Xbox hard drive replacement?

Hi

Later in the month I hope to get my original Xbox repaired. When I last used it there seemed to be problems such as music not playing in certain games and DVDs skipping despite playing fine on other hardware.

Hopefully a new laser will do the trick if it comes to that.

Anyway; the hard drive in my console seemed fine when I last tested it, but I feel it is important to know for when the time comes; is there a way to replace the hard drive in my original Xbox without modding the console? I do not want to play illegal copies of games and I would still like to have the original user interface.

Thank you

 

I think you may have to at least soft mod it in order to install a new HDD but I am not 100 percent on that. You should contact Borman. He will be able to help you.

 

You're right. You have to softmod it to get the harddrive lock key. Once you have that you can safely uninstall the mod and use the key to format any hdd into a replacement drive. The method of format I prefered back in 2010 was xboxhdm 2.2 http://sourceforge.net/projects/xboxhdm2/

 

You dont need to softmod it. You can read out the eeprom. But this requires opening the console, so softmodding is likely easier if the HDD still works.

eeprom method works even if the original disk is dead though.

 

But how do you do that without a modchip or a softmod?
Also softmodding means hotswapping (thus opening the console) to me as I require any self respecting soft mod to be 100% free

 

Desolder eeprom, dump it, done! There is also a schematic for wiring directly to the EEPROM for dumping it.

Or just install a modchip. $10.

As for the HDD I'd suggest using a SATA->IDE adapter. I pulled one out of an AT&T U-Verse DVR and couldn't be happier with a 750gb HDD in my 1ghz/128mb XBox. Some have a sort of delay for spinup on the SATA drive that causes the XBox to error out. Figured this out when booting up, found error, soft reboot and the drive worked fine. Wonder if anyone has produced a XBox specific SATA board. Every board I've used that works required some amount of cutting.

 

You can dump it without desoldering it. Just use a test clip with any programmer that supports the eeprom.

Regarding sata adapter, I have one that just fits fine. I will find you a link later

 

There you go, you need additional hardware and skills. With hotswap softmod you only need an xbox and a pc. So being a greedy noob leecher that's the way I like it lol

 

Xbox EEPROM reader:
http://imgur.com/a/KSHjs

I just hold the wires in place, only gotta do it for a few seconds while it gets the dump.

No, you don't need to have the system modded in order to replace the hard drive and keep it stock.