I've recently found my old xbox1 but I can't use it without a HDD. The old HDD I had used in it years ago has been used in a PC, so now now I need to format it for use in the xbox. I remember flashing a custom bios via the TSOP method (or at least that's what I think it was called) and so I had planned to just use evoX to drop in the HDD and format it. My problem is that my dvd drive no longer works, and so I don't have a way to format the HDD without using a PC.

So far I've tried using xhdprep to prepare the HDD and then tried using HD fatxbox explorer to install a dashboard and get it working in the xbox. However the PC won't doesn't see the xbox hard drive. The PC I'm using has IDE ports so I'm not using an add in card.

So yeah, is there anyway I can format the HDD using the PC, then install a dash with FTP and get everything else installed that way?

Use xboxhdm. You'll need to manually place the dash you want on the xboxhdm iso before you build it, and use xbrowser to manually place the dash in the right place on the Xbox drive (where you place it depends on your BIOS, but E:\evoxdash.xbe and C:\evoxdash.xbe are sensible options).

Thanks, I'm just in the process of trying that now

I've renamed the evoxdash to xboxdash and installed it on C as well as F via xboxhdm. IIRC the custom bios I flashed all those years ago was set to boot evoxdash from the F drive, so I'm assuming that will work

EDIT:

Everything worked perfectly, thanks

You shouldn't name it xboxdash.xbe, you should keep that for the real Xbox dashboard. Your hacked BIOS should be looking for that as a last resort - almost all of them look for evoxdash.xbe on C or F as their first or second option.

Before you change anything use BIOSchecker to see which BIOS you have, then download a copy of that BIOS to see how its default dashboards are configured.