what is the difference between an unlocked and locked hard drive? what are the pros and cons of each?
with a locked hard drivew it will only work with the mother board it was locked with otherwise a locked hard drive is completely useless to you
...as said a locked hdd has a code in it that allows it to only work with the motherboard that has the matching code (key) to open or use it. There are various programs designed to find this key for you. You cannot go on XboxLive without a locked hard drive. Even with your chip turned off. You cannot boot a locked hdd in youre computer when its locked either. Other than that it does not have to be locked to run in your box, mine aren't because I don't go on XboxLive, and are not networked, and if something goes all to hell I can put it in my puter and fix it(like recently when I changed some settings in my XBMC .xml file and it locked up on boot)
Wrong again. A locked hard drive is a drive that has been locked with a password via the hard drive BIOS. The password is stored in the hard drive's eeprom. This hard drive can only be access by first supplying it with a password. The drive can be accessed only with this password. The drive definately does NOT need to be unlocked with the Xbox motherboard (although it does this everytime it starts). It can be unlocked with any PC as long as you can supply the correct password. Lots of computer BIOS will crap out if you have the hard drive connected while the computer is booting but some will not. It is entirely dependent on the computer you are using however. The pro's of having a locked Xbox are: You have to have your drive locked if you are using a soft mod. You have to have it locked if you are going to use Xbox Live. The con's of having it locked are: You have to unlock it if you want to access the data. If you lose the password or your Xbox takes a crap you won't be able to access the data on the drive.
mess, there is a way to unlock an xbox drive using linux, without the password and "wrong again"? (is this implying that , theyre like, always wrong?) actually they stated valid points that were 100% accurate youre missing the point of the original question the q wasnt HOW its locked, the q was whats the difference, both answers looked pretty valid to me _ _ _ _ _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Ignorance isn't bliss.....It's just costly![/small]
thx djboogie I wasn't going to pursue a flame war on this matter, it didn't seem like a topic I was willing to stroke my ego over !
Now you got me doing some research ATIROCKS, (and they do, I have a 9600 AIW, painkiller is awesome !) but anyway...... I used my Slayers Disk to unlock my drives and when I look at the settings in certain dash's they always show unlocked. Good Question, though I don't kno how to answer it properly. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter could speak up, I kno it stays unlocked or locked if you make it, but it would seem that to even run it would have to be unlocked by the eprom on the mboard with the password. Ill keep looking as to why unless somebody posts more on it.
Now that you mention it that can be a little confusing, mostly because of the terminology. I'll explain. When we say that we are unlocking and locking the drive we really do 2 types of locking and unlocking. The first type is temporary, and occurs in these situations: You (the Xbox) request a read or a write function of the hard drive. The drive responds with a password challenge because it is locked. You supply the password and the drive either denies you access if you are incorrect or grants you access if you are correct. We, in the Xbox scene, sometimes call this process unlocking because the drive is available for reads and writes and for all practical purposes is "unlocked". A more accurate term would probably be "temporarily unlocked for reads and writes". This type of unlocking will not survive reboots. The other type of locked is when the drive has been set to a mode that prompts you to enter a password to perform reads and writes. When we say "unlocking the drive" in this case we really mean removing the password and the lock entirely. There by granting access in a more permanent fashion. This type of unlocking will survive reboots because the lock is gone all together. A good analogy would be, in one case we use a key to open a door. In another case we remove the door all together.
