Install a new Xbox HDD tutorial

[Wundy]

Just one thing to note if you use xhdprepa1.3 it will only take 2 seconds to prepare your drive and cut out sections 2 & 3 above

[TAR]

Originally posted by Wundy
Just one thing to note if you use xhdprepa1.3 it will only take 2 seconds to prepare your drive and cut out sections 2 & 3 above

Yup I used this and it worked fine, tho it took a little longer than 2 secs lol.

[Sweguy]

I´ve got the X-ecuter and are using EVO X dashboard. Reading all of your posts makes me worried, do i have to flash my bios? Is it possible to install a bigger HD for me? Flashing bios sound a little to extreme for me, is there any walkthroug for that.

Thanks for all the info!!!

[G-MAX]

Originally posted by Sweguy
I´ve got the X-ecuter and are using EVO X dashboard. Reading all of your posts makes me worried, do i have to flash my bios? Is it possible to install a bigger HD for me? Flashing bios sound a little to extreme for me, is there any walkthroug for that.

You dont have to flash the bios, as the X-ecuter already uses the EvoX bios. Just prepare (zero) the new drive with the "xhdprepa13" Xbox HDD prepare tool, and follow the instructions from #5 and on.

[EvilBoB]

the xhdprepa13 util takes an age though... Took me around 14 hours to prep a 45 gig Maxtor It is really slow and looks like it's doing nothing for ages.

[Prodigal]

I have followed this thread with interest, as I have only been brave enough so far to a: install a modchip in my beloved Xbox (the xbox has not been officially released in my country so i can't simply replace the machine if I cook it), b: load the evox dashboard, and finally c: dump 2 games on my original hdd (e:/). Now that I have seen how very cool it is to run the games from my hdd, I am considering a hdd upgrade. I am glad to see that Maxtor drives are being used, as I can easily get my hands on this brand.
Can I run throught his tutorial once again, as *I see it* and can someone point out any errors in my understanding or even better, tell me if I am right:

BTW: My system is as follows: PAL model Xbox, fitted with X-ecutor mod, running EvoX off HDD.

1: Boot Xbox, FTP, and backup C:/ & E:/ drives to PC (not worrying about games folders that you have already created if you don't want to).
2: Install new large capacity drive into your PC and (in my case) run xhdprepa13 to prepare the drive.
3: Uninstall original XBox hdd, and connect new large capacity drive.
4: Boot up XBox with EvoX CDRW/DVDR (the Xbox won't moan about not having data on the drive as it is booting from the CD?)
5: Enter 3 different command lines for the 3 partitions in order to get the keys. (eg: Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\PartitionX (Where PartitionX is either 1 (E), 2 (C), or 6 (F))
6: Format 3 drive partitions by entering command: FormatDrive key
7: FTP the C:\ and E:\ backups from your PC back to the new XBox HDD.

Does this sound correct?

Now, I have a quesiton. If I manage to get this process wrong and something doesn't work, by simply replacing my original XBox 8GB harddrive everything will be back to normal - am I right? In other words, if I keep the original 8BG drive somewhere safe, I can always use that to restore my system by simply putting that drive back in.????

Another thing that has confused me, is in Maltloafs tut at the top of this thread, he mentions that preparing the drive will create empty C:/ & E:/ drives. Then later on in his step 5, there are suddenly 3 partitions to format: C:/, E:/ & F:/. Maybe I am missing something, but where did the F:/ drive suddenly come from?

Thanks for the trouble
Prod

[Sweguy]

Ok, What do you guys think about a Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM and with 2mb cache? Talked to a retailer in Sweden that says that the maxtor do´nt get so hot compared to IBM and Seagate, is that right?
Thanks for the quick answer G-Max!

Love this forum!

[Sweguy]

Another thing, should it be ATA 100 or ATA 133?

[Prodigal]

Well, you can ignore the above post with my questions, as I found the more helpful original tutorial by opcode and have now installed a new 100G drive. took me 20 minutes from start to finish

[EvilBoB]

Originally posted by Sweguy
Another thing, should it be ATA 100 or ATA 133?

It does not really matter. There is a school of thought that says changing the original XBOX ATA100 cable for an ATA133 will get you slightly improved speeds, but to be fair these games are designed to run off DVD which is MUCH slower. Running from a hard drive is like a rocket anyway.

[Prodigal]

Originally posted by EvilBoB


It does not really matter. There is a school of thought that says changing the original XBOX ATA100 cable for an ATA133 will get you slightly improved speeds, but to be fair these games are designed to run off DVD which is MUCH slower. Running from a hard drive is like a rocket anyway.

I think he was refering to the drive spec (?).
I have used a ATA100 drive

[dussjp]

Thanks maltloaf for your tutorial

All was fine until point 6. (ftp C:\ & E:\ contents to xbox HDD).

My FlashFXP refuse to create subdirectories in \C\ and \E\.

Could you help me ??
Dussjp

[crazyal]

I too was getting problems creating folders on the partitions - what I did was just send the raw commands again.

Did you zero the drive upto 1100 or did you zero the whole drive??

I had to zero the entire IBM 80Gb drive and it took 8 hours

Once I had done this using the xhdprepa utility it was fine...


(Note: I still can't format partition 3 (X: drive) - I believe there is about 4 Gb sitting here doing nothing...if anyone can help please PM me....cheers)

((Although saying that, EvoX says F: is 74Gb and HDDLoader says it is 69Gb - which do I believe??))

[unregistered]

I thought there was 5 or six partitions in the original drive? c: e: X: Y: Z: and then you add F: and you should have six. I read somewhere that you must do Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\PartitionX where x is 1-6. that means 1,2,3,4,5,and 6

[Prodigal]

100% WORKING HDD TUTORIAL: THE BOLD TEXT BELOW (POINT 9) CONCERNS THE FORMATTING

This section will cover the following items:
Preparing the new hard drive for use in the XBOX using your PC
Running Evolution-x from the cd-rw
Setting up the network address in Evolution-x
Connecting to the XBOX via FlashFXP
Backing up the original XBOX hard drive
Copying the Evolution-x dashboard to the XBOX hard drive
Hardware required for this section:

XBOX with mod.
Torx driver (T10 and T20)
Crossover cable if connecting directly to the pc
Standard LAN cable (CAT5) if connecting to a hub
Television with at least RCA Jacks (so we can see what we are doing)
CD-RW or DVD-R with the Evolution-X burned on it (must be a CD-RW or DVD-R - not CD-R)
New PC harddrive (preferably 60GB or more)

Software Required for this section:
Xhdprepa 1.3
FlashFXP
Procedures:
1) Preparing the new hard drive: With the power to the PC turned off, place the new hard drive into an available bay inside the PC tower. Connect an available data cable as well as an available molex power connector to the drive. With the power and data cables connected, start your PC, once Windows has finished loading, open the "xhdprepa" program, you will see the hard drives listed on the left side, highlight the desired drive (the one you are going to put in the xbox) by left clicking on it once (NOTE: be VERY careful because if you choose the wrong drive, you will destroy Windows). On the right side of that screen you should see a checkbox labeled "Zeroing" with options in the form of radio buttons under that, choose click the radio button labeled "Only 1st 4096 bytes" and click on the "Prepare" button. It will ask you if you are sure, click "OK". This should take approx. 5-10 seconds. After it has completed, close the "xhdprepa" program. You can now shut down windows and remove the new hard drive as it is ready to put in the XBOX.

2) Opening the XBOX: Turn the XBOX upside down, there are six screws that need to be removed in order to open the console, one under each rubber foot (in each corner of the unit), and one under two of the three stickers (one at the front and one at the back of the unit, directly in the middle). Remove these six screws. Once the screws are out, turn the XBOX over and gently lift the top away from the bottom half (this will be tight so apply pressure without being barbaric).

3) Loading the Evolution-X dashboard for the first time: After the XBOX has powered up, press the eject button on the DVD drive, place the Evolution-X cd-rw into the drive. Close the drive, turn the XBOX off by pressing the power button (the small grey button in the front of the unit). Turn the XBOX on again, it SHOULD now load the evolution dashboard, if it doesn’t don’t worry, you may have to do it two or three times.

4) Editing the network settings in Evolution-X: Once at the main menu, you will see: "Network" menu item, scroll down using your D-pad on your controller and press the "A" button. This will open the network setting screen, you will see two places for ips in the middle of the (television) screen. The first ip is the static ip for the XBOX, set it to: 192.168.000.002 (this will translate to:192.168.0.2 in Windows). The second ip is for the gateway we are going to use, enter: 192.168.000.001 (this will translate to:192.168.0.1 in Windows). You can change the ips by moving up or down on the D-pad on the controller. Once both ips are changed from 000.000.000.000, press the "Back" button (the black button in the left-middle of the controller). Reboot your XBOX (leave the cd in the drive for now).

5) Connecting to the XBOX via FLASHFXP: Once the XBOX has rebooted and is at the Evolution-X screen again, load up FlashFXP on your PC, After that has loaded, press the "F4" key on your keyboard. This will open the site manager (where we are going to add the XBOX as a site), click on the "New Site" button, this will open a small screen asking for the site name, enter anything you like, I use: XBOX (original I know but easy to remember) and click the "OK" button. The right hand side of the site manager screen will now be enabled, this is where we will enter the ip of the XBOX as well as the port and username & password. For the field labeled "IP Address", enter : 192.168.0.2. For the port, leave the default port of 21. To the right of the field labeled "Username" you will see a checkbox labeled "Anonymous", by default this is checked, leave it checked. Once you have those settings, click on the "Apply" button located at the bottom of the site manager screen. Click the "connect" button. If you have done everything according to this guide, you should now see the drives on the XBOX in the window on the right side.

6) Backing up the original XBOX hard drive: You want to transfer the entire contents of the "C" and "E" drive from your XBOX to your PC so that you will be able to transfer them to the new hard drive. Once the contents from drive "C" and "E" have been copied to your PC, you can now disconnect from the FTP and turn the XBOX off.

7) Replacing the XBOX hardrive: With the PC DVD drive still attached, remove the original XBOX hard drive by unscrewing the two screws in the black plastic tray that holds it to the XBOX shell, once these have been removed, you will see two screws on each side of the black plastic tray, remove these as well. After that has been done, place the new hard drive in the tray and replace the four screws we just took out and put the tray back in the XBOX. Plug the data cable from the original XBOX hard drive into the new hard drive. Take the power connector that was used in the original hard drive and plug it into the new hard drive. We are now ready to plug the XBOX in and boot it up.

8) Connecting the XBOX cables: Plug the power cable from the wall into the connector in the back of the XBOX, plug in the video cable from the television into the video port, plug a controller into the controller port, and last but not least, plug in the Crossover cable (if connecting directly to the pc) or the CAT5 cable (if connecting through a hub). Once all the cables are connected as they should be, turn the unit on by pressing the power button (the small grey button in the front of the XBOX). When it boots up, you will probably get the red/green flashing error, don’t worry about that (assuming again that your modchip was working BEFORE we did any of this).

9) Loading the Evolution-X dashboard for the first time: After the XBOX has powered up, it will load the Evolution-X dashboard (providing you left the cd-rw in the DVD drive), if it doesn’t don’t worry, you may have to do it two or three times.

7) Follow step 4 above.

8) Follow step 5 above.

9) Formatting the XBOX partitions: In order to format the partitions on the new drive, we need to do a couple of RAW commands (two commands a few times each), these commands are as follow: Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partitionx (x being the partition number according to Evolution-X under the "harddisk" menu option. In order to do this RAW command, click on the "Commands" menu option, then on the sub-menu, click on the menu option labeled "RAW Command (Quote)", this will open a small screen requesting the raw command. Enter the previously mentioned command (Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partitionx). Once you do this, you will receive a key in the lower right window (the window that tells you how fast something transferred and if it is finished etc.). Copy that key and enter the next raw command: Formatdrive key (key being the key that you copied from the window in the lower right). Some people say you only have to do partition6, but just to be safe, I like to do them all, the only downside to this approach is, it will take about five minutes instead of one. Once you have formatted all the partitions correctly, you can then reboot your XBOX (with the Evolution-X cd-rw still in the PC DVD drive), once the Evolution screen comes up, you can then copy the original "C" and "E" drives back over from the PC to the XBOX (the ones we grabbed while the original hard drive was still in the XBOX).

List of RAW commands in accordance to the partitions:
Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)
Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)

Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)

Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition4
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)

Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition5
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)

Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition6
Formatdrive key (the key given by the FTP)

10) Replacing the original Dashboard: Once the "C" and "E" drives have completed copying over, you will want to replace the original dashboard if you haven’t already. FTP to your XBox and simply copy the backup contents of your original Xbox "C" & "E" off your PC to the new empty partitions on the new bigger XBox harddrive.

11) Copying Evolution-X to the XBOX hard drive: Rename the "xboxdash.xbe" to "msxboxdash.xbe" that exists on your XBox "C" drive. Browse to the "D" drive of your XBox. You will see the "default.xbe", transfer this file to your PC and rename it to "xboxdash.xbe", when it has been renamed, copy it back to the "C" drive of the XBox. Once this is done, you will want to copy the menu.ini file over to the XBOX as well (so that your menu items will work correctly), this file can be found inside the Evolution-X rar file you downloaded. When the "Menu.ini" file has been transferred over to the XBOX "C" Drive, you can now disconnect from the FTP and turn the XBOX off.

12) Finishing touches: After the XBOX has been turned off, screw the two screws into the tray (the two that secure the tray to the rest of the XBOX) and replace the cover (obviously you will also want to screw the six screws back into the bottom of the case before you move it). Providing you have followed these steps in this section of the guide, you SHOULD now have an XBOX with a larger hard drive. You will notice that your extra space will be found in partition "F".

[xb0xfreak]

what HD speed do you recommend: 5400rpm or 7200rpm?

[Falcon]

O.K guys where can i get Xhdprepa 1.3 please

[Falcon]

O.K guys i,m trying ta connect up useing flash and it states
Connection Failed No Route To Host , HELP Cheers Guys

[Prodigal]

Give us an idea of your configuration/setup:
what version evox you using?
what network hardware & cables?
have u set all the ip/gateways correctly?
are u using a password or not?

[Falcon]

o.k i,m useing evox 1.8.458

network card and crossover lead i use to link the 2 p-cs together

ip = 192.168.000.002

Gate = 192.168.000.001

Cache Directory disabled and Passive mode Disabled

And no password

Thankz

Doing my head in LOL

BTW my p-c has 2 network cards but i,m useing the one i connect to blueyonder , if i get it running i,ll try and use the other one that connects the 2 p-cs together...


Cheers