I understand that the hitachi .78 and below are easy to flash but I was reading that the newer drives like the benq run alot better. I was reading also that you can tell the drive by the back of the box and the manufacturing date. My question is which drive is best to get and if so how would I be able to tell if I buy a xbox 360 and it has that drive. Any manufactury information you know that Ic ould compare would be helpful thanks again

for your time and patience

They all work the same, they all read the same, they all do the same thing... the only difference is how you modify em.

I heard the benqs are not as loud and I heard that the phillips-samsung has a newer firmware update then the others to let u play on live?

All the drives allow you to play on Live, there is no difference there. But with all the drives you still have a very large risk of getting banned from Live if you play your backups on there, that risk does not differ from drive to drive.

The benQ IMO is the best and easiest to modify. Just hook it up to windows, and let it reset and your good to go about flashing and reading.

Hawk

Out of my experience of modding multiple consoles, The Benq is by far the best drive and is at a moderate difficulty to mod, But the Hitachi drives them self are the easiest

I had a hitachi and it sounded like a jet engine, now i have a benq and all i hear is the occasional seek noise. I would go with the benq if i was you.

Mhawk134 - are you saying you flash your benq in windows???? If so please give a link or briefly explain, i thought it wasnt possible? Im having a bitch of a time booting into a iprep usb or floppy.

Well if i could edit my above post this double post wouldnt exist.... Anyways yeh i found stuff on flashing the benq in windows. I guess all the guides (including textbook feb 2008 version) are outdated or skip this method for some reason.

Even more reason for the OP to get a benq. Also the modder who sold me my benq only offered replacement benq and hitachi drives, no samsungs. Dont know why but im sure theres a reason.

I dont know how you can tell which drive from outside the box, but you can check if its got falcon inside. I think most of the newer ones (where i am anyways) are either benq or hitachi 0079fl. I had a 0079fl and it sucked. Pray you dont get one of these.

Hey

http://www.360drives.com/list

this website is a good resource for deciding what 360 to buy.

Yeah, I use dosflash32 (it's the windows version) first i turn off pc, connect dvd drive turn xbox on or just let the pc do it if you have the connector kit. then once it boots open dosflash32 in windows, it will ask you somthing click yes, turn the power to the drive off then back on, you might have to use an xbox for this, i've been waiting on my connectivity kit for the past couple days to test it that way, but after you turn it off turn it right back on dosflash will open, then make sure your own your sata port it's like 1860 or somthing not 100% sure, just make sure that it says sata, and then click read, then save it, then use the make firmware program that came with the benQ iextreme, then right that file back to the dvd drive, and your good to go. Should take less then 2 minutes once you've done a couple.

Hawk