OK, I've seen lots of posts in various topics about people with apparently dead drives.
I had exactly the same problem after my floppy decided to give up the ghost mid-flash and the drive Borked.

Various solutions were offered by the group, none of which worked, so I was left with the task of finding another drive to hotswap with (Yeah, right!) or find my own solution.

This is what I found worked for me. (Twice, as I tested again by borking it a 2nd time)

You'll need a Bootable Floppy with MTKFLASH and your firmware. (we'll call this your original.bin)
Your Borked DVD drive attached to SATA 1 on your motherboard.

Boot from Floppy and get to a Dos prompt.
Type in "MTKFLASH W /SATA /M original.bin
You should get a response from the system with a list of possible sata ports to flash to.
(For arguments sake this is SATA 1 and SATA2 in this tutorial)
Turn off the power to the DVD drive wait a second and turn it back on again.
Now hit 1 on the keyboard to start the flash. (in response to the Sata 1 port on the screen)
OK, now it will start flashing or sits waiting at "Port: d800, Master/Slave: a0"
If it is waiting for more than a few seconds hit escape twice to stop the attempt and power off the drive again and keep trying the last part again. It will work after a few attempts.

This is what I have figured out so far and why this works.

MTKFLASH is looking for a response code 70 from the drive to start flashing.
Whilst the hitachi drives have a distinct recovery mode the samsungs show a code 70 JUST after power on.
I'm assuming this is a small recovery window that we can use.

The MTKFLASH software doesn't really care what device is on the SATA bus at the beginning, as long as it can detect something. Hence is people put a hot swap drive or hard drive on the sata bus, the software says "Ahh, SATA 1 has a device on there" and gives to the option to flash that port.
Only when you press 1 on the keyboard to start flashing does it try to detect what KIND of device it is and waits for the required 70 code to start flashing.

So in summary ..
Get MTKFLASH working so it detects a device on your Sata bus (Either the DVD drive or a hard drive)
Then start the flashing procedure JUST AFTER the dvd is given power, after a couple of attempts it should catch the Code 70 and start flashing.

Hope this helps.

looks good...i will add this to the tutorial

Hi, I tried that method, but when I type in "mtkflash w orig.bin" or "mtkflash w /sata /m original.bin" and press 1, it says "Failure to open Output file"? I have the orig.bin, mtkflash.ex, and mtkflash.typ on the floppy disk! Please help!..... much appreciated....

ROFL ....

mtkflash W /SATA /m orig.bin

try that, the output file is just the firmware files name , yours is called "orig.bin" and mine was called "original.bin"

You SHOULD get a reply asking what port to flash too
(Unless only 1 device is found on a port and it auto tries)
at that point turn on the DVD and hit the associated key on the keyboard.

OR if it will not detect with the drive off.
Type the command, then powercycle the drive before hitting the confirmation key.

Nice work, if this doesn't get found by a mod soon, PM one and ask em to put it in one of the sticky FAQ's.

BUMP.

For those that need it or too lazy to search.

im trying to read my fw not flash it.. i get the error code.. and never seem to get passed it..

can anybody help heres my situation

i backed up my firmware 4 times and it locked up once in 4 times so i thought i would risk writting the firmware and would you believe it it locked on the 4th bank at 80%. damn it i thought ,so i panaked and write to it again and this time it froze at 40% on the first bank.tried one more time and now just hangs.

my setup was

pci card with ali m5283 chipset (i know this has problems)
boot with hard drive plugged in and nothing else
when get to a prompt un plug hd and plug in 360 un powered.
power up 360 type the usual mtkflash w mod.bin tried all other variations of command
nowit does not reconise drive do it again and it does
choose sata 1 and it backed up and wrote
i used edited mtkflash the ali version from grims posts.

now i have tried to write again to the flash by turning on 360 at command option where you choose sata 1 or 2 . press 1 straight away and just hangs every time saying the following, left for several mins each time and nothing
hangs saying

df00,master/slave :a0

now to get to option to choose sata 1 or 2 i have to power on 360 to get to sata option 1 or 2 then switch it off for a min switch back on then hit 1 straight away but just hangs tried this 10 times now.

i have read on these forums that some people have had bad flash but was able to write to it again to recover their drive any help would be great been tring to get this sorted now for over a week.thanks in advance


Andy Hewitt can you explain a bit more how you got your drive back from the dead, i have tried what you said in your post about 50 times and no luck any help would be great.thanks

The ali m5283 chipset is as buggy as hell, however what I have noticed is the only way to get it to flash correctly is to flash the chip from cold.
switch the x360 off for a few hours allowing every in the xbox to go cold, even unplug the power supply from the wall

when you ready to try flashing it again after the few hours are up boot up to the command prompt on the pc type in the command MTKFLASH W /SATA /M mod.bin
only at this point switch on the x360

count to 3 then press enter on the pc keyboard
hopefully it should flash the firmware

if it doesnt switch of the 360 and give it a couple of minutes and try again

the emphasis is on keeping the 360 as cool as possible so that the ali chipset doesnt lock up while flashing

good luck

hey sharky thanks for the reply but tried everything and no luck all ready flashed it once but stopped halfway trying to reflash it but it always hangs and says df00,master/slave:a0

Thaks alot, you insturctions was on the money. dead drive is alive and kickin with the new firmware. I use the connectivity kit from team xecuter. I used the 360 20gig hard drive as the sata drive unplugged it and just plug in the dvd drive and BANG drive had a heart beat. thank alot you saved my $600 investment.

rtmcqueen

Thaks alot, you insturctions was on the money. dead drive is alive and kickin with the new firmware. I use the connectivity kit from team xecuter. I used the 360 20gig hard drive as the sata drive unplugged it and just plug in the dvd drive and BANG drive had a heart beat. thank alot you saved my $600 investment.


can you tell us what you did to kill your drive did it hang why you flashed or is it a key thing.what pci or mother board you used.thanks

i have an asus board 800d, during flashing the drive the a drive diskett failed, cd drive would not come on no power (dead). so I read the post and tried a new method as stated a Bang. the drive works perfect.

thanks for the reply will have to try mine again when i get a diff pci sata card one more compatable and hope that works fingers crossed, i dont want a £300 paper weight.

any way to save a bricked hitachi drive!!!!...my damn system turned off in the middle of flashing the new firmware when the lights went out...wat luck...now the drive doesn't even eject...helpppppp thanks

Hi i used this system and always worked fine for samsung and hitachi a friend of mine used the one of windows where u cross wire the 9pin and 0pin but he left them crossed for a long time. Now he can't open the drive nor do nothing like its dead any way of saving it or is it the xbox with the prob

Thanks

Ahh yes... this satisfies my daily dosage of Noob. That is just too funny.

so what xbox is to trow away all just buy a new drive

Yeah mate unfortunatley im with you does anyone have any ideas?

You should be able to use 2 drives, boot the good one, get it ready to flash, then connect the bad one and flash... But this is a good solution if you can't get your hands on a 2nd drive.

Woul seem a good ideaq but xbox shuts down as soon as u renove sata

I can confirm 100% that this DOES WORK! THanks so much for this info you have saved some of us a couple hundred dollars!

This should be made sticky!

(PS- Thanks to Grim for all his help when I had problems. Its greatly appreciated!)

Uh, then turn it back on. Or use another power source (homebrew or xecuter, whatever)...

I Bricked My Drive as well (backed up a couple of games then was flashing with xtreme then dead)
just woundering how meny times people had to try this befor they got there timing right, i would have tried 15-20 times and it always just come up with - port: #### (Cant Remeber) , mater/slave b0
dose any one have any advice or a tip

thanks

Does anyone know the answer to this one?

Sorry, cannot help with the Hitachi drive.
From what I understand there is no software released as yet to completely overwrite the firmware in the hitachi drive in 1 shot. If you could, everyone would be running the latest version and not have 4 or 5 diffrent patches depending on what revision you have.

I don't have a Hitachi drive to look at, but I'll see if I can source one out to kill and try to help folks out.

Oh, if you've bricked it due to shorting the wrong wires out, I'll look at that too.

Ive Kept Trying And Still have had no Luck
Would Trying on a Different PC Help?? (my PC Dosnt have Any Trouble Detecting The Drive)
And Also Would This Same Technique work with Toshiba-Samsung_360_Auto_Flasher_v1.1 ??

I have heard that some motherboards just don't work with MTKFLASH, but I reckon that if you can get it to read (make a backup) you should be able to get it to write.

If you have access to another PC, its not going to hurt to try. Is it?

Personally I've not used the Autoflasher and the whole point in my Tutorial was to Manually retry the flash over and over just after the powercycle.
I'd be carefull as I've heard the Autoflasher May overwrite your Orig.bin every time you try it.

Same here

Flashed my drive after days of trying to connect only to find after the flash using Samsung autoflasher
all i get is the 65 error message.

Now when i flash my backup orig.bin file to it it writes the complete thing says its done then i just get the error 65 again.

I have used hexworkshop to find my key and would find it helpfull if some one could give me an idea of
what the key should look like.

offset 4000 block 200 in hex

0111111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF02EEEEEEEEBBBBBBFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFF0311111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF04EEEEEEEEBBBBBBFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFF0511111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF06EEEEEEEEBBBBBBFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFF0711111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF08EEEEEEEEBBBBBBFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0911111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0AEEEEEEEEBBBBBBFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0B11111111FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF0CEEEEEEEE4051D9F0
D15EABEB3C8C05DA25CB61B3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF


Is this it ...

thanx for any help

Regards Josh

update

managed to flash drive with xtreme.bin presumably the key is inserted when i autoupdated the first time ?? console kicks up but just says
"to play this disk put it in an Xbox 360 console" ...this applies to originals as well as my backups.

any help would be apreciated

Regards Josh

Looking for some clarification from somebody who has been successful in recovering from a bad samsung flash.
Was flashing successfully (had done read and wrote the 0800 firmware). Then was about to do 1 more flash and computer froze mid-way through.

Now im following the flash recovery section (thanks to Andy H) and can only seem to get codes 00 of 07 from my samsung drive...
Id like to know, how has this been done? by powering the drive via the console? or an after market converter/plug?
I'm using the console to try and power the drive.

Also what type of time frame am i looking at between turning the DVD drive on and pressing '1' to start flashing? Is it meant to be simultaneous? (or as close to as i can)? 1 second? 3 seconds? I've tried with a variety of wait times and i cant get it to work, but i feel the closer these variables are the more chance of success i'll have...

Thanks so much for any help!

ok i've been trying this for a few hours now...
Seems you have to select the 'number' to flash within <0.5 second.
But it's still not flashing for me, the best i get is mtkflash saying:
"Flash type 'SST(SST3..)'
Erasing.. Chip Erase"

Ive let it sit there for quite some time and nothing more happens, when i pres esc it says the response code was 'f0'.

I'm running with /sata and /m, eg:
mtkflash /sata /m orignal.bin
on a SATA card.

*SIGH*

Keep Trying i Tried for 6 days befor i got it

i Typed - mtkflash w /m orig.bin

turned off then on pressed 2 then it flashed

yea ive had enough for today, will give it another shot tomorrow or the day after lol..

if you dont have a backup of your original firmware with the correct key no firmware you put on the samsung will let you play games

Thats how mine died "Exactly" ... After the 0800 firmware and starting to flash the Xtreme firmware

BANG .. Knackered Floppy Disk.

Just for information, I only ever powered it from the Xbox 360 console with a Sata to my Computer and a crocodile clipped cable to give an equal earth.

As long as it doesn't get too out of hand.

If anyone is UK based and have bricked their Samsung, I'll gladly give it a go here, if postage is paid for BOTH ways.

Obviously if you don't have your Orig.bin (or a bios I can extract it from) I can only install the 0800 Software. But it should atleast get the drive up and running in some capacity until some other solution enables the 360 to work without the unique ID's.

I'll except the drives on their own or the complete 360 if you want it fully working and tested again.

Hopefully this SHOULD stop the amount of questions on this Topic and help to save my Inbox going into overload.

PM me if your interested.

I've still had no luck with this on the nforce5 chipset, just sits there and when i press ESC it says code '00' expected '70'.
Andy what chip-set did you use? im looking at buying a sata card specifically for this.. :\

My Motherboard is Intel 865G with IC5 Southbridge.

Nice simple and affective.

OK, for the past few days I've been helping out folks via MSN with their Firmware problems.

I have a suggestion !

Stop using the Autopatchers

I reckon 9 out of 10 people who have managed to get their drive flashed, YET recieve Error 65, is due to the Autopatchers.

I've even had about 4 users who don't even have a reliable backup of their ORIG.BIN due to corruption.

If you MUST use an Auto Patcher, At the very least do a Manual Backup of your firmware and STORE ANOTHER COPY somewhere else. Then if things do go belly-Up, you can get your 360 working with a little patience.

i have the via6421l sata card and managed to read my orig firmware no probs. went to flash and floppy gave up after bank 1. evertytime i switch on the xbox to re-flash the green light just blinks. my sata card doesnt give me the option to chose 1 or 2 it just does it. but wehn i try to reflash the light just blinks on the 360 and nothing happens just sit at master/slave a0. tr to press escape and try again but the whole pc freezes. is there anyway i can get round this any help would be much appreciated?

btw its a sammy drive.

IF you have ORIG.bin AUTOFLASHER v1.1 and Samsung: Andy Hewitt IS gOD

LATE LAST NIGHT PANIC:

Hi, I have the Xecuter connectivity kit and the drive no longer ejects via this. I used the auto flasher 1.1, pressed 1 to extract original firmware and patch. This worked only after a few attempts as I only realized you have to power the DVD drive just after the prompt. Anyway, Once option 1 worked, I went into kdx and verified I had a key, I backed this up. I then flashed it with the xtreme firmware and it worked first time. I waited until it said please reboot pc. I tried it in the xbox and it came up error 65. I then tried to restore the original firmware but said something to the sort that the firmware wasn't recognized. I now cannot even eject the DVD ROM drive. Please help!!!


MEMBER REPLIED with:


If your confident that you have a good backup of your original firmware have you tried the bad flash recovery routine. Several people have been able to reflash their drives so they'd work by doing this but you need to have a good backup of your original firmware and you'll need to use mtkflash instead of the auto flasher. You'll find it in Geebee's latest tutorial or there is a post by Andy Hewitt on this board that covers it.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I've got to admit that the response to my offer has been rather popular.

As everyone should know I offer a FREE service to (re)flash their drives. (although Donations are greatfully recieved) as long as Postage is paid for upfront.

Luckily I have managed to save about 60% over MSN just by helping folks through the process.
The others that I've had shipped to myself I have so far managed to ship EVERY UNIT back with recovered firmware. I have only failed twice with drives that there was no key file avaliable, so they have gone back with the 0800 firmware on, rather than being left corrupted.

Thanks again for the Kudos.

managed to brick my samsung useing an ali sata card these are very unreliable it seems spent days trying to recover it with the card occasionally getting it to see the sst chip then stopping went out and got an asrock via8237 motherboard and worked first time done a few since both hitachi and samsung makes it so much easier

thanks to the great andyhewitt i managed to recover my xbox from a bad flash heres how i did it.

managed to make a backup of my orig firmware. went to write xtreme firmware and floppy gave up half way through. all i got was green light flashing on xbox and wouldnt let me flash xbox. pc just froze on the part where it goes to flash a400 master/slave a0. i was in despair as i tried everything and nothing would work.managed to get to talk to any one to one which helped a hell of a lot cos he could then properly understand the trouble i was having. he came up with the idea of leaving an ide cable plugged in and my drive so i could get the option of which drive to flash to as you need this to do the power cycle so heres a step by step of what i done.

boot up xbox without sata plugged in. boot up pc with one ide in. ( i used my liteon cdr as this was set to slave),

in dos type this command as its written mtkflash W /M and whatever you called your bin file ie. xtreme, orig.

plug in sata cable into xbox and then press enter.

should see something like 1 pri slave liteon 2 pri master v6421 sata.

switch of xbox. switch back on and wait a few seconds press 2 or whatever your sata shows could be 1 in your case, and hey presto it flashed and works a treat.

hope this helps alot of people that think they have bricked there drive but in reality have just made a bad flash and can recover.

Yay (ish) this saved my second 360 - the first got twisted with the auto USB methode and didn't even get a backup of my original FW (just FF FF FF etc).

If I cock up this 360 I will probably get divorce papers from my wife.

Ok I recovered from the bad flash and now the 360 does not frag - it boots to the dash but when I put in an original it tells me that if I wish to play this disk to put it in a 360 console ?????

Any ideas before I go at this again.

I presume it is bad FW or something.

Thanks mate, it was a blast talking to you and really pleased you managed to save both your consoles with a little over the phone help. It saved a few quid shipping them to me and you have the warm cuddly feeling inside that you managed it yourself. Not to mention your Brothers console isn't in the same situation.

Thats another tick in the completed box

It sounds a minor fault. Your not getting an Error 65 so its probably just the key slightly wrong.

Restore your orig.bin, test with an original game to make sure its ok.

Then try again with a new copy of the xtreme firmware and hex edit the key manually.

If you need any help just PM me your MSN details.

yeah sounds like you have the same trouble i was having. are you using hex edit or kdx1.5? at first i was using kdx 1.5 and was getting the same problem until i used hex edit and copied the key over manually then it worked a treat.