This is my first post here, but I have been messing with xboxen since virtually day one. I have never seen a definitive post on the net about whether this particular upgrade is doable and exactly what hardware will work, so since I just managed to accomplish it I thought posting my details might help others out.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

1. SATA harddrive. I assume there are other drives that will work as well, but I chose to use a Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB. It proved to be lockable so it will work for either modchip users or those with softmods. It is also very quite and runs quite cool to the touch. Regardless, you will need LBA48 support in your bios or a softmod which supports it such as nkpatcher (I use nkpatcher 11).

2. SATA to IDE adapter. Again, there may be other adapters that work, but I know this one does: SABRENT SBT-STDB IDE Ultra ATA-100/133 to SATA Port Mini Converter

Thats it really. I wont bother with a step by step as no trickery is required, the basic howtos for a harddrive upgrade will work fine. I used xboxhdm v1.9 and followed the normal procedure which can be found on this site. I used xbpartitioner and chose to split the free space across F and G using 32KB clusters. I ended up with 2 496GB partitions, and have completely filled up one of them with no corruption issues.

Happy upgrading!

FINALLY!!

Thanks a million for the info! I've been researching this idea for a long while and have been very hesitant to go through with it.

And to think I was just about to buy a 750gig IDE Seagate too (seems like the last model around).

THIS METHOD will soon be the ONLY METHOD for upgrading a HD! Hopefully the Sabrent hardware proves to be reliable though.

THANKS AGAIN!!

Nice man...I'm actually trying to do this same thing only not with a TB! wow. I've got half a TB I want to put in my xbox. I've looked at a few of these converters (do they fit in the xbox). I have a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s hdd. Thanks for the post.

-Nick

Received my new 750 gig SATA Samsung Hard Drive and Sabrent SATA to IDE Adapter.

Absolutely no problems setting it up. The adapter fits in nice and snug to both the SATA connector and the IDE connector. I set the jumper to master, took a guess on which way the IDE cable should go (the same direction as an IDE drive) and it booted properly on the first try.

Now I've been transferring around 450 gigs of files from my old HD to the new one. Been going all night and day without any issues...

This is the hard drive I got:

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822152100

So I suppose the limits on the xbox now are about a 1TB drive or so? I was reading a thread before about 64k cluster sizes, but not sure if that was worked out or not.

And thanks again, galvanash, for sharing. I probably would have went with an IDE Seagate drive if not for this. I avoid Seagate and WD like the plague these days! They just don't seem to be very reliable anymore.

Gald to hear you got it working BigPotty. When everything gets mailed to me I will tell you how it goes. Thanks to galvanash for the information as well . However I have a dead hdd in my xbox (and no oringal drive) to so I had to order a 1.6 version mother with matching harddrive. But anyway I've done xbox modding since 2003 so shouldn't be a problem .

Indeed, for now the limit is 1tb (using two 512gb partitions formatted with 32kb clusters).

We did get one guy going with 64kb clusters (grossly inefficient in my opinion even if it does allow a single 1tb partition - or even higher amounts of storage space), but it seems we've run out of willing testers.

Well I've finished moving all my stuff to the new drive. Took me a few days. I had this strange problem a few times where I would set up the transfer and come back later to find the xbox turned off. And the transfer had not completed yet. And to make this even more mysterious, it did this in both the X3 live config and in XBMC.

Also, it's locked up a couple of times on me while booting. The HD activity led will just stay lit solid. Turn it off and back on and then it boots ok. It also had these problems with my old IDE HD too (but not till I started this upgrade)

So I'm thinking its probably one of a few things:
1. Maybe my 1.0 xbox is finally giving out.
2. My IDE cable is going bad. (is this common around here?)
3. Something with my PSU.
4. Something to do with Master/slave/cable select.

The reason why I list #4 is because I've read here that the HD should be on Master. Is this correct?
But when I went to do the upgrade, the HD that I was removing had been on Cable Select (for the last year or so).

The other problem is that the jumper on the Sabrent adapter is very cryptic! It seems to have 2 different markings for the jumper setting. I basically just guessed as to what it should be. (I think I have it completely out right now). So anyway I tried it a few different ways and it didn't seem to make a difference.

The worst thing is that this seems to be a totally random problem (the slow boots and the freezing/shut offs). It doesn't happen every time I use it, thankfully, but it is annoying.

So what do you guys think? Any idea about the jumper setting? Or the freezing? I was thinking that because the drive is so large and is fatx, maybe the xbox just takes forever to scan it on boot? Does something like that happen? Oh by the way, when it freezes on boot up, it's just after the "X3 rox my box". The other lock ups and or shut downs were while doing FTP transfers.

And yes I formated F and G with 32k clusters and at about 350gigs each.

Oh and another thing, earlier tonight I was moving a few more files over and when I booted the xbox, my G partition was missing! I rebooted and it came back. Very strange...

Um, some of those things sound like other problems people have had... But only when using SATA drives.

It's too early to say if it's a drive model thing, an adaptor thing, or what... It also doesn't help that the symptoms come and go. Some sort of timing issue maybe?

Re the random shut downs, about how long would the system have been active? There's a six hour auto-turn off option that can be set via the MS Dash (on by default if memory serves), and XBMC also has a seperate setting of it's own (off by default though).

Indeed, ive had this problem with multiple SATA drives on other modchip settings.He's right about the model thing but im going to have to go with its an adapter problem, did your adapter come with a driver disc? if so thats more then likely your problem, SATA adapter like that cant run properly on there own(which is why its meant to go in a PC). If you happen to have gotten one of those "plug in play" adapter then check the circuits on top for any solder that could be bridged, especially on the main chip. Ive noticed on my adapter when i first got it there was solder bridging over 5 pins together on that one chip, once desoldered the problem was GREATLY reduced.

also , does your drive have a jumper setting? if so remove it, if its anything like WD SATA drives then you dont need SCC

Thanks a lot for the help guys.

The Sabrent adapter doesn't come with or need a driver. It does work properly, mostly. I used it today for a couple hours without any problems. Played a few games and transfered some more files with FTP.

It did freeze up on booting once today, though. I turn it on and it shows the the Xbox logo and Xecuter stuff. The HD indicator LED flashes a few times and then turns solid red (This seems to happen on every boot up now). The HD LED stays red and XBMC doesn't come up. I've left it for up to 5 minutes and nothing happens. So, I turn it off and back on and then it will boot up normally.

As for the HD jumper, it didn't come with one. Although, it does look like there are pins on the HD itself to put a jumper, I haven't tried. SATA drives don't need this, right?

As I stated before the jumper on the Sabrent adapter itself is a little weird. Kinda hard to tell which position does what. Typical Chinese crap. I could probably post a picture here if someone wanted a closer look at it.

I have tried disabling all of the Auto-Off features, including in the Xbox Dash and XBMC. Didn't make a difference. Last night I did some transfers and when I woke up it was still on. I'm sorta thinking that maybe my Xbox is just getting a bit worn out.

Thanks again. It seems we might be the pioneers of the large SATA HD upgrades for the Xbox1. At least there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of other info / experiences around here.

make sure it isn't overheating
maybe upgrade to an 80mm fan or something
just a thought

I have found that SATA drives never work out in xbox's. They cause the xbox not to work, and then work other times, and kill other components such as the dvd drive. Usually the hard drive dies after a month. It causes needless headaches so I refuse to use another sata HD in an xbox or computer.

That sucks that you've had such bad luck with this. You mind sharing a few more details? Like what kind of hard drives (brand/model/size) and SATA adapters you were using? Maybe what version Xbox and Modchip you have? I've been going over this in my head for the last week and I'm trying to work out every angle I can.

Hopefully we can all come up with some sort of guidelines for this. I still think that the Xbox1 is the best system, as far as Modding goes. And I surely don't want to see it die out just yet. At least not till someone cracks the 360 as far as the original has been.

And as for an update, it just seems to get more weird! Yesterday, it seemed I could only get my box to boot correctly about 2 times in 15. Didn't have time to mess with anything though. So, today I tried it again real quick before work and it booted and rebooted 3 times without a hitch. Hadn't been moved or touched from the day prior!

Does anyone know if a bad DVD drive could lock up the HD on boot? (Like a solid HD LED?) I don't think mines bad yet, but maybe it's going out. Who the hell knows.

Just a little insight. I had the same problem with a regular PATA HD and it was because my resistance (POT) was not set correctly on the positive side of my HD light. It could also be a power supply issue. I hope this helps anyone. By the way, I would shoot for the cable select setting. And yes, SATA HD's need not have jumpers.

Yeah I was having problems with the sata drive that I purchased so I just sent it back got an IDE. Just cloned my original drive I did the softmod on and it worked first try. I could have done something wrong on the sata but I just couldn't figure out what. Anyway, I had a 1.6 version xbox....maybe that converter just doesn't work with a version 1.6? I dunno.

Hey all,
I installed a WD10EACS 1TB drive into a 1.0 xbox a little while ago, along with one of those Sabrent type IDE -SATA converters I found on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi...em=250229080622

My problem seems to be the same as others are reporting, it seems to work ok most of the time, but sometimes hangs when booting, or boots very slowly.
When it does boot, sometimes it works ok, other times, after booting to the slayers menu, if you try and load xbmc or a game, it starts to load then goes back to the slayers menu. Rebooting it usually makes it work.
Other times I was able to ftp around 500GB to it without any problems.
Does anyone whow what the jumpers on the converter board are for ? Mine came with the holes on the board, but no pins. I soldered in the 4 pins and tried a jumper in the 2 positions but doesn't seem to have helped. It must be some sort of timing issue ?
I bought 2 of these converters at the same, I'll try the other one with the 1TB drive in a 1.6 xbox and see what happens...

I forgot to mention that just after switch on before slayers boots, the occasional MS error 7 or 13 pops up on screen. again, a reboot fixes it.

taking all the lockups into account how is the data? im thinking about doing this but i dont want to worry about data loss very much. with 1 tb i hope to xfer all my media to the drive and dont want to worry about it. lockups i can handle

Why not use a 1Tb drive as a SMB avalible drive instead of installing it to your xbox. this way no corruption cause its on your PC....and all the media is watched via XBMC. This would work for music, video, and pictures.....but not games (not sure about the games, but I know other media works great that way.)

OR

Is this thread just to see if the 1Tb can be successfully used INSIDE the xbox with no corruption.

Hello.
I noticed the adapter is listed as ATA 100/133, I take it you guys are using an 80 wire IDE cable? I've had similar problems on some older pc's with using 100/133 drives with 40 wire (ata 66) cables. Maybe the adapter is picky......

Hope this helps and I'm not just pointing out the obvious

Seagate makes IDE models of there 750GB hard drive... As far as the hardware goes in the xbox it works just fine, it never hangs etc... I also think Hitachi offers a IDE 1TB HDD. Although i have never seen one in a xbox.

But beware that the xbox is not fully compatable with a nearly full 750GB hdd. I have around 200 gigs free on my 750gb HDD but folders and files float around the F & G drive mysteriously. One day something will be on your F drive, and the next day it appeared on the G drive~!!

Its not exactly that dramatic but just beware, the partitioning acts goofy sometimes. But in all reality i have not lost any data yet on my xbox so you should be alright.

Just make sure that:

Your bios supports custom partitions
You split F & G evenly in space
Set the entire hard drive to 32k clusters!

A bit of an update...

So I've been working on this for a few weeks when I get some time away from work and the social life.
This is what I've tried thus far (in no particular order):

- Variety of jumper settings on the Sabrent Adapter, including using 2 jumpers! (currently have the jumper completely removed)

- Fully disassembled and cleaned the MB and all components of my Xbox.

- Re-soldered the 2 main pins for the power connector on my PSU (I have a 1.0 and it needed to be done anyhow)

- Checked over all of my mod chip soldering work and cleaned it up a bit (I've gained some soldering skills in the last year or so!)

- Checked all cable connections

- Tried a variety of settings:

-Tried all of the Acoustic Management options for my HD (Samsung 750gig)
-Tried different power management settings in XBMC for the HD
-Set the HD's link speed to 1.5 rather than 3.0 using Samsung's Speed Switcher Utility

- Turned off the DVD check in the X3 bios

- Tried (re)booting in a variety of ways:

-CD/DVD in or out
-Cold Boot/Reboot
-Warm Boot/Reboot
-IR Remote Dongle in/out
-Wired/Wireless controllers in/out

-Others I'm probably forgetting

So, none of this stuff seems to make a bit of difference. Very frustrating! And today I noticed another peculiar problem. It seems that I can copy files from my SMB share with no problem, but when I tried to move a folder with files in it from my G to my F, I kept getting file copy errors! XBMC would stop the copy and give some error message about failing to copy. I tried quite a few times before giving up and just using the SMB file transfer instead.

And here's something else I noticed today. This Sabrent adapter seems to me to be the exact same adapter as this Rosewill one:
Rosewill Adapter

And, after reading all of the reviews for both the Sabrent and Rosewill models, it seems that people have had a variety of problems with both. From them not working at all, to the same slow boot / no boot problem, even on a pc.

So, since I've sorta hit a wall with all this, I broke down and have ordered another adapter. I had to search high and low for another model and supplier that seemed like it would do the job. I will report back with any success/failures after I've had a chance to fully test it.

capboy210: Is it necessary to set ALL partitions to 32k clusters? I've been under the impression that only the large partitions need it?

Only partitions larger then 256gb need to use larger clusters. I'm not even sure if the console would function if you did the entire drive that way.

Here we go again...

SO, a couple days ago my month old 750 gig SATA Samsung HD started the good ole "click of death". Of course, it's hard to say what exactly caused this. Heat? The SATA adapter? Samsung's new substandard HD's?

I read over the reviews for this particular model a little more closely than when I had impulsively bought the drive a month ago. It seems at least a few people have had the same problem or a DOA drive. I even read one review that said "I used to have great luck with Samsung" (paraphrasing). I've come to the same conclusion. I have Samsung drives that are a few years old running 24/7 and have never had a problem (SATA too). THANK GOD that Newegg is so freakin awesome. I was just past the 30 day mark, but I emailed them and they emailed me a prepaid UPS label and authorized the RMA!

Luckily, I hadn't reformated my old 300 gig Xbox HD, so I only lost a few things added over the last month.

Aside from all this, I intended to order a new SATA adapter from some no-name Yahoo shop, but they canceled the order and notified me they were out of stock. It "looked" like a higher quality adapter from the pictures. It has a JMicron JM20330 chipset and the store is kind enough to have a lot of info about the product:
http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/sahadradtoid.html

BUT, no stock, so I ordered a similar looking one from an Ebay Store:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...N:IT&ih=004

Paid $7.98 WITH shipping!! Which is great, but I looked over it real close and noticed some horrible soldering work. And as usual, it's made in freakin China. Also, it has a 2X2 set of jumper pins, but no jumper included or any indication of how they would work. And the packaging RAPES the english language. Which is as funny as always, but I'm sure my heart will stop for a second the first time I try to use it.

So now I have a new Samsung HD on the way and 2 SATA adapters to experiment with.

Of course I will report back here with the results...

Hadn't looked at this thread since I posted it... Sorry to hear some people are having problems. Ive been up since day one (almost 2 months), and this is on an xbox I use as a uPnP server (it is on 24/7)... No issues with the hardware at all, runs like a clock.

I wouldn't at all be surprised that these little SATA adapters are hit and miss though, they don't exactly look like top notch engineering... But my particular one is solid so far.

ps. Im using the standard 40 pin IDE cable btw, but from my past experiences with xboxen 40/80 pin doesnt matter, as long as the cable is sound.

BigPotty - I also have a 1.0 (although the 1TB is a 1.6). My 1.0 has a 320GB IDE and has always been a bit moody... I dont know what the issue is with mine. I dont exactly have the symptoms as you - mine will (maybe once a month, sometimes 2 months go by) just freeze up solid, and when this happens it refuses to boot (no xbox logo - nothing - nada).

Sometimes when it does this, if I wait a while (10 - 15 minutes) with it powered on it will actually start up (its kinda spooky, no idea what it is doing during all that time as there is no activity at all). Other times it just wont boot, even when I let it sit for hours. I generally open it up, look at everything, find nothing wrong, and then when I plug it back in everything is fine again... Im only posting this because I have spoke to friends with 1.0s and quite a few of them have dodgy ones as well. Id love to fix it though, as that is why I didn't put the 1TB in it. If I thought I could trust it Id put a 1TB in it as well. As it is now, Ill probably just buy another 1.6, they are like $60 or so on ebay...

I'm also using that adapter for my 2.5" 320gb samsung spinpoint. I can't test it out now as I am waiting on a new power supply, but I will let you know how it turns out.

Well this whole issue that BigPotty brought up about his 1.0 got me itching to finally fix mine. I did alot of research and it appears that mine (probably not BigPotty's problem though) is suffering from degraded traces... I pulled it apart and went over it with a magnifying glass and sure enough quite a few of the signal traces on the bottom outside edge of my board look pretty pitted and corroded. It still worked intermittently, but the problem appears to be getting worse. I could probably fix it, but Id rather just replace it with a v1.1, as the 1.0s run hot and I hate having the extra cooling fan (which I have had to change 3 times so far).

I'm posting this because someone else mentioned they ran out of willing testers for 64Kb clusters. Well you definitely have one now. I just ordered a new v1.1 board to replace my 1.0. I'm going to TSOP flash it with x2 5035 and am going to buy the same 1TB driver/adapter for it as well. I would REALLY like to try and get it working with 1 F partition (or a small F and a > 512GB G), because from my understanding unlike a softmod the X2 bios wont let you do an even split of the free space between F and G for very large drives (please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Even if it is possible to split though, my preference is to have one of the partitions be > 512GB. I store nothing large media files (nothing smaller than 500MB or so) on it so I don't much care about slack.

When I get everything in order I will post again, but if anyone has info on how I can get my hands on the version of xbpartitioner that supports 64KB clusters please let me know. I know there has been alot of activity on a patch set for it lately, but I havent seen it on xbins or anything.

AHHH CRAP!!

Well, I got the replacement Samsung HD. As soon as I started to transfer my stuff from my old HD I started having problems! Freezing during transfers and slow/no boots.

I'm pretty sure that it is only a problem with the HD's themselves. I cannot return the drive for another Brand/Model so I am stuck getting it exchanged AGAIN.

Well at least Newegg makes this painless for me with free shipping and friendly service.

So now I have to wait for another replacement drive and hope that it won't crap out on me right away. Then I get to worry about it crashing some time over the next year and losing all my stuff. GREAT!!

This whole upgrade has gone so well!! Screw you Samsung!! I used to trust you!

BTW, I was running this replacement drive on the new SATA adapter I bought from Ebay.

Well, I moved the adapter and 1TB drive from the 1.0 unit to a 1.6 xbox - same result with slow boots and hangs.
I then tried an identical adapter I bought with the other one as a spare - this time both xboxes worked perfectly every time.
I checked the faulty adapter with a magnifying glass and found a solder bridge between 2 of the legs on the main chip on the board. This isn't present on the good one. I haven't been able to remove it yet to test, but the seller on ebay has offered to send a replacement anyway. due to the gap between the legs, the short is barely visible to the naked eye.
The soldering on these boards (even the one that works) is quite dodgy, and wouldn't be surprised if there are many more out there with similar faults. They are probably all made in the same Chinese factory no matter what brand name is on them.

I think your psu is dying if you eliminated the trace damage on the 1.1 and the issue is the same this is common I have seen this many times it was the first thing I thought when I started reading your last couple post.
I never had an hdd act like yours Ive had them put no audio or video out and had them throw errors but never send the xbox in a coma
If the xbox does not respond to anything it is almost always the psu or it could be trace damage from the pcb board to the pic16 or the pcb board itself on model 1.6 it usually is a collector that goes bad there is a tut here about it.

Ok. So I decided to test the drive a bit more before sending it back. Newegg gave me 7 days for the RMA.

I was planning to reformat the drive and just send it back, but when I went into my X3 live setup to do the format I decided to change the LBA option.

Now don't get me wrong here, I have changed this option several times while doing this whole SATA HD upgrade. And normally I would leave it on the option for an F and G drive.

Anyway, I just decided to try and change it to F and G drive again this time before I did the reformat. Well, what do you know, the damn thing decides to work now. Unfortunately not 100% though.

BUT, I did leave it on for over 8 hours copying (by FTP through PC) about 300 gigs of stuff over from my other HD which was in a borrowed Xbox.

It went through all of this with no problem. I left it on while I slept and when I woke up it was locked up with the HD LED on solid. Damn.

I've been randomly booting, rebooting, shutting down, playing games and leaving it running for the last couple days. It seems like it's ok now. But who the hell knows? I hate this! Now I'm considering building another Xbox just so I have a proper backup of it. Another $150 or so. Yeah I can afford that. (Yeah right).

It would be nice for my car though! LCD, new head unit with Aux input, maybe a new sub and amp. I think I need another job.

Maybe none of this is even worth the trouble! But I feel so commited now!

And yeah, I looked over the SATA adapter I got off of Ebay and the soldering looked pretty bad. I cleaned it up a bit, but doesn't seem to make a difference. Didn't notice any solder on the chip though. Maybe I need a stronger magnifying glass.

BTW, thanks to all those offering suggestions! And may I suggest, if you have this working well with NO problems maybe you could share some details about your setup?

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out 3 hdds later that the hdd may not be the problem.
My guess as I said is the problems you have are signs of a dying psu most of the time or the traces as I said but if you dont want to listen you can continue sitting around with your broken xbox.
Do I have to send you one that I have laying around that acts the same way to prove this before you put any stock in it or do you really not want to fix it at all?
By the way it is not uncommon for the xbox to freeze on that big of transfers just boot it back up and continue transfering it will be fine.

Thanks for your suggestions run088. I'm in fact only on the 2nd HD. I have not yet decided to send it back as I'm still testing it. The freeze up was not during the file transfer. Maybe I wasn't completely clear in my last post about that. 300 gigs of file transfer went just fine. Then I left it on over night (IDLE) and when I woke up it was frozen.

I only suspect the hard drive due to the large amount of complaints about this particular model in the customer reviews on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductRevie...False&Page=


I don't disaggree with you however that my power supply or motherboard could also be the problem. In fact it could be the SATA adapter too. Or some combination of all 4 components.

The problem is that this is only an intermitant thing and I have no way of isolating any aspect specifically.
Maybe you could give me some advice about testing my power supply? I have multimeters but don't know the first thing about how these power supplies work.

Thanks again for your assistance!

Picked up a SATA 750gb Samsung of my own to play with... Including the adapter and all postage costs, came to about $160AU.

The adapter was some cheap no-brand Korean thing. Has a jumper diagram to set master/slave etc but no actual pins in the jumper points. Plus both sets of jumpers have the same name (JP0) whereas the jumper diagram lists a JP0 and a JP1 as well... So yeah, really cheap. Eventually worked out that it's set to master by default (other then the chart on the circuit board there was no documentation included at all).

Plugged it in and my X2 5035 sits on the Live Config Loading screen for a few minutes, goes to a black screen for a few minutes, flubbers, sits on the XBOX screen for a few minutes, and then finally goes to an error 14 (takes about a quarter hour to get there all up).

EvoX M8+ flubbers right away then sits on the XBOX screen. Couldn't be bothered waiting to see if it eventually went to an error.

Plugged it into a PC and... works fine. Hooked it up on primary master, DVD drive on secondary master, XBoxHDM quite happily formatted and installed a dash and so forth. Stuck it back in the console but it acted the same way as before.

Stuck it in the PC again (PC's own HDD on primary master, SATA drive on secondary master, DVD on secondary slave), formatted with NTFS successfully and played Sonic 3 & Knuckles off it (love that game).

So I'd say the adapter is functioning, and the jumper settings must be ok, but for whatever reason the console still isn't happy with it. Guess I'm stuck with my 320gb Seagate for a while longer.

Bomb Bloke: I'd suggest trying some other jumper settings including 2 jumpers and no jumper and possibly even changing the orientation of them. I believe the Xbox likes "Cable Select" best. Or, if you're so inclined, you could try getting a different adapter. What brand of HD did you use?


Currently waiting on my 3rd 750gig Samsung drive to be delivered. After a lot of testing and moving files back and forth, the second one finally died. And it was working pretty well too. I'd say properly booting about 95% of the time and occasionally my F partition would be "missing". A reboot would bring it back though. Definately tollerable. Oh well.

Same as the first one, it started the "click of death".

This one was used with a different model of SATA adapter than the first one.

Thanks to Newegg for providing me another free shipping label for the return.

The X-Box expects the drive to be in the Master position, so that should've worked. I gave Cable Select a go anyway but it didn't make a difference. Thanks for the suggestion though. I imagine the drive just isn't initialising fast enough for the system's liking, I don't hear the drive head start to move until a few seconds after it's powered up.

As mentioned, the drive is a 750gb Samsung - in fact I see it's the same design as yours. The exact model is HD753LJ.

I'm planning on a computer upgrade shortly, so I'll probably stick the thing in that then re-instate my LAN. If I shift all my media off the console my old 320gb drive would still provide plenty of space to play with.

This is what I got it seems to work pretty good so far but it is a little buggy.The mobo does not always access the hdd quick enough causing an error 13.I figured this because the ini of the 5035 does not always get picked up it mostly never really does the hdd just kicks in at the last second and it is normally bypassed.It acts the same way on 4981 as it does 5035 I can just see what is happening because of the ini of the 5035.
Here is what I am using

http://shop3.frys.com/%7B1LDPmH3q2l42WpesC...CH:MAIN_RSLT_PG



http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...N:IT&ih=009

That appears to be the exact same adapter I'm using, right down to the QC Passed sticker on that big IC... Only mine didn't come in any real sort of packaging, it was just entombed in bubble wrap (probably to cut down on postage costs).

You see in one of the corners how there's a white square with four solder points in it? Yeah, that's the "jumpers".

Given that your 1TB drive works at all I'd pin the blame on the Samsung. Shoulda known it was too cheap to be worth while.

Thats not the price I paid it was on sell last week $159 free shipping.

It might have something to do with the speed of the 32mb buffer.It seems at some points the drive is moving faster than it normally does.The way it flew there a slayers build of the hdd was quite impessive.
The adapter came in a nice package but the work done on it was shotty to say the least.It has a solder bridge on it that may or may not suppose to be there and there is a couple solder splashes on the board.

It does seem to be holding up so far.I have not loaded much media to it yet because I need to find out a little more about how the debug bios operate with hdd size and limitations first.

So I received my second replacement hard drive a couple of weeks ago. I'd been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to install and test it. But, I finally got around to getting it in and copying everything over from my old drive again. It all went ok with just a couple minor snags.

One thing that I'd found after having this drive in my computer for a day is that it was running pretty hot. My computer is pretty high end and definitely pumps out some heat but I'm getting the feeling that this model of Samsung drive has some temperature issues.

So I'm thinking that when you have it locked up inside the Xbox, it's really not getting a whole lot of airflow and the excessive heat eventually causes the "click of death" failure.

What fan speeds is everyone running at? What's your minimum? Is there a utility for the Xbox that will show the SMART info for a drive so that I can keep tabs on it's health?

It would be great if the Xbox (XBMC) could control fan speed in relation to drive temp in addition to CPU temp. This is how I have my PC configured.

So for now I'm just running my Xbox without it's cover on. Probably not the best solution, but I really don't want to lose another drive and have to go through the whole RMA hassle again.

Maybe it's a good time for a fan mod?

Comments, thoughts, suggestions appreciated!

I've heard it mentioned that running the console with the cover off can mess with the airflow over the motherboard (resulting in graphics IC meltdowns).

Perhaps if you chopped a hole in the thingy the HDD is screwed into, so that the CPU fan is blowing air right into the drive?

Thanks to all thread participants for the information! I have been happily using my Xbox with a WD 120GB PATA hdd for years, but have recently been thinking about getting a bigger hard drive so I don't have to FTP/SMB share out files from my PCs (i.e. I don't need all those videos wasting my RAID10 space!). Most of the information in Xbox-Scene is old and so only talks about hard drives as big as 320GB, so it's good to hear that larger drives could work.

I don't want to have to worry about the SATA-PATA adapter, unless we get more definitive posts in this thread soon. Hence, I'm planning on ordering the largest PATA drive that I can - 750GB is the largest I've seen.. but I may settle for 500GB, as I've been a very happy WD-only customer since 30GB drives were considered huge . I'll post any problems, or my success, as it happens.

Aside from allowing extremely large drives, is there any benefit to using a SATA drive? Is there an increase in load/access times?

been gone for awhile and glad to see others still going on the xbox1.


Here my old thread from 06
hd

I havent read this whole thread yet but since fry's have 1tb for 159 i might try it

It works good but it is a little buggy you get the occassional error 13 or f or g partition missing.It cures on a reboot.I guess it is the price you have to pay for the size advantage.
On the otherhand I have a 750 gig pata and it works flawlessly so you decide whats best for you.
As far as performance they seem the same.An xbox does not ask much out of a hdd and the interface that the xbox uses couldnt use the extra speed if it did.

Why error 13? Isn't that a very strange error? Is this in combination with a softmod?

I'm very interested to try this upgrade because I want to use the Western Digital Caviar GP. Not because of it's size but because it runs very cool and quiet. The only problem is that I can't find a shop that sells the right SATA to IDE adapter.

Trying to find the root cause: is the issue with the adapter or is it with using a 1 TB drive?

And, am I getting this correctly - only one person(the initial poster) was able to hook up a sata 1 TB drive w/ adapter successfully with no problems?

read his other posts, he still has problems even though they're minor.

Best I can make out, the main issue is that SATA drives just take too long to power up for the X-Box's liking.

For what it's worth, one guy got his console booting using a certain adapter that I also bought. Another guy got his console booting with a drive that I also bought.

But that drive/adapter combo didn't work in my X-Box. Worked in my PC though.