It's been a while since I softmodded my xbox. Friend brought his over. So let me retracemy steps. I tried to refresh my memory with Textbook's guide and I know what he is doing but it is for the Xbox original hard drive.

When I softmodded my xbox, I used xboxhdm and made a backup of the cd drive I think after hotswapping it. Then I ftped into the xbox and got the xbox. Dont ask, I forgot how I did that too since you cannot just ftp into the xbox without softmodding it.

Anyway, as I was reading Textbook's guide, I began to wonder. I am planning to help my friend put a new hard drive in the xbox and have no intention of going on Live, why do I need to get the eeprom and go through all that ftping. Can't I just use Slayer's disk or XboxHDM and just format the new hard drive and have it install and softmod the MS Dash automatically???

After that, it's just start up and play.

Or did I miss some steps and need to do what I did a few years back:
1. mod the original hard drive using xboxhdm
2. make a copy of the eeprom
3. ftp into the original xbox drive
4. retrieve the eeprom
5. make a new xboxhdm with the eeprom in its folder
6. burn the new xboxhdm
7. stick the new hard drive into my pc
8. softmod the hard drive from there
9. stick it into the xbox.

Like I said, I'm hella rusty with the steps. Only thing I remember is that when I hotswap I waited until the Miscrosoft logo appeared and then I got like 7 seconds to swap it. I remember this part only cuz it took me 8 tries the first time around.

Just check this out, it's a very detailed guide on to getting your Xbox installed with UnleashX+NDURE.

Yeah thanks, I read it before I posted. I read Kingroach's too. None of them have anything about upgrading to a newer hard drive WITHOUT the eeprom. All they say is what an eeprom does and how to get it so you can make a new disk. I already stated that's how I did it the first time around. But I am not so sure I needed to do that step to upgrade to a new hard drive IF I dont plan to use Xbox Live. I guess we can ASSUME that you can softmod a new hard drive IF you are not planning to use Xbox LIVE.

But I'd like to know from someone who did it.

If you could read a little better you would notice you need the eeprom backup if you plan on getting a new hd.