Hdd Mod Only - Anybody Been Banned For This? And A Question On Corrupt Options

[stillaftermath]

Sorry if this is answered elsewhere, I've been searching and skimming threads for quite a while and haven't found anything. I have a 360 that has only a modified HDD installed (Upgraded from a 20GB to WD 120GB) - Are there any reports of people being banned for this, without an optical drive firmware hack?

Also, I'm aware that a banned console has it's HDD corrupted and saved data is lost (unless you do the secdata.bin restore or recover the profile on an unbanned 360) but I'm unclear as to whether you can just reformat the drive and "start over," minus the ability to cache discs to the HDD. I.e, if I was banned, is the machine a total loss or could I then just do a firmware hack on it and continue to use it, offline only, obviously, and have it save games etc as usual?

[sonic2120]

You will not get banned for using an unofficial hard drive. Now if you were hacking your gamer profile and such on it and using it on Live, you could get the gamer tag banned. The whole console ban is specifically for modified dvd drives. You'll be fine if you don't modify your dvd drive.

As far as the ban effect goes..
You lose the ability to install games to the hard drive and the use of the media extender. You can still save your games on the banned system but you can only use that profile and game saves on the banned system. Once you access something on a banned system it says with the banned system. Anything access on a banned system will appear corrupt on another system. The issue isn't with the hard drive itself but with the software. Reformatting the hard drive won't do anything. The software is what makes the data inaccessible on other systems. Since you didn't flash your dvd drive you won't have to worry about this.

[stillaftermath]

Awesome, thanks for the quick and concise answer. I've not done anything to modify any of my profile or saved game data, so I should be in the clear (at least for now.)

And as long as the system is at least usable offline after the fact, it seems worthwhile to me to continue what I'm doing (versus paying the ridiculous Xbox HDD price) at the risk they'll get all super-anal about it and ban me at some point in the future, though it seems unlikely at this point.