Help! Xbox Hard Drive, hard drive is messed up in an unmodded xbox Options

[swfullback22]

i got a xbox given to me that has problems with the hard drive. i originally had an error 16. so i hotswapped and looked at the contents in xplorer360. it only showed 0-3 partitions. the 4 partition was missing and had been deleted somehow. so i downloaded xhdprepar and first tried to zero out the 1st 4096 sectors and that didn't work so i zeroed the entire drive and that didnt work. i even unchecked the zeroing box and chose prepare and it didnt work. and when i say it didnt work i mean that i no longer could bring it up to see it in xplorer360. i have tried shutting down the pc and hotswapping again and restarting many times and still wont show up. at this point i have no idea what to do. i thought the purpose of xhdprepar was to set up the hard drive by reformatting it with the partitions and drives. i have read all kinds of tutorials and everything takes the view that you have a chip. MY XBOX IS UNMODDED. its just a plain xbox with no kind of chipmods or softmods. can anyone tell me how to format the drive correctly without the need of a modchip? or how to do it through hotswapping or using a windows based program or dos. i have a fresh copy of ms dash to put back on it if i can just get xplorer360 to recognize it with the partions. any help would be greatly appreciated. on another note i also have a softmodded xbox made with ndure and unleashx. could i maybe use this somehow to fix the other xbox drive so it will still work in the original?

[ldotsfan]

i got a xbox given to me that has problems with the hard drive. i originally had an error 16. so i hotswapped and looked at the contents in xplorer360. it only showed 0-3 partitions. the 4 partition was missing and had been deleted somehow. so i downloaded xhdprepar and first tried to zero out the 1st 4096 sectors and that didn't work so i zeroed the entire drive and that didnt work. i even unchecked the zeroing box and chose prepare and it didnt work. and when i say it didnt work i mean that i no longer could bring it up to see it in xplorer360. i have tried shutting down the pc and hotswapping again and restarting many times and still wont show up. at this point i have no idea what to do. i thought the purpose of xhdprepar was to set up the hard drive by reformatting it with the partitions and drives. i have read all kinds of tutorials and everything takes the view that you have a chip. MY XBOX IS UNMODDED. its just a plain xbox with no kind of chipmods or softmods. can anyone tell me how to format the drive correctly without the need of a modchip? or how to do it through hotswapping or using a windows based program or dos. i have a fresh copy of ms dash to put back on it if i can just get xplorer360 to recognize it with the partions. any help would be greatly appreciated. on another note i also have a softmodded xbox made with ndure and unleashx. could i maybe use this somehow to fix the other xbox drive so it will still work in the original?

Use xboxhdm. Google for "xboxhdm for dummies" if you are not familiar with the tool. xboxhdm will rebuild a xbox hdd from scratch.

[Chancer]

Error 16 can also mean the drive is knackered. I have had a few which will can not be written to even after boot in a chipped box with and auto installer. The auto installer goes through the motions and all looks ok but the drive ends up still blank. In all cases a new drive rectified the issues.
Moving to the correct forum for this (this is the backup forum as in game back ups)

[Bomb Bloke]

It's true, once a box goes to error 16 you're really getting as much info as a 1.0 box gives you (that is, no error code at all). The console would've given a different error code before displaying that one though - Any chance your friend can remember what it was?

Nine times out of ten the console'll only get to 16 in the first place if the user has been playing around with their softmod, but if that box has never been modded then yes, likely the drive is about toast.

That said, XBoxHDM as Ldotsfan suggests is well worth a try. Xhdprepar is somewhat outdated now. See, if XBoxHDM fails you're gonna have to build an EEPROM reader (check my sig) or install a modchip.

[swfullback22]

alright i have tried using xboxhdm and when i get to the xboxhd tools screen and choose to start from scratch, it says invalid entry and above option 1 at the main screen it says disabled so i am assuming that the hard drive is locked and i will need the eeprom. what is the easiest way of getting this. what i would ultimately like to do is to buy a chip and mod an xbox and that way i could soft mod other xbox's without having to chip them. ive modded a bunch of xbox's in the past and every time i have always chipped them with either the smartxx or executer chip. they are both really easy to use and have never had any problems with them. but now i am really trying to get into softmodding because every time i order the chips it takes forever to get them and from every thing that i have seen, softmodding can be just as good if done right. the other night i tried softmodding another xbox i had and everything was successful. i have set it up with everything that the chipped ones have had so i would really like to keep with softmodding. plus its alot cheaper. so right now im still at the point that i need to format xbox hard drives to be put into unmodded xbox's for the purpose of then softmodding them. if i buy a modchip and chip my box, could i format a hard drive and then place it into the unmodded xbox and then softmod it. im just looking for the easiest way to do this. if anyone has any idea of how to do this or if someone currently does this now, please let me know what chip i need to purchase and a tutorial of some kind.

[Bomb Bloke]

If you want to get a chip anyway, you might as well use it to help with this particular problem. Get one that can be used with an external flasher (don't ask me which ones do).

Once it's installed and setup, stick your "faulty" HDD in the console and boot a Slayers/Auto Installer Deluxe disc. Take a look around the hard drive to see exactly what is an isn't there. You might get away with just installing a new dashboard, you might need to format the drive, it might be that it really is toast and you need a new one...

In the later case, the chip will allow you to just slot in a new drive and you can then set it up with your installer disc. Easy.

Regarding the installation of softmods using a modchip, there are two ways to go about it. In brief:

1) Install the modchip into each new system you get. Use a CASH 1.1 disc to install a softmod and dashboard to the system, then just remove the modchip.

2) Install the modchip into one system and leave it there. Build an EEPROM reader and use this to grab the EEPROM data off each new console you wish to mod. Write this EEPROM data into your master system, install the hard drive from the new box in there as well, then use CASH 1.1 to install the softmod. Re-install the HDD back into the new system then restore the master console's original EEPROM data.

Messing with the EEPROM is a little "iffy". So long as you make backups you can always fix your mistakes, but you'll need to do some editting with LiveInfo to get 1.6 EEPROMs to work with other console versions and vice versa (technically 1.0-1.5 EEPROMs aren't always compatible with other 1.0-1.5 consoles either, but ConfigMagic will convert those types for you).