Flashing Hitachi 59dj Using Sata To Usb Adapter, Am I going in the right direction? Options

[Nailbunny]

I spent the weekend attempting to flash my Hitachi 59DJ DVD drive using my Dell PowerEdge SC420 (Intel E7221 board, ICH5 I think).

My first attempt was to use the standard directions provided by textbook's tutorial. This meant booting to the Slax2.0 alpha 1 disc. I found that I could not boot the CD when the DVD drive was attached. I assume this is because the MB will try to boot the SATA drive when attached instead of the IDE drive (there is no differentiation between SATA and IDE in the BIOS boot order, its just Floppy, CD-ROM and HDD.) I tried delaying the startup of the 360, but when Slax would boot, the DVD drive would not be recognized and thus, ModeB would not be enabled. I tried using Slax 2.1, with the same result.

I then found instructions on getting Slax to boot off a USB drive. This involves running the make_disk.bat <drive:> where drive is the letter of the USB drive. Once complete, modify the cfg file in the root of the USB drive and change 4444 to 16384. This worked to get the drive into ModeB (though I couldn't boot the USB from a cold boot, I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del at least once at the post screen.)

Once in ModeB, I could not for the life of me get the system to boot into Windows. My primary HDD is connected to the primary SATA port. The DVD drive attached to the secondary SATA port. The system would simply hang at the post screen, and after 4 restarts, it would return an error. I tried installing XP on an IDE drive, and removing the primary SATA HDD, but still no luck. I also tried getting XP installed on a USB drive, but even a USB drive would not boot with the 360 DVD attached. (For reference, I used Bart PE, but even the Slax USB drive would not boot.)

It was clear that after spending the entire weekend with the components on hand, this was not going to happen. I began looking into alternatives, and it seems there is very little documentation or instruction on using SATA to USB adapters, but that they do work for this drive, as well as older Hitachi drives.

This raises the question, how do I proceed once I get the SATA to USB adapter? More specifically, can I attach the 360 DVD drive after Windows boots using such an adapter? (For reference, I ordered the Vantec adapter from newegg)

(As you can see from my sig, I have some experience with the oXbox. I'm new to the 360 modding, through.)

This post has been edited by Nailbunny: Apr 28 2008, 05:42 PM

[Refferehtom]

Here's a stupid question, did you take the slax disk out of your drive after you got it into mode B before you rebooted to windows?

[Nailbunny]

Only the USB stick (Slax 2.1) would work to get the drive into ModeB, and yes, I removed it afterwards. The system simply would not boot with the ModeB drive attached. I even did a fresh install of Windows on an old IDE drive and removed the primary SATA hard drive. At one point Slax did boot again, which is why I pursued installing Windows on a USB. In the end, that seemed to have been a fluke, because I could not get anything else to boot.

This post has been edited by Nailbunny: Apr 30 2008, 05:30 AM

[podger]

Get the 59 into mode-b with Slax and leave it powered-on but disconnect the SATA connector and reboot to windows... Once in windows plug the sata in again and the drive should appear... If it locks up the system or doesn't appear unplug it, the system should come back, then just try the USB2SATA instead....

Personally, my 47 never works with my VIA6421 and I always use a USB2SATA and it works every time. To get slax working I have to remove my promise SATA Raid controller or it bombs out half way through, it's a real pain in the ass..... generally I just use the 2 wire trick...

[Nailbunny]

Thanks for the info! I didn't even think to plug in the drive after booting windows. I was worried I might damage the system or drive by doing so. I will be giving it another shot in a couple days, once I get through GTA4.

[Reaper527]

Only the USB stick (Slax 2.1) would work to get the drive into ModeB, and yes, I removed it afterwards. The system simply would not boot with the ModeB drive attached.

just let the system boot into windows on its own after you put the drive in mode b. if windows doesn't boot up properly (not incredibly uncommon), just hit the eject button on your 360's dvd drive. everything will now boot. (i did this on a dell optiplex 210 with onboard SATA and a slax disc)

[Nailbunny]

The USB adapter worked flawlessly, even with SLAX. Just don't do the safe disconnect if you are using XP. That will disable ModeB and you'll have to start with SLAX again.

When the drive was in ModeB connected via SATA, the system would not get past the BIOS. There was no booting into Windows, unless I plugged in the SATA after Windows was up and running. I wasn't comfortable doing this, as I didn't want to damage the drive or system, and I wasn't sure Windows would even recognize it if it wasn't recognized in the BIOS.

This post has been edited by Nailbunny: May 6 2008, 01:44 AM