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[GUIDE] Upgrade & Replacement of Xbox 360 HDD

MmxZero — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:28:44 +0800

FIRST OF ALL
1. I TAKE NO CREDITS AT ALL. I HAVE PICK ALL THE GUIDES FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.
2. ANYTHING THAT IS IN GREEN COLOR, IS MY OWN ADD-ON NOTES.
3. THIS GUIDE IS DONE ON WIN XP SP3.
4. DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. IF YOU SCREW UP YOUR HDD, YOU CAN EITHER THROW AWAY OR SELL IT.
5. IT WILL VOID YOUR XBOX 360 HDD WARRANTY
6. YOUR GAMES MIGHT CORRUPT DURING THE TRANSFER. BUT THIS IS YET TO BE CONFIRM SINCE RANDOM EFFECT ( So far only 2 by 2 different people. But you can always try recopy again. )

Any comment of feedback will be welcome. Any addition guide from you guys which is helpful will be given credit.

UPDATES
V2.5 27/11/2008 - SIMPLIFY HEXING AND ADDED FEW MISSING WORD.
V2 21/11/2008 - ADDED IN PICTURE AND EXTRA AND EDITED SOME GUIDE.
V1 20/11/2008 - COMPILE GUIDE FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

Credits
roofus and anger = Xplorer360
TheSpecialist = HDDHackr and Xplorer360
hobartrus - tutorial in xbox scene
xpk1234 - tutorial in bbs.a9vg.com and picture
DarkSaviour - for compiling the guide and helping out the faqs.
Jcsy - for highlighting some Vista issue
wintzen - for helping out

QUICK GUIDE REFERENCE
[GUIDE] Upgrade / Replacement of Xbox 360 HDD

TROUBLESHOOTS
ABC01 = FLASHING HDD EDITING HDDHACKR
ABC02 = CLEARING XBOX 360 HDD CACHE
ABC03 = OPENING XBOX 360 HDD

Notes
1. Picture can't be post too many. LOL. Forgot about this . Anyway, I'll find another way to put it in.
2. More update are coming soon
3. I need tester for games that got corrupt ( fable 2 or forza 2) re copy again and see it works or not.

[GUIDE] Upgrade / Replacement of Xbox 360 HDD
1. Stuff that you will need
A. A pc with a sata port. If your using an old pc ( like mine which use IDE ), then you have to go and get a sata card. Something like this = SATA CARD
Make sure you have 2 sata cable if you are running on just 1 HDD for your PC.

B.. A Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS 120 GB SATA hard drive ( notebook = 2.5' ). Is hard to find 120 gb these days. A 160 gb would do. Reminder, it must be a BEVS type. Is hard to find these type also. A BEVT type also can but you will encounter problem on the way. Ask wunan for more help cause he had succeeded flashing it with BEVT. Don't buy any larger then this because it's pointless cause the hdds.bin was only meant for 120gb. Even if you buy larger, it only recognise 120gb only. Maybe in the future but who knows.

C. A Floppy boot disk, you don't have, then you can either create a bootable usb/pendrive drive or bootable CD.
D. A Xbox 360 with a HDD 20gb?
E. A torx T6 and T10 screwdriver.
F. HDDhackr
G. Xplore360 " extreme build 2 "
H. Hex Workshop
I. hddss.bin dumped from a retail 360 120GB hdd. Due to copyright coded, you have to search it yourself. Use the search engine.

NOTE Don't format your WD HDD with Windows, straight flash it with the hddhackr

Note for vista user - Thx to Jcsy for highlighting me these.
You have to use administrator account in order ease your job a long the way. To enable administrator account, follow these steps

1. you'll need to open a command prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and choosing "Run as adminstrator "
2. Now type the following command: net user administrator /active:yes
3. Log out and you will able to see "Administrator" account.
4. To disable it, just follow back step 1-2 but this time type net user administrator /active:no

Guide / Tutorial
2. Let's get started. Format your floppy disk and make it bootable. If you don't have a floppy drive, then you can use usb, pendrive and make it bootable. A bootable Cd would do also. Copy HDDHackr.com and the hddss.bin file to your bootable floppy disk / media.

3.Turn off your PC. Disconnect your HDD ( all Pc HDD ) and connect your WD BEVS drive, and boot the PC up on the floppy. If for some reason when you boot it and you ran into some error, please refer to Troubleshoot ABC01. When you boot up, you will have something like this.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

4. At the command prompt type "hddhackr -f" and hit enter. Follow through the prompts and be sure to create an undo file when asked. When you done that, you will have something like this

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

5. Wait for a few seconds once it have finish before turning off your PC. After turning off, count for 10 sec ( 20 - 30 sec if you are scared of just be safe ) On the pc and boot the floppy again. Run "hddhackr -f" again and it will tell you if the drive will be compatible with your 360 or not. If compatible then you have something like this

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

6. Turn off your PC, disconnect the WD BEVS. You might want to clear the cache to save up little time on transferring files. On how to do it. Refer Troubleshoot ABC02. Now disconnect your 20GB drive from your 360. One how to open your Xbox 360 HDD, please refer to Troubleshoot ABC03

Disassemble the casing, and remove the 20GB drive. Hook the WB BEVS up to the connector and plug it into the 360. You're going to have to unhook the drive and pull it out again so I'd recommend not completely reassembling the casing... I just put one screw in to hold the drive in.

7. Turn on your 360, goto the system blade, "console settings", and "system info." Jot down the serial number, you'll need it in the next step.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

8. Go back to the system blade, goto "memory" and you should have the option to format the drive. It will ask for the serial number, type it in and send it flying. (if it says "no device detected" something is wrong. Check the connections.)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

9. Connect back your PC HDD and hook the 20GB hard drive up to your PC. Boot up into Windows, create a folder on your desktop called "xbox" and run Xplorer360 Beta 6 "extreme build 2"

10. Within Xplorer360 click "Drive" then "Open" then "Hard Drive or Mem Card". It should take a few seconds and then pop up some partitions in the left hand window. (If it doesn't detect the drive, check the connections and also make sure that your SATA controller driver is properly installed.)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

11. Before copying make sure your HDD got at least 12-15gb ( depends on how much data you have in your old hdd ) free space. Click on Partition 03, select all the items in the right hand window, and drag and drop them to the folder you created on your desktop. If you get errors you'll have to open task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and manually kill the program. reopen the program and drag and drop the folders one at a time. When you find the problem folder create a subfolder in the xbox folder on your desktop with the same name as the problem folder, go into the problem folder and copy the folders/files in there one at a time. You may have to do this a few times, creating folders within folders. For me the problem file was a 0kb .db file within the compatibility folder under a few subfolders. I couldn't get the file to copy so I just created a blank text file and renamed it to the exact name of the file (it was st.db or something like that.) Once the copy starts going it will probably take awhile, depending on how much data you have... so take a break. I suggest best is drop each folder 1 by 1 if possible. The 1st break down would do the job.

12. Once done backup partition 3, this is an optional ( I skip this part ). If you have Xbox 1 games on your hdd, then I suggest you back this partition 2 up. Choose the "backup partition 2" option to dump the second partition to a bin file (named part2.bin or something like that.) It should create a 262MB file.

13. Shutdown the PC and disconnect the 20GB drive. By this time the 360 should be done formatting the drive, so turn it off and disconnect the 120GB drive. Hook it up to the PC and boot up to Windows.

14. Open the Xplorer360 Beta 6 " extreme build 2 ", and try open your HDD as step 10. If there is error occur or can't be detected or only detect partition 1, then you have to do some hexing. If you have no problem, then skip the next part and go to Step 20

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15. Open up Hex Workshop. Click "Options" and "Preferences." On the "Layout" tab in the "Rows" section uncheck the "Fit to Window" box and ensure the Bytes/Row is set to 16. This isn't necessary but it makes the next steps easier.

16. Click "Disk" then "Open Drive", change the "Select" drop down to Physical Disks and locate your 120GB drive. Be sure you select the correct drive or this could potentially cause catastrophic problems.

17. This is the potentially tricky part. You need to get to byte 80000 in hex, but Hex Workshop doesn't let you go to a specific byte offset on drives, only to a specific sector. Assuming the sector size of your drive is the same as mine, or 512 decimal bytes (which I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be,) the sector you should have to goto is 400 (hex). You do this by clicking "Edit" then "Goto", typing 400 in the "Offset" field and choosing "Beginning of Drive" in the "From Where" section.

18. You should see a bunch of columns numbered 0-F, and they should all have "00" in them. If they have anything else in them you are either working with the wrong drive or you are at the wrong offset, don't change anything!

19. Within Hex Workshop open Xplorer360.exe "extreme build 2". I'm assuming that this change already exists in the "extreme build 2" version so you can probably skip this step, but I'm including it because I did this. Goto offset F0C2 (hex) where you will find the following values:

68 77 03

change them to:

00 C2 1A

Save the file. You will be prompted to make a backup, which is always a good idea.

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20. Load Xplorer360 beta 6 version "extreme build 2" open the 120GB drive like you did with the 20GB drive in step 10.

21. Expand Partition 03 and copy all of the data from the xbox folder you created on your desktop. This will take awhile depending on how much data you have, so take another break.

22. Once finish copying back partition 3 onto the new HDD, then select "restore partition 2", select the 262mb bin file you made in step 11 (part2.bin.) Once it completes, your drive is ready!

23. Now, Shutdown your PC, pop the 120GB drive into your 360 enclosure. It's probably a good idea to only partially assemble it so you can test it. If you hook it up and your 360 boots up and looks like it did on your 20GB, you should be done! You may want to check your XBL connection and ensure your XBLA games and other DLC works.

Pictures and troubleshoot will be upload later. I hope this will help guide you easily. Please post your feedback, comment or success or failure or what ever the it is about Upgrade and Replacement Xbox 360 HDD.

Sorry for the long guide. Just wanted to be detail. Thx.

TROUBLESHOOTS

ABC01 = FLASHING HDD EDITING HDDHACKR. Thanks to DarkSaviour for translating it.

1. Click Start, “Run” type in msinfo32

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

2. Choose “Storage/IDE” (If you’re using SATA card your need to choose SCSI)

Msinfo32 example above:

3. Find your Sata Controller, should have 5 I/O Ports, Choose the first and the third. You need to find the last 4 digits before “-“. Which Line 1 = 09F0 and Line 3 = 0970 (The digits will different according to your SATA controller)

4. Run your Hex editor, open the HDDHACKR in your floppy disk, go to the last row of the number which will be “00003690) the last 4 pairs should be default as “4D 50 52 54”. Example Below:

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

5. Ok now change the last 4 pairs of digits to “09 F0 09 70” (Digits will be vary according to your SATA)

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

ABC02 = CLEARING XBOX 360 HDD CACHE
Before removing it, I suggest you clear your HDD cache just to speed up the transfer file a little. How to clear cache.

Clear All Installed Game Updates and Console Cache

1. Go to the "system" blade
2. Select "memory"
3. Press Y on the HD symbol
4. Press X,X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X,X
5. A message will appear saying: "Do you want to perform maintenance on your Xbox 360 storage devices?"
6. Select Yes

ABC03 = OPENING XBOX 360 HDD
WARNING : BY DOING THIS, YOU WILL AGREE TO VOID YOUR WARRANTY FOR YOUR XBOX 360 HDD

1. Flip it over like this. Now, use the torx T6 screwdriver and open those screws.

2. You have to open the back part and push the casing to the front. The front part act as a hook. When you open, you have something like these

3. Becareful not to lose the spring and the grey button.

4. Now use a torx T10 screwdriver to open these screws

5. Next, unplug the cable connecting to the HDD, and you have now successfully open your Xbox 360 HDD

If you need extra guide on how to open it, refer here Open Xbox 360 HDD[/COLOR]

Getting a new desktop or upgrading old for gaming.

MmxZero — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:02:13 +0800

I want to get a new desktop for gaming ( ignore monitor, mouse, sound, keyboard ) just the CPU.

I currently using a P4 HT 3ghz with a agp motherboard with still a ddr ram and ide HDD ( upgrade it long long time ago )

So I was wondering whether to get a new 1 or upgrade the existing.

Kinda noob on the comp term

New
C2Q 2.66ghz

MOBO if possible 2-4 slot of ram ( not sure which is good for gaming so I need some suggestion )

DDR2 ram 4 ghz ( cause using vista and norton ) ( or should I wait for ddr 3 to drop price )

HDD sata 2 80gb ( not sure which brand is good. Need suggestion ) ( or wait for sata 3 to drop price )

GPU nvidia 8800 ( gts or gtx better? ) or maybe ATI ( im not sure which is good, need suggestion )

can someone estimate the price? I wanted to go for C2Q because I really can't catch up with the update. So might as well jump to there.

Or should I upgrade my old 1? Just change the motherboard? Can someone tell me if still possible to get a new motherboard with P4? Thx.

Xbox Live's Worst Demos

MmxZero — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:54:21 +0800

QUOTE

From oxm.co.uk:

When a demo is done properly, it can create a lot of buzz around an unheralded title. The early days saw Fight Night Round 3 stun 360 owners with its sharp visuals and crunching slow-mo knockout replays.
Later down the line Civilization Revolution, Lost Planet, Bioshock and Burnout Paradise all had stellar demos that did a great job of selling the game in question.

Sometimes it's too easy for developers to fall into a "here's the boss, now the demo ends" trap. Unfortunately, some developers tend to fall even further. Here are the five most disappointing demos, all notable for the fact that they've turned people off the game rather than onto it. They might be free but sometimes, you get what you pay for...

5. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
4. Sonic The Hedgehog
3. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
2. Too Human
1. Hour Of Victory

Full story at : oxm.co.uk

Scratch / prints on PS3 console

MmxZero — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:31:16 +0800

My PS3 got a lot of scratches

Well can't see it will from far but if you go near with white light at it, you can see like a patch of scratches. It looks like your oily finger when you rub on it then it will spread a around.

I trying using those glasses cloth to rub it but the scratch ( I dunno what is it call excatly ) is still there.

So any idea on what I could use the remove those prints

My bottom of console is full with it

Best Game For Xbox 360 For Year 2007

MmxZero — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:43:36 +0800

There is many good game this year and there is not enough to fit into the pole. Therefore everyone please CAST YOUR VOTES ONCE IN YOUR POST and I will updates the result here. This only for games which are released in this year.

PLEASE DO NOT FLAME AND DON'T VOTE TWICE. CHOOSE ONLY 1 GAME. IF YOUR GAME IS NOT IN THE LIST THEN I WILL ADD IN.

HOW TO VOTE
GAME NAME

COMMENT ON WHY YOU VOTE

EXAMPLE
Assassin Creed

Graphic is the best so far.... bla...bla...

List of Game for 2007
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition [ LP ]
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 [ TC:GRAW 2 ]
Guitar Hero II [ GH2]
Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars [ C&C 3 TW ]
Forza Motorsport 2 [ FM 2 ]
BioShock [ BS ]
Eternal Sonata [ ES ]
Halo 3 [ H3 ]
FIFA Soccer 08 [ FIFA 08 ]
The Orange Box [ TOB ]
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [ GH3 ]
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare [ COD 4 ]
Assassin's Creed [ AC ]
Mass Effect [ ME ]
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation [ AC 6 ]
The Simpsons [ TS ]
Beautiful Katamari [ BK ]

Winner Of Best Game For Xbox 360 For Year 2007
Call Of Duty 4

No. Of Votes [ 27 ]

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Closing Date : 30 DECEMBER 2007

Samsung 2232BW vs 226BW

MmxZero — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:07:09 +0800

Hi, I'm going to buy samsung lcd monitor which is on my budget. But this two lcd monitor have price. So I was wondering which 1 will be better. I tried compare the specs but both look the same. Can someone give me the pros and cons of both this monitor?

Here is the full detail for both the lcd monitor

2232BW

226BW

Can someone just say which 1 is better. Because both the market price are the same.

1 more thing, does this both support VGA cable input? Because I'm using it to play Xbox 360

Sorry and thx

Need Opinion on buying LCD monitor for Xbox 360

MmxZero — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:12:28 +0800

Sorry can't afford to buy a lcd tv so going to get a monitor instead.

I found this dell monitor which is quite reasonable the price.

Dell 22" Wide Flat Panel

The only problem is I need to add another RM200 for the speaker which is quite nice attach to the monitor

Is there anyone can suggest me another lcd monitor with a best price? Here are requirements
1. With support hd component output
2. Wide screen
3. 20" - 22"
4. Price quite reasonable
5. Any brand as long it's good.
6. Budget RM1000 or less

Another thing, where can I buy the vga cable for xbox 360 other then going gamers hideout. Quite far leh for me to drive there and buy.

Boys / Girls need attention when Gf / BF ignore ?

MmxZero — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:15:24 +0800

I don't think the title of the topic is right and it's kinda long too. So here is the situation. This is someone i encounter. Needs both side of sex opinion

And sorry if posted before.

1 day a guy / girl sit next to you. Then as time goes by, both of you get along with each other as friend, go out have dinner, watch movie, go shopping, have fun ( only 2 of you ). But you also know the guy / girl got gf / bf . But the guy / girl always tell you that their relationship is bad but still haven broke up. Then when free time the guy / girl will always find you go out with him / her . Some times if their gf / bf dun wan , then he / she will find you first.

Is this call they need attention or the are really started to be interested on you?