Ok i have been at this for hours now and i made sure i tried everything i could find before i posted so i dont look like a total moron i have tried http://www.xboxscene.com/articles/pc-hdd.php this looked promising but the boot disk that Gtac posted only works with floppy drives and i haven't seen one of those in years and or even the disks for it i have tried XboxHDM with my external HDD and HDDunlocker but it wont pull up right and i cannot find the slayers disk NOTE: this is how i modded it the first time and worked perfectly i have also tried XboxHDM 2.2 usb edition but i keep getting blocked when i try to load slax i get a fatal error slax data not found but i don't necessarily need it but when i try to load the second freedos & dos HDD tools i get another error i get a init error drive 01 read error it gives me the option to enter commands saying enter full shell command line i have tried to use it to get to the freedos Dir and try to run the HDD tools but any and all commands it gives me bad command lines now im ready to pull my hair out whats left of it im not using my Xbox anymore since i have upgraded to 360 and i could use the drive space immensely for other things thank you in advance for anyone's help.

It normally is rather simple to do. 3 questions:

Is the HD in question unlocked?
What is the current OS installed on the PC you are using to attempt this?
How is the former xbox HD connected to said PC?

OK the hard drive is locked but according to a couple of the threads that i have read through all i need is the HDD key and i do have that.
the current OS installed on computer is windows vista.
and the Xbox HDD is connected directly to the computer.

my bad sorry just thought about it i dont have vista i have windows 7 ultimate 64-bit

You have to use xboxhdm, option 4 to remove the lock from the disk. Alternatively you can run atapwd or MHDD directly. You may find it easier to use one of the master passwords - XBOXSCENE or TEAMASSEMBLY, depending on how you locked the disk in the first place.

now my problem with xboxhdm is that when i try to load it it wont load and i have done the steps necessary to get it to boot but populate the c and or e drive space does that make a diffrence.

Your posts aren't very clear.

Are you saying that xboxhdm won't boot at all, or that it starts booting then freezes, or that it boots but freezes when you select one of the options?

i apologize for not being clear but when i run xboxhdm it does not load at all

How did you burn the CD?

Have you set your BIOS to boot from the CD drive first?

Do you see anything on the screen, or does the PC just hang, or does it just boot its normal operating system?

ok rechecked with my programs again when i try to load with xboxhdm it says cannot find grldr and i have gotten xboxhdm 2.2 up and running i can get option 4 up but lost as to how to unlock from this option

ok when you mess up its epic i found out what my problem was my retarded self went back and checked every step and found out when i formatted my drive to fat32 it was actually formatted to exfat and that doesnt work and to let everyone know now my hard drive has been recovered and working fine and i want to say thanks heimdall for the help.