First off, this tutorial is meant to be short and sweet, so it will be mostly pictures.

NOTE: These pictures were taken with a BlackBerry, sorry about the quality/size...

NOTE: 3.5" HDDs are only supported by Freeboot and XBReboot at the moment, retail kernels will not detect them.

Anyway, as we all know the 360 is designed only to be used with a 2.5" laptop sized hard drive and as such only supports 5v, which means that we are unable to connect full sized 3.5" hard drives to the motherboard without some type of external power supply...

This tutorial will show you how to solder a 12v/5v SATA power connector and standard SATA data cable straight to the motherboard and allow you to use any SATA hdd of your choice (2.5" and 3.5").

Step 1: Disassemble your 360 all the way down to the motherboard (not covered in this tutorial, search for it)

Step 2: Solder your SATA data cable as shown below: (make sure you do not forget to wire the ground wires otherwise your SATA cable will be subject to interference and may not detect your HDD)



Step 3: Run your SATA data cable along the bottom of your motherboard as shown below:



Step 4: Put your motherboard back inside the metal cage, and let your SATA data cable feed out in front of the fans as shown below:



Step 5: Solder your SATA power cable as shown below:



Step 6: Drill a hole in your case, and install a grommet as shown below: (1" size is ideal for feeding the SATA data/power cables through)







Step 7: Reassemble your 360, with the SATA data/power cables coming out of the top of the case as shown below:





Step 8: Connect them to your 3.5" HDD, start up your 360, format your new HDD with Freeboot or XBReboot, and you are good to go!

thanks a lot

Great tutorial! Can't wait to try this out. How does this affect Microsoft HDDs? If both HDDs are plugged in at the same time will there be any conflicts?

you are the man as usual

you cant have both plugged in at the same time it will make them both not work and the console will not boot

Wow, I didn't know that that homebrew 360s supported HDDs larger than stock sizes. Time to buy Xbox 360 number 3... Thanks for the tut.

Hi mate could you please show another picture pointing out which point on the motherboard sata solder points are ground and which ones are data?

Judging from your pic, 1 and 2 are data, 6 and 7 are data, and the ones in between are ground?

I'm asking because I've split open my sata cables and found 4 white covered wires, and 3 exposed bare wires, the white ones are obviously data and the exposed are ground but it's difficult exactly to tell exactly which pins correlate to the ground wires as my ground wires aren't in any particular order within the cable.

You are correct in thinking that the white-jacketed wires are the data lines, but they are pins 2, 3, 5 and 6.

The bare wires are pins 1, 4 and 7, and they are the ground lines. (these NEED to be wired to a ground point or interference will mess with your SATA signal)

NOTE: Pins 1, 4 and 7 can be connected together and soldered to any ground point on the motherboard.

Here's the pinout for the SATA cable:

having trouble, I soldered it all up, but both the 3.5 Hard Drives I tried, don't show up in xexloader, I tested a xbox 20 GB drive and it worked fine, all wires appear to be fine but nothing in xexloader?

second question how do you format the drive in XBReboot?

Your 3.5" HDD needs to be formatted by the 360 first before it will be seen in XexLoader, FAT32/NTFS partitions do not work.

Follow these directions on your 360 to format the 3.5" HDD:

1. System Settings

2. Memory

3. Select HDD (it will show as 'unformatted' most likely)

4. Enter Serial Number

5. Drive is Formatted

yeah I thought that mite be how to format.

used an external power source and the HD worked, guess I have to recheck the wires

thanks again.

i did something similar, but i didnt pull voltage off the mosfets like that, it does have inherent dangers, for me 12V is pulled direct from the power connector and 5V from the short protected 5V rail in front of the CPU

Actually the 5v point leads directly to the 5v line from the motherboard's HDD connector, and the 12v goes directly to the main 12v rail of the PSU.

That 12v point can be traced directly back to the PSU plug, and the trace/voltage have both been verified via multimeter.

So, AFAIK, the 12v and 5v points should be perfectly safe to use.

I've been using this setup for 3 days myself and I have been playing some serious 3.5" HDD-loaded COD4 MWF2 on system-link with no trouble.

for those worried about soldering (for 12V/5V points), you could always use an powered external 3.5" caddy. You'll still have to do the SATA part of course...

thinking about it, you could even use bits off a pc esata bracket and make it a VERY neat (pluggable) install if you removed the ports from the blanking plate and screwed into the 360 metal case (perhaps even on the OTHER side rather than the normal HDD side)

Back plate to pull ports from like this one. CHeap on ebay too

* UPDATE *

I re-sized all the horrible 1600x1200 images down to 800x600, so they should be a lot easier to look at now.

If the images are still huge, try clearing your browser's cache.

EDIT: Nevermind, damn Photobucket, didn't seem to re-size the images properly...

Hey Frosty Thanx for the tut. You always do something for scenes and try to help us. Thanx once again for time to wrote this tut.


Of topic:

Frosty can u tell me is DVD drive are still needed for playing games?? I am planing to Dump my 360 DVD drive cause its noisy and old. I want to make a 360 just for Home-brew and for gaming occasionally. (May be for XBMC )

No problem, glad to help.



Technically no, it's not required anymore. You can just load all your 360 games on to a SATA HDD (or USB, but the loading times are not the best) and play them with XexLoader.

NOTE: The only downside to removing your DVD drive is that your eject light/power light on your 360 will constantly be blinking, but the console will work and play games/homebrew from the HDD just fine.

I can't wait for XBMC on the 360, it's gonna be sick. However, I would be more excited to see an FTP server homebrew app released, because copying games via my 8GB USB flash drive is getting tiresome...

But if the DVD drive is not needed then how do people load the games to HDD. is there way to do it from PC?? I am curious

Well, at the moment DVD dumping support is not complete, because XexLoader does not automatically patch the XEX files in the game to remove media checks, so dumping games from the DVD drive doesn't really work...

So, this is the only way you can do it for now:

1. Use XboxImageBrowser on your PC to extract the game files from either the DVD (using a Kreon drive) or the ISO of the game you want into a folder on your PC

2. Use X360GameHack to automatically patch all XEX files in the directory that you just extracted your game files into

3. Copy the folder to either a USB flash drive or a USB HDD

4. Boot your Freeboot/XBReboot homebrew-enabled 360, connect your USB flash drive or USB HDD, start XexLoader, and use the File Browser to copy the folder on to your SATA HDD.

NOTE: You can also play the game using your USB flash drive or USB HDD instead of using the SATA HDD, but the loading times will not be as good as the SATA HDD.

thanx for answering my question. You are always helpful.

Wish you achive whatever you want in your life. Thanx once again

Would it be possible to modify the DVD power cord so it doesn't blink?

Also since the power cord has 12v and 5v lines (i think anyway) would it be possible to adapt it to power a 3.5 HDD?

No problem, i'm more than happy to help where I can.



I'm sure it's possible, perhaps grounding the 3rd pin (open/close status pin) on the DVD drive power connector would work?

Not sure though...



My gut instinct tells me that the DVD power connector doesn't provide enough amperage to support a 3.5" HDD (since the DVD power connector was only designed to support a 360 DVD-ROM drive's power requirements), you would probably end up damaging the DVD power circuit if you tried...

I have not attempted this though, so I could be wrong.

So the main benefit gained from this is that:

1. It's a f@#$@ rad mod.
2. It's seen and operates as an "internal" drive, increasing read speeds.
3. It's a f#^#% rad mod.

Do I have that pretty much correct?

Another well done in order. I love seein peeps go to it and coming up with cool stuff like this. Thanks for the great pics.

Ground it to the cord like this:



or to the motherboard?

Pretty much.



Oops, my bad, on second glance Pin 3 is not correct... it would seem that Pin 4 is actually the tray status line, which is the one that needs to be connected to ground...

But yes, in theory, shorting Pin 4 (tray status pin) to Pin 5 (ground) should make the 360 think the drive is closed and make the light stop blinking.

Here's a pinout for reference:

Thanks, as soon as I get my 360 I'll try it out.

* UPDATE *

My 3.5" HDD modified 360 supports a 1.5TB HDD!

Check it out!

I did the mod but the box displays E68 if I power on everything at once.

I must boot the console to dash then connect the sata cable to the HDD and everything works fine.

If I turn on the console with the hdd sata connection i get E68.

Console 1921_8955 XBR

dunno if this is a XBR limitation or the drive takes to long to boot-ready state (WD 1TB Model:WD10EADS)

I actually have this exact same problem with my WD15EADS drive...

I have also found that turning the machine on, then off, then on again will also make the E68 screen go away.

Also note though that only my WD15EADS randomly causes E68 on bootup (sometimes it starts up just fine first try), but not my WD10EADS drive... (works perfectly every time)

Either way though, once the machine is booted up the drive works perfectly.

Did you make sure to connect the SATA ground wires on your machine?

to me seems that the firmware is so damn slow to respond to the id request xD (on the hdd)


yep ground wires are connected

Edit:

i added the slow firmware because on my pc i had to add a boot delay or the hdd would not be properly recognized

I agree, I think it is a drive firmware issue.

Mostly because the WD10EADS and the WD15EADS drives have the exact same power requirements... so it can't be power/amperage related because my WD10EADS works just fine.

Still though, a 1.5TB HDD is well worth the occasional annoyance of the E68 screen.

Now to find / hack a xplorer360 that's usable with the new drive


Thanks for the great tutorial BTW

Thanks! I'm glad it worked well for you.

For now i'm just using an 8GB flash drive w/XeXLoader to transfer my games, and it's a tedious task LOL.

Xplorer360 supporting 1TB+ drives would be definitely be cool, but an FTP server would be ideal... hopefully something will be released soon.

Are you guys able to boot from the standard HDD ?

I can boot read/write fine with the 1 tb HDD on the added SATA cable. But if I unplug that and try to boot from original Hdd it hangs on Xbox 360 loading screen for about 10 secconds then gives me E68.

If I lift pin 6 from the added SATA connection it will boot fine from original hdd.

I have checked all wires for a short and continuity and there all fine.

It is puzzling me why it will hang with pin 6 connected when the other end of it is not connected to anything, yet boots fine if I lift pin 6 from the MOBO.

I have also removed the connector from an original hdd, plugged that in the MOBO and checked continuity on pins 1 through to 7 between original sata plug and the one I added just to make sure i had all the wires in the right places.

Any ideas, or have i got to resort to a switch on pin 6 lol ?

I'm having the same problem, i just leave the sata cable plugged and disconnect the power plug on the 1tb hdd

I was having trouble at first getting my hdd detected (E68) by soldering the sata cable directly to the motherboard. Maybe it was because I'd stripped the wires of too much shielding to make it out of spec.

In the end, I just butchered the external connector that comes with my stock 20gb and soldered my sata cable to that instead. Connected all the 7 wires 1 to 1 and its working perfectly so far. No more working under cramped conditions and trying to make sure there's no shorts.

Got both 12v and ground directly off the power connector through a single cdrom audio cable.

is the sata ground need as an older mod some one did dosnt you them but then he used a 2.5" drive if the ground is needed can thy all go to the same point

I am also having this problem, I am not sure what is causing it...

My best guess is that the disconected SATA cable is causing interference or a heavy load on the motherboard SATA header, causing the original HDD to not be detectable...

If you shorten the cable to less than 10" then the original HDD is detected, but that isn't long enough to go underneath the motherboard... and feeding the wires through open holes on the motherboard does not seem to work very well either (due to interference I think)...

So it seems to be only one or the other... stock HDD or enormous 3.5" HDD...



The SATA ground wires are definitely required from what i've seen in my own tests, and yes you can just wire all them up to any ground point on the motherboard.

The above picture doesn't have the ground lines wired up, so unless that cable is really short I don't think it would work very well.



If that works then that is a perfect workaround for me, thanks for the tip!

i think a good fix would be a 4 port jumper switch like used on modems to physically isolate the data wires, a bit of a pain, but if the need necessitates it then you have no choice

Thanks for the tut.

I've got everything wired up, the drive shows up as unformatted, I put in the serial number to format the drive and the status bar completes. I've done this over and over again.

The problem is that once that is done the drive still shows up as unformatted. Has anyone else had this issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on a cause or a cure for this?


Additional info:

I soldered to the board with about 7 inches of 24 gauge solid core insulated wire. That wire goes to the top of the board near the fans and connects to about 15 inches of SATA cable. Is this too long? Should I shorten it?

I connected all 3 ground wires to the #5 ground wire on the DVD connector. I can't imagine this is the problem but maybe I'm wrong.

I'm using an external HDD enclosure to provide the power to the HDD. I wanted to wire up a power supply but the solder points for the power connector in the tut appear to be only applicable to xenon's, I have a zephyr.
I found plenty of power sources at http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=613160 to anyone who is interested. I'll solder the power later.

Thanks

Your wiring seems to be fine, but here's the big question: Are the wires running underneath your motherboard shielded?

Grounding the shielding around the wires is equally as important as grounding the 1, 4 & 7 wires.

If the 7 wires running underneath your motherboard are bare, that might be your problem.

Also, what size HDD are you using?

I have tested the following HDD sizes: 80GB, 100GB, 1TB, 1.5TB (and they all work fine)

I've only got the four data wires running the length of the bottom of the board and they are insulated (They are not bare copper, I think I would fry the whole box when I put it in the case or sooner) but they are not shielded like the sata cable with its thick rubbery stuff all around it, so hopefully this is my issue. I will undo everything, try soldering the sata cable directly to the bottom points and I will post results.

Currently I've got all three grounds soldered to one of the ground wires for the DVD drive, once I move the sata cable to the bottom I will find a different ground but having all three together isn't an issue, correct?

Coincidentally, I am using a 1TB WD drive which is identical to your original pictures. I had been using the drive, formatted in FAT32, in an external encloser through USB with this very xbox but horrible lag issues inspire me to wire it up better. So I doubt the drive is the issue.

Thanks

Yeah the bare (although insulated) wires are the problem...

SATA cables are a lot like video cables, they need metal wire shielding wrapped around the data wires to prevent interference from messing with the signal.

This metal wire shielding is already in the SATA cable (the 3 bare ground wires) but the white wires (data wires) are essentially 'naked' and vulnerable to interference if too much of the wire is not shielded. (more than a few inches of bare SATA data wire is enough to cause interference)

You need to strip only about an inch off the end of the sata cable (like in my picture) otherwise your SATA cable will be vulnerable to interference.

Frosty, You are in fact the man! I re-soldered the SATA cable directly to the board and just soldered all three grounds to one and it worked like a charm.

I'm now looking at 927 GB's of free space on my freashly formatted drive.

Thanks again!

I've pretty much done the same but cheated some :-)

I've used a external caddy to power the drive as the xenon POS is stressed enough (imo) to i wanted to use as little as possible.

I butchered a offical 20GB caddy and pulled out the hdd connector (so no soldering needed). Used SATA<->Sata connector to allow drive to interface with 20GB cable (inside caddy) with some cleaning with an a sharp knife to allow the adaptor to fit to the 360 connector.

All works great, I too get 927GB , thing is I've heard you cant actually USE more than 250GB (on irc) even though the usable space shows as 927GB. Has anyone loaded up more than 250GB to see if it works?

dunno if that's true i hope not

im gonna start ripping some games to the hdd till i hit the 250+Gb mark

Bummer man, that would really suck...

Im sure it is just a software hack that would need to be done to remove the limitation, but i'm in the process of loading 1.25TB+ worth of 360 games at the moment, so I should find out if this is true pretty soon...

I hope not.

This would be very, very disappointing...I have a 1TB drive on the way :/

Im gonna watch this thread, keep us updated

it sure would, i have a 250GB 2.5" drive i passed up on so i could get this working with a 1TB drive, looks quite nice too (the 1TB solution). The issue was apparently found on a devbox, your testing should confirm what the situation is on a retail box. Waiting for your results...