looking to upgrade xbox hard drive on xecuter modded console.

ok i will give unleashx a go then i tried burning bioschecker to check my chip but it didn't boot. i found the modchip pics on xboxscene though so soon as my torx set comes back i can check the modchip to confirm it's xectur and then replace hd

 

BIOSchecker wouldn't exactly show what chip you have sadly. As long as anything can boot from DVD (which it should) you'll be all good to go anyway man, no stress

 

got my screwdriver set earlier and my hard drive is ready to go. i took my xbox apart and my chip is indeed an xecuter 1.0 or 1.1. seems that these chips are not flashable. they support hd swapping but not lba48 large hard drives. i placed the HeXEn cd in my xbox to setup ftp which was easy enough and i can transfer files to and from my pc and xbox. i tried to perform a eeprom bin backup but the tool says something about the e:/evox file location not existing.
backing the eeprom up is the only thing i thought i needed to do before changing the hard drive. is it realy necassary to backup eeprom when you have modchip?
also someone suggested to me that i can still use large hard drive even without my chip by using phoenix bios loaderbefore loading dashboard. not sure how this works but sounds promising i guess.

 

You don't need your EEPROM with a modchip, the EEPROM is just required for those who have a softmod and want to install a new HDD and lock it (how my 1.1 is setup).

It's odd you can't backup your EEPROM though, you can try and back it up with configmagic. AID has an EEPROM backup option too.

 

not too bothered about backing it up tbh. i seen a tutorial saying it's very important backing it up but that was probably refering to softmods as you suggested.
the biggest problem for me is working out what to do with the phoenix bios loader method. it's either that or use the smaller hd i have and settle for 137gb. i would prefer the 500gb though.
oh one more thing. apparently the xecuter 1.0 and 1.1 chips don't support the clock bypass problem. everytime i unplug my xbox i get the reset clock thing before it will boot from dvd or anything. i guess this could be a pain while trying to swap the hd?

 

The clock data isn't stored on the HDD, since if it was it wouldn't reset when it's unplugged for more than 10 minutes. BIOS loader I've never used, not too sure how many games you want installed on the HDD. I can tell you even 80GB goes a long way for me, and I play about 3 titles at a time and others are pick up and plays. I have 40+ games on there right now.

You have a modchip so just experiment and see what works best. You can't screw the system up unless you flash the wrong BIOS or similar, which you're not doing.

 

i'm not going to flash the bios. i think i may jaust use the 160gb hard drive and get the 137gb use with it. i will use the 500gb hd for my ps2.

 

You may as well stick with the 160Gb drive for now, it may be more than enough for your needs.

In the future if you want more space you can always pick up a cheap second console for around £10, soft mod it and put a bigger drive in.

Less talk, more action!

 

I'm not sure how HEX1GON managed 40+ games on 80GB. I personally have 160GB too (with F: and G and its by far enough for me. I have ~20 DVD games and about the same amount on the harddisk. I usually move games back and forth from my PC if necessary.
500GB would certainly be overkill in my opinion.
After all, by today standards, the xbox is not that good of a media player. So if I use my xbox, I use it to stream content from the web or to play games.

 

well i have it set up with the 160 hard drive now and unleashx as dash. installed morrowind GOTY edition to test and it run fine. some parts of the menu don't seem to be set up right yet. i guess i will have to edit some xml settings.
moving games back and forth via ftp is a good idea if the drive starts filling up. the main reason for this was to preserve the laser which sounds like it's struggling these days and now i can do just that so thanks everyone for all your suggestions

 

Some games are around 500MB or no more than a 1GB so. There's very few titles that are the full 2GB+

If there's a game you want to play but not enough room on the drive, nothing hurts to burn it to a DVD.

 

i got all my games backed up on dvds. just a matter of ripping them back to pc and then ftp to xbox. bearing in mind i will only need to do this when i feel like playing an xbox 1 title which wont be all the time. i game on a lot of systems, i have everdrives for all the classic consoles and own the 3 playstations, xbox 360, dreamcast and so on.
it's greta being able to play xbox without worrying about the laser dying. i decided i needed to mod it with alt dash, larger hd and start playing from hard drive before the laser died. although i heard it's easy to change dvd drive and most drives are compatible if you have a mod chip.

 

You heard correct. Any odd DVD-ROM drive will be fine, it just won't read pressed XBOX discs. I have spare DVD-ROM drives sitting a draw, I don't have any worries about the laser.

Now I practically own every game I downloaded a few years ago, I enjoy putting the discs in the drive. It's all down to preference I guess. Good luck with installing the drive, you should be fine man

 

it's running very good now. i copied mameox 128 plus and fullromset to the f drive and configured the options to have 2 roms folders because of the 4096 file limit.
this larger hard dirve thing is probably the bext xbox decision i have ever made lol. i was stressing so much about breaking my beloved xbox and it turned out to be rather easy. nothing ever appears easy the first time when your not sure what your doing though lol.

 

Great to hear it's all up and running

Xboxes with bigger hard drives are fantastic. You can get so much retro action out of one box.

I remember the first time I soft modded my console and put a bigger hard drive in, I was really nervous too about bricking it. But once you do it you get confident and then I did the same for a couple of mates and it was a breeze

 

Lots of XBox games (most, probably) have files in them that can be deleted when you copy the game to hard drive, as you're never going to need those files. These files can include foreign languages in text formate (which take up a tiny amount of space, and aren't worth the trouble of deleting), foreign language sound files (speech files, which can be pretty large), and foreign language video files (which can really add up in file size). Often an XBox disc that's made in English, in PAL format (the only ones I have) will also have the German/French/Italian/etc language files on them, and offhand I can't remember even one game where deleting these files caused the game not to run, as when the game was run (on my PAL, English, XBox) the game only tried to load the English files. Also, lots of XBox games had their video files stored twice on the disc, once in PAL format, once in NTSC format, and of course the game would only ever load one type on your particular XBox, so deleting the other format (in my case the NTSC version) would free up hard drive space without causing any problems to the game.

For instance, in the game Alias, if you delete the following files from your XBox hard drive (or just don't copy these files in the first place) then you will save 1.13GB of hard drive space.

/shell_xbox/res/asylum/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/asylum/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/bunker/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/casino/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/casino/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/casino/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/casino/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/casino/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/casino/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/casino/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/casino/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/club/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/club/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/club/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/club/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/club/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/club/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/club/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/club/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/common/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/common/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/common/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/common/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/common/textFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/common/textGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/common/textIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/common/textSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/embassy/movies/sp/
/shell_xbox/res/feck/Fr_*.ICN
/shell_xbox/res/feck/Ge_*.ICN
/shell_xbox/res/feck/It_*.ICN
/shell_xbox/res/feck/Sp_*.ICN
/shell_xbox/res/feck/TXPDA_Fr.all
/shell_xbox/res/feck/TXPDA_It.all
/shell_xbox/res/feck/TXPDA_Sp.all
/shell_xbox/res/museum/ltextFr.all
/shell_xbox/res/museum/ltextGe.all
/shell_xbox/res/museum/ltextIt.all
/shell_xbox/res/museum/ltextSp.all
/shell_xbox/res/museum/movies/fr/
/shell_xbox/res/museum/movies/ge/
/shell_xbox/res/museum/movies/it/
/shell_xbox/res/museum/movies/sp/

Some games have no files you can delete, others have lots. For an idea of what files you can safely delete, see;

http://xbehome.com/xbox/

And read up on "How to use ACL files", to automate the deletion of unnecessry files (I've never tried this, I used to do it myself, as experimenting was part of the fun, plus this was back when much less data was available on what we could and could not delete).

Depends what he wants it for. A *lot* of XBox games, plus emulators and ROMs would eventually fill it up.

The XBox is still a great media player, relatively speaking, but it can't play high definition stuff, which of course makes it of limited value to a lot of people. Still, if you want a cheap player that can play any (non-HD) media, and play it straight from the XBox's hard drive, then a modded XBox with XBMC is great. But of course it's true that just about any PC or laptop made since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth is more powerful than an XBox, so for many people a cheap PC would be a better media centre.

 

Told you Enjoy it!