This tutorial is my way of giving back to this community for providing all of the information I needed to upgrade my drive. I did the upgrade a few nights ago, going back and forth through various threads, using trial and error, etc. Since I couldn't find a comprehensive step-by-step walkthrough, I decided to go ahead and write one to help out those who may want to do this.

I want to specifically thank roofus and anger, the guys who made Xplorer360, as well as TheSpecialist, the guy who made HDDHackr and also hacked Xplorer360 to play nice with the WD BEVS drive... I also want to thank him for taking the time to explain how to work with these tools, and I also want to thank folks in this thread for documenting what worked and didn't work for them. Most of the steps in this tutorial were gleaned directly from posts in that thread.

This tutorial may be reposted and distributed elsewhere as long as it is not modified and credit is given to the afore-mentioned folks (roofus, anger, TheSpecialist, and those from that thread.)

In this tutorial I will list the exact steps that I followed that led to success. Some of the steps may not be necessary and some may be redundant, but I wanted to be sure to document everything.

Also, this tutorial focuses pretty much just on the software needed and the steps required to make it work. I'm going to assume that you already know how to physically replace the hard drive. If you don't, there are plenty of other tutorials available (such as this one) that will show you how to do it.

Additionally, these steps were written with Windows XP in mind. If you are using a different OS (such as Vista) these steps may not work for you (but they should give you a pretty good idea what to do.)

And finally, the obligatory disclaimer: you do this at your own risk! If you end up destroying your 360 hard drive, your shiny new 120GB WD BEVS drive, or your PC I cannot be held responsible, even if you follow these steps to the letter.

Ok, let's get this thing started!
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What you'll need:
hardware:

• A PC (duh) with a SATA controller. If your PC is antiquated like mine you'll need an add-on card (I used this one it comes with all the cables you'll need and it's natively recognized by HDDHackr, though be warned it apparently has compatibility issues with some motherboards.)
  
• A Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS 120 GB SATA hard drive
  
• A Floppy boot disk (go here for disk images, I used a Windows 98SE OEM boot disk. You could probably also use a bootable flash drive or a zip disk or something as long as the media is writable under DOS)
  
• A Xbox 360 w/ a 20GB hard drive (duh)

software:

• HDDHackr
  
• Xplorer360 Beta 6
  
• Xplorer360 'extreme build 2' (you may be able to just use this hacked version and not need the Beta 6 version at all... you may also be able to skip some of the steps in this tutorial thanks to this version, which I will note.)
  
• Winhex (needed for verification purposes)
  
• Hex Workshop (needed unless you have a registered version of Winhex.)
  
• A hddss.bin dumped from a retail 360 120GB hdd (I'm not linking to one because they contain copyrighted code. You're smart, I'm sure you can find some way to get ahold of one.)

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The Steps:

1. Copy HDDHackr.com and the hddss.bin file to your bootable floppy disk.
   
2. Turn off your PC, connect the WD BEVS drive, and boot the PC up on the floppy (I also disconnected my PC's hard drive just to be safe.)
   
3. At the command prompt type "hddhackr -f" and hit enter. Follow through the prompts and be sure to create an undo file when asked.
   
4. When it's finished, reboot on the floppy again. Run "hddhackr -f" again and it will tell you if the drive will be compatible with your 360 or not.
   
5. Turn off your PC, disconnect the WD BEVS, and disconnect your 20GB drive from your 360. Disassemble the casing, and remove the 20GB drive. Hook the WB BEVS up to the connector and plug it into the 360. You're going to have to unhook the drive and pull it out again so I'd recommend not completely reassembling the casing... I just put one screw in to hold the drive in.
   
6. Turn on your 360, goto the system blade, "console settings", and "system info." Jot down the serial number, you'll need it in the next step.
   
7. Go back to the system blade, goto "memory" and you should have the option to format the drive. It will ask for the serial number, type it in and send it flying. (if it says "no device detected" something is wrong. Check the connections.)
   
8. While it's formatting go ahead and hook the 20GB hard drive up to your PC. Boot up into Windows, create a folder on your desktop called "xbox" and run Xplorer360 Beta 6 (you may also be able to use the "extreme build 2" version.)
   
9. Within Xplorer360 click "Drive" then "Open" then "Hard Drive or Mem Card". It should take a few seconds and then pop up some partitions in the left hand window. (If it doesn't detect the drive, check the connections and also make sure that your SATA controller driver is properly installed.)
   
10. Click on Partition 03, select all the items in the right hand window, and drag and drop them to the folder you created on your desktop. If you get errors you'll have to open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and manually kill the program... reopen the program and drag and drop the folders one at a time. When you find the problem folder create a subfolder in the xbox folder on your desktop with the same name as the problem folder, go into the problem folder and copy the folders/files in there one at a time. You may have to do this a few times, creating folders within folders. For me the problem file was a 0kb .db file within the compatibility folder under a few subfolders. I couldn't get the file to copy so I just created a blank text file and renamed it to the exact name of the file (it was st.db or something like that.) Once the copy starts going it will probably take awhile, depending on how much data you have... so take a break.
    
11. Close Xplorer360 and run the Xplorer360 "extreme build 2" hack. Open the drive like you did in step 9 and choose the "backup partition 2" option to dump the second partition to a bin file (named part2.bin or something like that.) It should create a 262MB file.
    
12. Shutdown the PC and disconnect the 20GB drive. By this time the 360 should be done formatting the drive, so turn it off and disconnect the 120GB drive. Hook it up to the PC and boot up to Windows.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    
    Now for the "tricky" (and possibly unnecessary) parts. If you are using the "extreme build 2" hack of Xplorer 360 some or all of the steps in this section may not be required... I don't know for sure. I did the steps exactly as I'm going to show here and it worked for me.
    
13. Open up Hex Workshop. Click "Options" and "Preferences." On the "Layout" tab in the "Rows" section uncheck the "Fit to Window" box and ensure the Bytes/Row is set to 16. This isn't necessary but it makes the next steps easier.
    
14. Click "Disk" then "Open Drive", change the "Select" drop down to Physical Disks and locate your 120GB drive. Be sure you select the correct drive or this could potentially cause catastrophic problems.
    
15. This is the potentially tricky part. You need to get to byte 80000 in hex, but Hex Workshop doesn't let you go to a specific byte offset on drives, only to a specific sector. Assuming the sector size of your drive is the same as mine, or 512 decimal bytes (which I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be,) the sector you should have to goto is 400 (hex.) You do this by clicking "Edit" then "Goto", typing 400 in the "Offset" field and choosing "Beginning of Drive" in the "From Where" section. If the sector size is different for some reason, you'll have to do a little math to get to the right offset (here's my math, just to give you an idea... 0x80000 is 524288 in decimal. 524288/512 (the sector size) is 1024, 1024 is 400 in hex. You could probably do all the math in hex, but I'm not good at hex math so I convert to decimal.)
    
16. You should see a bunch of columns numbered 0-F, and they should all have "00" in them. If they have anything else in them you are either working with the wrong drive or you are at the wrong offset, don't change anything! Otherwise change the columns as follows:
    
    58 54 41 46 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 01
    
    And save by clicking the disk icon or clicking "File" and "Save"
    
17. Leaving Hex Workshop open, open up Winhex and either goto offset 80000 or do a search for the word "XTAF." Verify that starting at byte 80000 you see the string above (58 54 41 46, etc.) If you do see the string, go on to the next step. If you don't then you need to back to Hex Workshop and undo your changes, and then find the correct offset to make the changes to. If you are lucky enough to have a registered copy of Winhex or another hex editor that lets you goto a specific byte, you can simply navigate to byte offset 0x80000 and make the changes. The shareware version of Winhex does not allow you to save though.
    
18. Within Hex Workshop open Xplorer360.exe (the beta 6 version, not the "extreme build 2" version.) I'm assuming that this change already exists in the "extreme build 2" version so you can probably skip this step, but I'm including it because I did this. Goto offset F0C2 (hex) where you will find the following values:
    
    68 77 03
    
    change them to:
    
    00 C2 1A
    
    Save the file. You will be prompted to make a backup, which is always a good idea.
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    
    The rest of these steps fall are most definitely "necessary".
    
19. Load Xplorer360 beta 6 version (you can probably use the "extreme build 2" version, but I don't know for sure) and open the 120GB drive like you did with the 20GB drive in step 9. If the drive won't open or it opens but you can't access the partitions then something isn't right, go back and check your work.
    
20. Expand Partition 03 and copy all of the data from the xbox folder you created on your desktop. This will take awhile depending on how much data you have, so take another break.
    
21. Close Xplorer360 Beta 6 and open the "extreme build 2" version. Open the drive, then select "restore partition 2", select the 262mb bin file you made in step 11 (part2.bin.) Once it completes, your drive is ready!

Now, Shutdown your PC, pop the 120GB drive into your 360 enclosure. It's probably a good idea to only partially assemble it so you can test it. If you hook it up and your 360 boots up and looks like it did on your 20GB, you should be done!

You may want to check your XBL connection and ensure your XBLA games and other DLC works. You might also verify that your original XBox games still work, and check a game save or two just to make sure nothing is corrupted. Then turn off your 360, reassemble your drive, hook it back up, fire up your 360, and bask in the knowledge that you spent $70 and about an hour (of work time, not data-copying time) instead of $180 to upgrade your 360 from 20GB to 120GB.

I just discovered one other step that you have to do if you want to be able to download videos off XLB Marketplace, or watch videos you've already downloaded.... goto the System Blade, select the hard drive, goto system items, choose "rights database" and delete it.

If you don't you'll probably get a very annoying error about media usage rights and won't be able to watch or download DRM encrusted videos.

btw when u change the original 20gb hd with the WD 120gb BREV, did the console recognize it as 120gb or just 20 gb?
since your switching it to a 120gb instead of something smaller, im just wondering.

First off, Good Job on the Tut.
Its always good to have more info crammed down our throats then nothing at all.

My method was a bit different though. Didn't require as much winhex use. I've posted mine before, so I'm not going to get into that again, but I did have questions at the "Possibly Unnecessary steps" 13-18. What is going on there?

The changes in the hexadecimal code kinda made me ponder, but may have been taken care of on my side the different method I used.

Also, when trying to restore partition 2 to the newly formatted drive, I ran into problems where the program(xplorer360) just hung. I bypassed this by just restoring a whole 20GB image to the 120GB drive. The only issue with this is the freespace remaining following. I end up with an 107GB drive, but 13GB free space. A format takes care of that and shows the whole 120GB drive.

I'm thinking that there may need to be files copied over to the drive first so that you can simply restore the partition 2 without using an image of the whole 20GB drive. If you and others have had success with this, then there may be hope.

If you know what the reason for your steps, I'd be interested, and it would put just a little more info out there for us.

Thanks.

In order for the console to see it at all you have to flash the drive with an hddss.bin from an existing 360 drive. If you use one from a 20GB drive the console will only see 20GB (well, ~13GB.) If you use one from a 120GB drive the 360 will see the full 120GB (~107GB)

Once you've flashed the drive you have to format it on the 360, and then you can start copying your data.

Thanks for the encouragement...

Since I was successful in upgrading my drive, I wanted to document all of the steps exactly as I did them... and I wanted to do it while it was still fresh in my mind. I realized as I was writing that some of the steps may have been superfluous thanks mainly to the hacked version of Xplorer360 'extreme build 2' that TheSpecialist put out.

You see there were some changes that were required, hex edits to both the drive and the original version of Xplorer360 Beta 6 to make them work together. When I was upgrading my drive I made these changes prior to downloading the 'extreme build 2' version.

The 'extreme build 2' version was apparently made specifically for working with the BEVS drive... so it's possible that by using that version none of the hex editing steps are neccesary. It's also possible that the only hex edits required are those done to the drive itself... but I don't know that for sure because I didn't do it that way. The only people who could answer that question would be those who have tried it, or TheSpecialist.

As for restoring partition 2, I had no problems with that. Using the 'extreme build 2' version I was able to create the image of partition 2 and restore the image without any lock ups or other issues. The only time I got lock ups was when I was copying the data off of my 20GB from partition 3 using the Xplorer360 Beta 6. The work around was to copy the data one folder at a time until I found the problem folder, and then I created the folder structure on my desktop and copied the files/subfolders one at a time until I found the problem file (which was st.db, I believe.) Fortunately the file was a 0kb file so I just created a blank text file and renamed.

Thanks for the tut!


Now ready for the fall update, woo hoo!

Hi, Great Tutorial

I plan on buying an arcade 360 and use my old 20GB on it, then use this tutorial to make the 20 a 120. Just wondering if this is Xbox LIVE friendly?, from what I've read there has been no issue. Also I am a little confused on the 360 seeing the whole 120GB. Does this happen when you format the WD 120 on the 360? I only have a 20GB 360 Drive to flash.

I'm sorry if this is a n00b question, but the search function of the site doesn't work for me. Is it true that I can't work on the 360 drives by connecting them to my laptop's USB port with an SATA cable adapter? I have to actually connect them to the hard drive controller in a desktop computer, right?

Thanks for a great tutorial.

hi guys

just wanted to say a huge thankyou for this guide and all the effort you guys have put into developing these programs and guides to help the 360 community get one up on MS!

i purchased a wd1200-bevs usto 120gb, flashed it last night with the image after hex editing hddhackr (thanks specialist!) plonked it in my xbox formatted and awesomeness 107gb of storage! total cost £32!!!!

so again many thanks! legends!

Bad news.... I think I fried my drive... I have a broken 20gb hard drive so just wanted to fix it with a 120gb drive. Flashed OK...formatted ok did all the Hex steps OK put the drive back together... however now my xbox nor my pc spot the drive I guess it is cooked.

Anyhow that was probably my bad...

My question is , when i get a new drive, do I need to do all the steps just to put in a 120gb drive, the Xbox 'sees' the drive to format as I have nothing to copy can I just leave it there???

sorry to here that chap.

the new drive will have to be flashed with the hddss.bin before loading it into the xbox. id recommend you do a quick format of it before flashing (this is what i did). once its in the xbox it should show as unformatted and you'll need to let the box format it to its own XFAT file system. once thats done it should be happy days!

re: your now broken 120gb drive, did hddhackr see it initially and now its not seeing it at all? have you tried using the undo option to restore the drive or is it not responding at all?

This is an amazing tutorial, if only I read it sooner...

While attempting to install bevs I somehow messed up my original 20gb drive. The thread describing the problem is here: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=662197
All help extremely appreciated.

EDIT: looks like I'm not alone:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...p;#entry4349197

Thanks for the great guide, none of the hexing is required anymore by the way, at least I didn't have to do any of it anyway.

I followed this guide and successfully upgraded to a 22UST0 BEVS drive (120GB). I used a copy of HDDSS.BIN found on the usual public places. The BIN I flashed turned out to be from a Fujitsu drive (according to HDDHACKR), but everything seems okay.

One thing I did not do was the winhex/hex studio mods... i used the newer versio0n of xplorer360 so i was hoping this was unnecessary (the instructions for this part are a bit sketchy).

I have a small DRM issue on my xbox that I can't seem to figure out. I have a few games from the marketplace that were purchased. Now these still work fine with the gamertag they were bought under, but they no longer function for the other two xbox live accounts on the xbox. i deleted the drm database and I even tried the new drm transfer tool with no luck. Even free demo videos from the marketplace have suffered the same fate.

I am going to try re-downloading some of the content to see what happens, but I am on a very slow internet link (live in the country so i have to suffer with throttles fixed wireless).

Thanks for this thread! I just save over $100!

On saturday I succesfully converted bevs into xbox360 compatible drive. I also thought that hexing wont be possible, but it turned out I had to do it - neither xplorer360 beta 6 nor extreme 2 would work without those hex magic.

I went about it a bit differently. After running the hddhack and formatting the 120 GB drive, I had off loaded my 20 GB drives files when I decided that I could live without my game saves. So after playing with the drive a bit by downloading a few games and arcade titles I owned, I read about the backwards compatibility problem with these drives. So I tested out some xbox titles and lo and behold they did not work. I tried the Xbox 2007 update from Microsoft, but that did not resolve the issue.

So, I plugged the 120GB back into my comp and continued with the procedure by looking at the 80000 byte offset but found that it had already been updated with a string slightly different from the one described on the guide (Don't ask me what it was, I didn't write it down). I used xplorer360 extreme 2 to copy the files (I used the extreme 2 version exclusively through out) and restored the partition 2. Then I plugged the drive back in the 360 and, in addition to having all my game saves and downloaded content, the backwards compatibility was now working again.

So, I guess that the official drives from Microsoft have backwards compatibility files that cannot be installed via the 360 backwards compatibility update. I wonder if the 360 formatting of official drives skips the backwards compatibility portions of the drive or if formatted drives lose backwards compatibility? Of if just copying the "compatibility" folder of my old drive to the new drive would have worked as well?

I succesfully converted a bevs and it was visible in Xbox360 dashboard as unformatted. I formatted it, created a hdd gamertag profile, played a game and made savagame. So I figured - if xbox360 saved a game on a disk, then partition 3 must exist, right? Wrong, at least for xplorer360 xtreme 2- it did not see this partition, neither partition two, so it was impossible to copy over the files extracted from 20gb dusk. And xplorer 360 beta 6 would not even got that far - it hanged as soon as I tried opening the disk.
This forced me to edit hdd partition with hexedit the way it is described in the tutorial. After that partition 3 appeared under xplorer360 xtreme 2 and it was also possible to restore partition 2, too.

i didnt need to do any hex editing on my usto bevs drive, simply put it in formatted it, then copied all my saves to memeory card and transfered them to the new drive, ive downloaded lots of content again and loaded saves etc all working without a hitch. i didnt bother using xplorer360 the memory card option was far quicker and easier.

Bios wouldn't 'see' the drive so i guess it is fried, slight smell of burning from the mainboard so i figure it shorted... sent it back to the supplier as duff...if i get a new one great if not i am in same position as now

What is a 22UST0 BEVS drive?

Fujitsu bin? I thought this was for WD drives?

This is simply particular 'subtype' of WD12000BEVS drive - "22UST0" moniker changes depending on date of production. All BEVS drives can be converted, provided you hook them up to compatible SATA controller (Intel ICH9 did not work for me, external VIA 6421 controller worked)


Try to read and understand what you are reading, no offence.
The .bin file contains information taken from a genuine original 120gb xbox360 disk - as it happens Microsoft uses Fujitsu HDDs - so after successful flash of the WD drive it will be visible as Fujitsu disk, to fool the console.

My only concern is how will Microsoft react to sudden proliferation of exact same 120gb drives without increase in sales of actual drives... - I assume they are able to gather statistical data on drive capacity and model from live.

The company i ordered from sent me a new drive today so will have another go... anyhow i have a case and a dff 20gb drive, so have nothing to move or convert can i just stop at the format stage (8) without the hex editing and backing up as i have nothing to copy??

Yes each drive has its own serial number. But I really don't think MS will ban people for having modded hard drives. I mean the PS3 owners are also able to upgrade their drives by themselves without flashing the firmware either. I also think they know that $180 for a 120G drive is really stupid. I paid $45 for my BEVS 120G drive.

Now if you have a modded dvd firmware that's a different story and you better buy a different book if you don't like bad endings. Its only a matter of time before you get caught. I have been caught during the Halo 3 Beta period. I would also suggest flashing back your dvd firmware before applying the fall update or any update as far as that goes.

This coming Monday Xbox Live will be down 24 hours for this reason they are coming with the fall update to be realeased later on down the line.

So everyone tread softly in the coming months. You have been warned. No BS. I expect the update to also have with it the new Ban Hammer.

My opinion is that they could do three things:

One is ban a particular hard drive serial number. That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update. Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken). From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials.

Two, they could ban the consoles from Live running the drive. Suddenly their are now drives that ban consoles connected to Live. People would unload their drives on unsuspecting buyers on ebay/craigslist/etc and then more consoles would be banned. The users would complain about how they just bought a used drive and MS would have to explain why their drive is violating copyright, is bad for the user (in MS's point of view). And would they unban the console? Wouldn't the user just resell the drive? Copyright laws vary from country to country, so such drives might be perfectly legit even with the serial in certain countries and Microsoft would probably have only it service agreement to rely on.

Three, they could ban the gamer tag from Live if caught using a banned serial multiple times. They would have to weigh the costs of live subscription revenue vs the lost hard drive revenue. And the legalities of this would probably be messy as with point two.

As an aside, I've noticed that the 360 drives from Hong Kong don't seem to be listed on ebay anymore. Perhaps those were using the same mod we've used on our drives.

i think with the release of the 60gb drive as standard now people are less likely to go through the hassle of upping it to 120gb, bottom line is 20gb is not enough these days. if i had a 60gb i wouldnt have bothered...

thing that gets me is that you can buy a core console in the uk now for £129.99 rrp but the 120gb drives are still upwards of £119!!! i mean WTF! M$ need to bring down the price of these drives ASAP, theyre shooting themselves in the foot.

as for bans, i can understand M$ banning people for hacking the DVD firmware as it allows the user to copy games and of course this costs the industry a huge amount of money. i doubt very much that M$ will ban us for using modded drives. i mean we are using offcial firmware (technically ) on these updated drives not hacked firmware (although i apprciate that the BIN files are copywrighted). but you could just claim ignorance and say you bought it second hand like that...

the most likely consiquece is as mach said above;

"One is ban a particular hard drive serial number. That is, all hard drives with a particular serial become invisible with each firmware update. Now this in itself is a bad strategy as all that is needed to get around this is for someone to distribute a new legit serial (if I'm not mistaken). From Microsoft's point of view, its a war of firmware updates vs the new serials."

but here's hoping! i dont want to get banned! i use live almost every night. id be expecting my yearly memebership costs refunded if they did ban me! damn you Gates!!!

Hi Folks
I registered on this forum just to say a big thanks for the tutorial
Worked an absolute treat ( I had to use a hex editor on my drive) but all worked well.
Superb.
Many thanks.

Great tutorial, worked on the first try, but now i got a problem with several savegames which are now corrupted
They are working on my 20gb hdd but not on the 120gb.

I heard something that they have to be resigned, but i dont have a clue how to do that.
Any ideas?

I didn't see this question answered and I too was wondering if it is possible to do this mod using a laptop.



I have not done this yet so I may be miss understanding what you did. The way I understand it you put a 20gb drive image to the 120 gb drive, formatted in the xbox360 and it was then recognized as a 120 gb drive. Why not put a 20gb image on a 250 gb drive, put in xbox360 and format? If after formatting it recognized your drive as a 120 wouldn't the same technique work on a larger hd?

Thanks,
Marc

My putting of the 20GB image on the newly formatted 120GB hard drive was done after using hddhackr and getting a working(recognized in 360)hard drive. It is a way to get around having to hexedit your hard drive to get the other partitions (0, 2). You still have to use a legit 120GB hddss.bin to prep your hard drive and have it recognized in your 360.

The requirements are that you have the Specialist version of xplorer360 and that you have a image of your 20GB hard drive backed up. I know its a pain, takes up 18.6 Gb, but its a 100% way to get your hard drive working correctly.

Once you have a hackr'd drive flashed and working, if you look in it with xplorer360, you will only have 1 partition. Original games won't work because the emulator partition is not there. Like I said above, restoring a 20GB image to your 120GB drive will eliminate the need to hex-edit your drive. You don't even need to let it completely restore, because that can take some time. Let it run about 3 or 4 minutes and then stop xplorer360's restore function. When you close and reopen the drive in xplorer360, you'll see all the partitions that should be there. At that point, you can install the hard drive in your 360 and run the emulation update disk to get the latest emulation software loaded. If for some reason, you let the restore go too long, or just let it finish restoring the 20 GB image to your drive, you'll see something like
total space 107 GB
free space 13GB
or something like that.

One other note. You may have to put the drive back in your pc for a quick hddhackr -u, followed by a reboot and a hddhackr -f to get the drive recognized by the 360 again after you restore the image to the hard drive. If you have to flash it again, do not make another undo.bin. The first one you made the first time you flashed is fine.

I've had it happen where immediately the drive is usable, but only 13gb free(solved with another format) and also having to undo with hddhackr and redo again to get it visible again.
As long as you have these pieces of software, the correct hard drive, a valid hddss.bin, and a compatible sata port, you can get the drive working very quickly.

Thanks for the reply thr4773r. I get it now. I figured I was missing something.

I followed this tutorial pretty much to the letter except I only used the extreme2 version of Xplorer360 - obviously this meant I didn't have to hex edit the beta 6 exe. Btw, it's an excellent turtorial!

I purchased my WD drive from ebuyer in the UK. Specifically it's a WD1200BEVS-00VAT0. I can confirm this works for almost everything.

BUT, it doesn't work with existing Rock Band game saves. Basically, after installing the new drive, Rock Band refuses to load my profile's saves giving the error "Loading has faled for an unknown reason. Selected storage device is no longer available". It then allows you to play the game without any previously saved information (musicians, bands, etc.). I've tried loading the game saves "from another device", selecting the harddrive as source, but this results in the same message .

I've not found any workarounds for this but there are others with the same problem, e.g. here and here.

For me this makes this mod unusable (the wife would murder me if I lost her rockband saves! ) which is really gutting because it's otherwise great!

Is this the right kind of harddisk that I need:

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD1200BEVS

Because I see nothing in the topic start about the Blue part.. But this is the only WD1200BEVS you can get here in The Netherlands..
So is this the right one?

And can I also use a 60GB Harddisk?

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD600BEVS

Because MS is using a 60GB harddisk now in the premium consoles.

And is the undo file the same as dumping the hddss.bin from your 20GB HDD? So a backup..?

I keep getting Disk Boot Failure, please insert...

Any help? I've set my USB flash drive (all i have, no Floppy) up with i believe Windows98SE boot files...

EDIT: are there any cheaper SATA controllers that are guaranteed to work with HDDHackr? I have the ICH9 Intel chipset and it works fine for me for everything else i use it for, so i'd like to keep costs down for this project.

ive done all the pre hard drive steps and i just want to confirm that before you format the 120gb hard drive you insert your OWN xbox serial number?



the only reason that would be happening is if your flash drive wasnt configured properly for boot.
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
try that website for help

My problem is that i don't have a floppy drive on my computer so i am unable to get the boot sector files...if someone could send those to me, that would be great, but until then, it looks like i'm out of luck.

sorry i sent the wrong link i wasnt paying attention.

http://www.thepcspy.com/read/bootable_usb_flash_drive

use that one and the files to download are in the comments

My problem now is do i boot from USB-FFD (or was it FDD?) or USB-HDD?

should just boot to usb drive try both and see if either gets you to dos mode

I have a ICH9 chipset so i'm not sure if i can even get there or if i do boot into DoS if i'll have further problems but i'm going to try.

never hurts to try

I'm still getting the Disk Boot Failure My options when booting are;

Floppy
LS120
Hard Drive
CDROM
ZIP
USB-FFS
USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
USB-HDD
Legacy LAN

Nothing works

EDIT: just to clarify, i have my Hard Drive and Optical disconnected.I'm using a Kingston thumb drive (1GB) and i followed the directions in the link you sent me exactly. I'm going into the BIOS and trying to boot from there buy nothing...perhaps it's a setting in the BIOS?

i have an intel d945plrn motherboard that im connecting my bevs with, however after booting into hddhackr -f [using an hp boot flash disk] it searches in enhanced mode first and then legacy mode and then says enter the nr of the drive to be used, numbers between 1-4 im stuck here

you need to hex edit hddhackr with hex editor so it can manually find your device

can it be any digital wetern 120 gb hard disk or does it have to be a laptop(slim) harddrive????

laptop slim BEVS series

can i use sata II type harddrives? i know that in the end it will not fit , but can it work connected?

can i use any western digital hard disk drive, a normal desktop hdd fits in the connectors of the 360 so can i format that hdd and use it? i know that it won`t fit in the case though

Can i recycle the original m$ 20g drive to work on my old laptop? Reformating is enough?

I used my ICH9 chipset successfully. I had to connect another SATA hard drive as well to get the flash to work.

Also, instead of using a USB thumb drive, you can do it from a hard drive. Burn a boot CD. Put all the files you need (hddhackr, hddss.bin) into a folder on your C drive, for instance C:\360\
boot off the CD into DOS and navigate to C:\360\ (might change drive letter to D:\ due to the RAM drive, I'm not sure, but you'll know when you have the right drive with a quick dir command) and run hddhackr from there.