4. Sometimes new is not always better, especially for hacking things.
 
This has been a great post. I tried hacking the WD5000LPVX -08VOTT5 but ended up in complete disaster. After reading through the posts its clear that 08VOTT5 is not compatible.
But i have lost the UNDO.BIN file in the process or it has become corrupt and now my new HDD- 08VOTT5 is not even detecting on my laptop.
Many have tried on hacking 08VOTT5, could be please upload the UNDO.BIN here.
Thanks a lot
 
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