I have a st3750640a seagate hard drive that I had in a original xbox. I wanted to take it out to use if for my computer but I can't because it is locked. I have the eeprom.bin and the hard drive key and password. I tried using xboxhdm to unlock it using the instructions here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xup8b8IE1AI

However when I run unlockx my drive says "Not Lockable". My attempt to enter the password and unlock it fail. In the youtube video the guys hard drive says "Lockable (and locked)". What am I doing wrong?

If all you want to do is unlock the disk, and you won't ever want to rebuild a disk for than Xbox, then it's really simple.

Build your xboxhdm 1.9 disc with no content, but put eeprom.bin in /linux/eeprom/ before making the xboxhdm iso.

Connect your hard drive to your PC (connect the Xbox hard drive as primary master on IDE cable 1, and your CD/DVD drive on IDE cable 2). Select option 3 and type unlockhd -a to unlock the disk.

If you might want to build a new disk for that Xbox at some point then build xboxhdm using the details in this post.

i made a post about unlocking hard disks without the eeprom.
but if you have it make sure the file name is correct "case sensitive"
Also if you used a program to lock the drive to start it then you can use option 4 (unlock using dos tools) in xboxhdm.
then type atapwd.
chose security tools.
unlock using master password.
and the try.
XBOXSCENE
or
TEAMASSEMBLY
if that says command completed sucsessfully.
select dissable using master password.
and use the same working password

I tried what you said and all I get is command lines that say
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hda..
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hdb..
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hdc..
etc.
etc.
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hdt..
Linux CD not found! Insert it and try again...

How many IDE ports does your PC motherboard have?

That works. Now unlockx shows "Lockable..(Not Locked)". Thanks so much!

Only one. I was using that port to connect my (formerly) locked hard drive. My CD drive is SATA.

That's why the linux based xboxhdm features didn't work properly. xboxhdm 1.9 (the CD version) only works with two IDE ports. For a motherboard with only one IDE port you have to use xboxhdm 2.2, which boots from USB.

Ah, good to know. I had an old xboxhdm 1.9 disk so I didn't bother using the USB version.

i have no issues using a pc with only 1 ide port and xboxhdm 1.9
But i use a IDE dvd..
you need a ribbon cable with 2 ide connectors on it and set the ide dvd to slave. and the hard disk to master.

I really need to make a video to prove it lol.
but i really dont see why i would need too i wouldnt lie about it lol.

The SATA drive may be an issue though. because as far as i can tell it looks for the cd on a secondary IDE device (primary Slave / or / secondary master)

I definitely don't think you're lying, I think you're just lucky, and have a motherboard / BIOS combination that convinces xboxhdm 1.9 (and specifically the linux 2.4 kernel) that the devices are in the right logical locations. Either that or the people who wrote xboxhdm 1.9 all got it wrong, but given their level of expertise I somehow doubt that!

You are right about the SATA DVD drive - a SATA DVD drive isn't likely to ever work, because it appears as /dev/sdx, not /dev/hdx, so xboxhdm is looking in entirely the wrong place for the disc.

xboxhdm's default is to use HDD as primary master and the CD-ROM as primary slave (hda and hdb), so only one IDE port is fine... If you use the CD drive as secondary master (hdc) you're fine but probably not the other way around..

from xboxhdm for dummies:

"1. Put you cd/dvd drive in primary slave and xbox hard drive in primary master"