Upgrading HD on Softmodded Xbox Tutorial

SAWEET!

 

i just bought a new hd and when i connect it to my computer and run xbhdm i press 1 for the boot vga and it sits there for awhile then says disk error 80 can someone plz help me with this shit because i cant figure it out

 

Yes i am talking about the games thaqt ive copied. I made the folders GAMES and APPS in the F drive and when i copy a game it saves to the F drive in the GAMES folder. But the only way i can play the game is to file explore to the GAMES folder and the default.xbe file for the game. I want to be able to just access games from the main menu as if were still saving to E drive. I read somewhere that you have to modify the XBINS file to make it use F instead of E when choosing games from the menu. Any help would be much appreciated!!!

 

What dashboard are you using?

 

Try another PC.... many ppl have had to try more than one machine to get it to work.... some have had to try several.

 

UnleashX Version 0.37.1218A Build 543

 

I'm unfamiliar with UnleashX. I'm sure there is a way to make it see the F partition but I don't know how. Perhaps someone with more UnleashX experience than I could take a shot at it?

 

Yea i hope so....thanks for trying though.

 

Hi guys, I sucessfully upgraded my softmodded xbox (no modchip). Now it has a 160GB seagate hard drive working perfectly with all F and G partiotion enabled for full capacity allocation of the hard drive.

Anyways I went through so much shit that I thought I should explain how this all worked for me so that hopefully it will help some people out who are still having trouble.

1) When I stupidly froze my hard drive in atapwed.exe, this is what I did to unfreeze it. (the + sign under the F colunm)

The HD being read as frozen is actually due to how your computer reads your HD. So if you ever freeze your HD in atapwed.exe by mistake, then all you have to do is go to your computer bios and change how the computer reads it. So from it being "AUTO" you would change it to "DISABLED" or in my case on my bios I had the option "NOT INSTALLED". Then if you got into atapwed.exe the HD should no longer be frozen.

2) Trying to unlock the HD in XBOX HDM 1.9 but it does not unlock.

This one caused the most trouble but actually was very simple to fix once I figured it out. All I did was retrieve a lock pass key from XBOXHDM (i think is option 6 or 7). Best to write the pass key down. Then used the make DOS tools option and set my computer to boot from floopy.

NOTE: sometimes the computer will not allow you to boot into CD/Floppy if the hard drive connected is currently locked. To resolve this just plug in the IDE ribbon after it has booted to the specified device.

Once it has booted type unlockx and the program will appear. Choose your hard drive, type the pass kek in and DOUBLE CHECK THAT YOU TYPED IT ALL IN CORRECTLY. Then lock the hard drive, rebooting after it has been succesful. Go back into unlockx repeating the same steps as above but instead after typing in the passkey choose to unlock the hard drive. Reboot yet again, type in atapwd and it should show that your hard drive is now unlocked. You are now able to build the HD again in XBOX HDM. If it still does not work then do not panic and try lockhd and unlockhd which are equally decent programs.

3) After locking with xboxhdm, I get an error code 06 etc.....

Firsly I want to greatly thank pittfan for pointing out to use the eeprom in the UDATA FOLDER. DO NOT USE EVOX BACKUP EEPROM. Once you follow all the steps in the guide on how to build the HD, stop at the point where it goes on about locking. Instead boot the DOS tools, following the provided steps on how to create them above and go into unlockx.

NOTE: remember to write your lock pass key down exactly! so if it says 0fee67 - do it exactly and not in capitals.

Choose which hard drive you want to lock, type the pass key and press L to lock. Then stick that bitch in your xbox and its happy days.

NOTE: when taking the stock xbox HD out, you might note that the power cable feels like it is glued to the HD. Just grab the wires and pull whilst wiggling them up and down. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO JUST PULL IT STRAIGHT OUT! Also you will probally have to install your softmod again. Choose UnleashX as your dashboard if you had a hard drive bigger than 137GB.

Go into unleashx dashboard and go to the format option. Type in the password (default - is Xbox). Then go to the format G partition and thats it. You can use the full capacity of your hard drive.



So thats it people. These are the problems I experienced and these are the steps I took in order to fix them. It took me a couple of days but I kept on at it and got there in the end.

Just remember DO NOT PAINC. It seriously does not help anything and can make things worse. Hope this helps some people out there and thanks everyone on the forums for being such a big help as I would of never of done it without you lot. Cheers Fellas!

 

Well if your using unleash X or EVOX then I think the default location for games is E partition . But load on XBMC which is one the sweetest dashboards you can get. And then all the games in a "games" folder will appear in the games tab on XBMC, regardless of where they are on the hard drive.

 

Thanks for the info. I think the best advice you offered is to simply keep at it and don't panic! The more success stories we get on this thread, the more likely it will be to help ppl out!

 

where and how do you get the XBMC dash?

 

XBMC is available via "the usual channels" (Bittorrent, xbins, etc.), but due to legal reasons, cannot be distributed in it's compiled (binary) form and will not be linked to from this site. More info can be found here: http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=Obtaining_XBMC You'll have to figure out how to find it on your own or get a copy from a friend.

 

ok so i just used xbhdm to put in a new 340gb harddrive and everything went good but now when i try to play games most of my games wont load or play they just freeze but if i switch back to my old hd the games work fine can someone tell me if i did something wrong or how to fix it

 

Well I did my first 160GB the other week and now moving on top bigger hard drives (thinking of 500GB). I heard that you need to use XBpartitioner to change the cluster size of the F or G dirve (if partions extend a 250Gb). Just finding it hard to obtain XBpartitioner.

 

I've heard that as well but I'm afraid I don't have any experience with anything larger than 120 GB. A google search on the subject might help and I'd search xbins for XBpartitioner.

 

Further research on google has shown me that XBpartitioner is only needed for 400Gb plus hard drives as you can allocate 137Gb to F and the rest to G, resulting in each partition being 250Gb or less. The only thing that might be causing the probelm is if you have allocated all the reamaning space onto F only (so 250GB+ on the F drive and no G drive). Then you would need XBpartitioner to allow 32K clusters for the F drive.

Need more info on your hard drive layout.

 

Hey. I copied a bunch of files from the stock harddrive to a western digital 250GB. Included were applications, emulators, and 1 game. So when the new harddrive was ready to go, it would load the game on the new hard drive and games could be read, but could not be copied or launched. I am very confused about this because games launch perfectly when the stock harddrive is inserted back. It will suck if I have to ftp all games from my xbox to computer, back to xbox. So, any help would be awesome, I believe I did all of the steps properly but if anyone's had the same problem and knows how to fix it, please let me know. Thanks.

 

When I upgraded my drive the first time, I ran into similar issues as you. I used a free program called craxtion in addition to standard ftp to copy my game saves and other info to my pc then after the drive was upgraded, I reapplied all my mods and copied everything back. I'm not sure why it didn't work when copied directly from the drive using Xboxhdm 1.9 but it was simple to fix. Hope this helps you.

 

so just use craxtion instead of xboxhdm? I'm familiar with craxtion so it wouldn't be a problem. So your DVD drive wouldn't launch the games, but would with the stock harddrive? It'd be awesome if this works.