PICS ARE LOST DO NOT PM ME TO REPOST THEM AS I DO NOT HAVE THEM ANYMORE!


First off I would like to thank [-elmo-] for his suggestions for doing this mod.

Supplies:

SATA power to Molex cable
SATA cable
XBOX 360 SATA HDD removed from its case
Solder iron (I used a 15/30 watt from radio shack)
solder
snips
wire cutters
electrical tape

some items you might need:
wire
hot glue
^^I used these for extending wires and covering exposed wire with hotglue and electrical tape.

Our victims:
SATA Power Cable to Molex cable and generic SATA cable. On my Sata power cable there was a yellow cable(12V) and another black cable(ground) you can just cut those right off at the connector.



First you need to decide where you are gonna place your HDD, you can prob put it on the opposite side of the case if you wanted to, you might just have to extend the some cables. You might be able to put the harddrive under the opposite grill, above the shielding and below the grill, this may require you to cut some metal shielding to place it there. For me, I am just resting it on my DVD drive.

My length will be short, just enough to make it above the DVD drive and connect the HDD. Cut your wires to the proper length and strip the wires.

Here's a picture of the SATA connector that shows numbers that correspond to the pins on the motherboard. Make sure you follow the wire from the pin on the connector to the end of the wire you stripped, as it is important to where you connect to on the motherboard.



There is 7 total wires in the SATA cable. Wire 7 which corresponds to pin 7 on the motherboard, is right next to the L shaped part of the SATA connector. When I stripped mine, some of the wires were already exposed and not shielded, so I didnt want that to be a problem with anything so I took some wire and soldered 7 pieces to the SATA cable so no wire would be exposed to touching metal. I then covered the wires in hot glue and then covered those in electrical tape. I didnt want any shorts to happen or any damage to the mobo or HDD to happen.





Next you want to locate the pins under the motherboard. They are directly below the HDD connector on the motherboard. I numbered all the pins accordingly and will tell you each pins function.
Pins 1-7 are for the SATA cable
Pins 8-10 are ground
pins 11-13 are 5V
pin 14 isnt used.

Now you want to solder your SATA data cable to the bottom of your motherboard. Make sure you connect the correct wire to each pin. You will be using pins 1-7, see picture below.



Now after you solder the SATA data cable, you need to solder your SATA power cable. The wire gauge was to fat on my power cable, so I soldered a smaller gauge wire to it so I could connect to the pins easier. You can use pins 8-10 for ground and pins 11-13 for power. I used pin 10 for my ground and pin 11 for my 5V power connection. You only have to connect to one of these pins, perhaps you could use this 5V for a LED mod or something in the future, which I will be. Solder your ground to pin 10 and solder your 5V to pin 11 and you are almost done.





Cover your solder work with hot glue or electrical tape. Place your HDD where you plan on having it and connect your wires and you are done. Test to make sure your HDD works before putting everything back together first.

awesome tut... maybe ill do this with my next 360.

Cool. Now what happens when you want to take the hard drive off? e.g. going to a friend's house

It's called a memory card, they cost $40, but I hear you can get them cheap on ebay

I am doing this because I am modding a crystal XCM case and they dont have a crystal HDD case, so this is a good solution since the HDD looks dumb on top.

Well done on the tutorial, I did this a few months ago, great job Bong. Later this week i should have a tutorial up on how to internalize your Hard drive using the stock connector, so stay tuned. Thanks - Nate

yea. this way is kind of better, that way you dont have to cut your stock one up, in case you want to externalize it again someday.

Nice Tut, BoNg

- Added to tutorials section

dude g0t m4xx, when did you become a mod!?!?!?

nice toot man, im doing it right now

Looks like I have something to do tomorrow... saves me from having to paint my HD casing to match my XCM case.

Agreed lol, thats why i used Standard SATA connectors on mine a few months back. Great tut. Thanks - Nate

PERFECT!

Great guide. I came to the conclusion yesterday that I would need to have the HDD inside my casemod (under the Mainboard) but was putting off working out how to do it

First thing after work tomorrow I will be doing it.

when those great people find out a way to use a larger hard drive, this mod will come in handy

Great idea and good explanation throughout tutorial.

This really only helps the case-modders at this time as the original HD keeps such a low profile anyways. Of course this will come in handy when larger HDs can be used.

pretty cool bong your signature make me sick thou

Hmmm nice mod!

Only thing is, where can we actually mount the HDD?

Thx Bong for the cred/props. Great Tut!!!

You can mount the HDD on top of the DVD drive with double sided tape, or crazy glue if you want it uber permanent.

crazy glue is very dangerous... i got my right hand stuck to my.. nvm.



but yea, above the dvd drive is really the only place to put it.

Another place you could probably place it would be between the shielding and the plastic side gray piece, you know the piece that would be touching the surface if your system was vertical.

^^^ i supppose thats possible.. and bong.. is your sig moving, or am i on crack?

Its an optical illusion. Your pupils focus on one part making the rest of it appear to move. Its psychedelic

Oh kk. I might try this tbh. Thanks!

Hmm I think ima going to use a few cable ties to secure it to the dvd drive.

@Bong: Mate, my eyes, THEY BURN!!! lol

yea its not moving it just messes with you.
want to see another one..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v160/bongman/crazy.gif

stare at the + in the center and the pink dots will disappear, only concentrate on the + and dont blink as long as possible.

also look at this
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v160/bongman/crazy.jpg full version of my sig, dunno got it in my email one day

Yea, i just looked at those and went into anaphylactic shock... well, not really. But it gave me a seizure... well, not really. I just got really dizzy and confused.

been watching house have we?

get this man an MRI scan, give him a lumbar puncture and biopsy his brain.

I think the HDD looks good on top

I like it too. would look silly with a crystal case though.

Did this yesterday... super easy to do. Only problem I had was that the HDD doesn't fit real well on top of the DVD drive, it makes the case look deformed. So instead I put it in front of the big heatsink on the other side of the case... fits perfectly there. Looks great, works great, and now I didn't have to paint my HDD casing... but I am probably still gonna finish the window & LEDs in it for someone else.

Hmm dont let it touch that heatsink though! That thing will get HOT!

I'm probably gonna figure out somewhere else to put it... it's mostly just a temporary solution... I may end up cutting/removing the shielding to make it fit on top of the DVD drive.

i have 8 pins, sorry no pic it gos like this
exposed, wire 2 white insulated wires with shield, exposed | exposed, wire 2 white insulated wires with shield, exposed

the | is a space in the middle where there's no wire
i think i will just try connecting the middle 2 to the same pin
anyone have any ideas?

oh i forgot to add that in I was just didnt know a good way to word it at the time. You use the center 2 as one wire and connect to the same pin.

tryed i got error E69 (i think)

hmm make sure you use the side closet to the little L shape thing as 7

ya i got it fliped backwards (i disconnected the connector and im using the pins on the top)

turns out i dident, i just messed around with the wireing and it work, glued it up good and put it back togather

i have a sata cable that came with my dfi mobo, it has 7 pins on each end but only 4 wires in it(2white,space,2white). Is there something I'm missing here

wow thanks i am going to do this

dude i tried the same exact thing, i cut my DFI sata cable and its exactly like you said.

should I just buy a another sata cable?

did it have 2 white wires and 4 exposed wires?

7 WIRES!?!?! Hmmmm...there were only 4 inside my SATA cables that I used for my switch mod. I was wondering what those black lines in the diagram that I used were supposed to represent. That still leaves me with the question, where the f are the other 3 wires? My switch works perfectly, and I only used 4 wires...the 4 that were there.

i thought about what u said when there ru bigger hdds out there well that looks to me like thats a laptop hdd so cant u make a file of what ever is on that hdd make a copy ogf it on ur pc then connect another lap top hdd tranfer those files and wooolah or not that easy.

No offense, but if it were that easy it would have already been done.

I think the thing people are trying to crack as we speak is the Microsoft digital signing. Once you alter the HDD it changes the signature and the 360 only accepts Microsoft signatures.

(Don't quote me, that's just what I understand from reading around)

I have the same cable sounds like. I have it tooked up and I get a E68 when it connected to a HD. Does anyone know what going on? Well after checking into, I have 7 pins though. But the wire layout like yours is the same as mine.

Thanks

I have a nooby question were do u plug the molex in? isent there only one plug on the hadrive?

Is it just me...or are the images gone from the first page of this tut?

Doesnt work here either.. I would like the pictures, gonna do the same.

Me too....and the tut would be a lot easier with the pictures.