[Bigg Russ]

That's weird. I found the HDD on my first Google search.

[GordoSan]

George, on Sep 27 2008, 05:29 PM, said:

Yeah. I will wait.

Not to keep this off topic, but it seems that Dec 9th is the day for TDK! That is my Blu-ray deadline.

[Red Ronin]

GAH! Why is it I always come across these things after I'm broke or the instant the "deal" is gone from store shelves?

SlickDeals.com Forums
I was in Target yesterday looking for the battery deal and stumbled upon an Xbox360 20GB hard drive with the red clearance sticker priced at 24.99. I'm going back to buy it this morning and will post receipt. Store is Little Rock, AR and it was the last one left

Red Ronin

[GunnerX]

I picked up 4 of the WD 120GB HDDs yesterday. My friends and I will be doing this mode with my spare 360 HDD to be the guinea pig. The mod seems rather straight forward. Good thing I have my HTPC that I can easily use for this.

[Bigg Russ]

GunnerX, on Oct 3 2008, 08:26 AM, said:

I picked up 4 of the WD 120GB HDDs yesterday. My friends and I will be doing this mode with my spare 360 HDD to be the guinea pig. The mod seems rather straight forward. Good thing I have my HTPC that I can easily use for this.

Let us know how it works out, man!

[segadc]

Yeah definetly!

[Red Ronin]

It seems the "hardest part" is simply making a backup copy of the firmware, then flashing the new firmware to the drive. Sure, it might be a little challenging to find certain pseudo-legal files online, but even that should be relatively easy. Worst case it seems is that this wouldn't work, so you'd re-flash the drive to its original state and use it in a HTPC instead. Somehow I rather think that Microsoft won't make a big whoop over this and start issuing banninations on Xbox LIVE simply because someone decided to put together their own storage device. Heck, as long as you still purchase content for download (why else would you need the extra space anyway?), they still win.


Red Ronin

[GunnerX]

First one is a big success! Created the 120HDD and successfully transferred a 20GB HDD to it using the transfer cable. Three more to go. It's actually a lot easier than it seems.

[Bigg Russ]

GunnerX, on Oct 4 2008, 01:41 AM, said:

First one is a big success! Created the 120HDD and successfully transferred a 20GB HDD to it using the transfer cable. Three more to go. It's actually a lot easier than it seems.

Congrats! I'm lazy. If you were in the States, I'd send you mine!

[GunnerX]

Bigg Russ, on Oct 4 2008, 10:15 AM, said:

Congrats! I'm lazy. If you were in the States, I'd send you mine!

Haha, most definitely. I was actually surprised at how much easier it was that I thought. The part that took me the longest was getting the usb key setup to boot. The app provided in the link didn't work for me. I had to use another app from HP. I used my Toshiba laptop for this. It was easier as I just had to slide the drives in without fumbling with wires. The hddhackr part only took me less than a minute for each drive.

The part that was the most time consuming was transferring files from the 20GB to the 120GB. On average it took 1 hour for the process but overall it works great. I upgraded my 20GB which was blank to start off with to 120GB and I created a new Live ID which was flawless and I downloaded a bunch of free stuff from the marketplace.

Paid $56 CAD for the 120GB HDD. A lot cheaper than what MS is asking.

[thengodisseven]

I like what you guys are doing, but it felt a bit easier just getting a 120 gig drive from ebay.

Right now, 120 gig is too hot, the 20 gig was too cold. On my PS3, I can copy files like movies from my pc to the ps3's hard drive. I'd like the same freedom for the 360.

Even still, it's great to have the bigger drive space. Some of the demos are nice.

[Red Ronin]

It seems as though if someone intended to get an Arcade unit and a 60 GB unit anyway, this would be a great way to "upgrade" if you already had a 20GB system lying around. You could give the original 20 GB unit away as an "Arcade" configuration without HD (or stick it in the kids' playroom). Keep the actual Arcade unit with HDMI and add the 60 GB drive to it, upgrade the old 20 GB casing to house a 120 GB and install that on your new Pro system then enjoy life.


Red Ronin

[GunnerX]

The 120GB upgrade is a precursor to the Fall Dashboard update aka NXE. This update allows copying of any game to the HDD and play games from there. This would let us copy a lot of games before we have to worry about deleting games we don't play anymore.

[GunnerX]

***UPDATE****

So far, I modded 5 HDDs to 120GB from 20GB before the release of NXE and 1 after NXE and they have been functioning without any issues.

The article in the first post is quite outdated. It mentions that it has to be a specific WD model but this is no longer the case. The latest version of the HDDHACKR tool is v0.91 and it supports all WD 2.5" models 120GB or greater. If you get a larger than 120GB drive you will still be limited to 120GB and the rest is wasted space. The only reason to do this would be if the larger drive went on sale for cheaper than the 120GB. This was actually the case when I bought the HDDs initially but I didn't know that the 160GB was supported.

I don't do any other hacking for transferring files over. I was able to obtain the MS transfer cable when I purchased my ELITE and I have been using this to transfer files from the previous 20GB to the new 120GB. I'm using my original 360 HDD case as a temporary case for the new 120GB for the file transfer. Once done, I open up and replace the 20GB with the new 120GB HDD. The file transfer on average takes 1 hour and 15 mins.

Also, the links provided by the article to boot from a USB flash drive didn't work for me. I had to find another method which took me quite a while going through links on Google. I will have to find which one I used and will post it here. If anyone wants, I can also make the files available on my server.

To summarize:

-Booting from USB Flash drive required different methods
-Latest version of HDDHACKR is v0.91 (find on google)
-Works on any WD 2.5" HDD 120GB or greater
-MS transfer cable is used to move files from the 20GB to the 120GB

[Bigg Russ]

Thanks for the update, man!

[ClintonDMB]

I need to find someone who has a sata in their pc. I sadly do not.

[ZP..]

I picked up a suitable Western Digital BEVS 120GB drive some time ago, but later ran into problems with my PC, and fixing those was a priority. And also a pain in the arse, so it took ages...

Anyway, I finally got around to having a go at this, and am quite pleased that I managed to make a USB flash memory bootable after struggling in the past. I might have a play with these later, to see if it's possible to stick Windows 95 or 98 on them.

But on the 120GB drive, I've given up. My HDD turned out to be the 'UST' type, and hddhackr was throwing up errors. The FAQs for hddhackr only mention LAT and RST types, not UST. Suggested online solutions include repeatedly flashing different hddss.bin files, cold restarts, borrowing other people's computers... Sod that. It's too volatile for my liking. I'm not going to trust my game saves to something that needed pure luck to work.

I'm told that higher capacity drives are faster than smaller ones because of the higher density of data on them. So at the same number of RPM, more data can be read. Is this true? If so, it might make the cost of a legit 120GB easier to swallow. Part of my motivation to upgrade was the opportunity to have everything defragged in the data transfer process really. It takes about 3 or 4 minutes to load up my page of gamer icons, and that's just stupid for a hundred or so thumbnails really. It's like a 14,000 baud modem sits between my 360 and its HDD

[GunnerX]

Are you using the latest hddhackr v1.00 ? It should support all versions.

http://www.xbox-scen...ls/HDDHackr.php

[ZP..]

GunnerX, on Jun 8 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

Are you using the latest hddhackr v1.00 ? It should support all versions.

Wah! Cool! All the guides seem to point to version 0.91, so I was using that.

Thanks, will give it another go.

Edit: Perhaps not. It seems that v1.00 can kill UST drives completely, as opposed to just not working with them

http://forums.xbox-s...howtopic=685373

This post has been edited by ZP..: 08 June 2009 - 07:20 AM

[GunnerX]

Ah, that sucks. I guess I never got a UST drive yet.