Installation of a New/Larger Harddrive

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If you lock the hard-drive to a wrong password you will have a dead hard-drive that you can't use anymore. (unless you lucky enough to know what the wrong password was).
If you have logged on to Xbox 'Live' at all, your account is matched between your network Mac Id and to the hard-drive serial number, once you switch hard-drives you will be banned! After logging on with the new hard-drive, expect the ban to take around 12 hours. Once you have been banned your only option is to purchase a new Xbox to use with 'Live'.

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You will need the following:

1. Obviously a Hard-drive, but it needs to support 'Password Locking' or be 'Lockable' the majority of all Hard-drives are, but some models don't support the feature, check first to save yourself a lot of grief.
2. You will need access to a PC and need some hardware experience as you need to remove and install Hard-drives.
3. A T10 'Torx' screwdriver and a T20 'Torx' screwdriver.
4. A program called 'Xboxhdm 1.9' which you can get Here
5. a FTP program and knowledge of how to use it! Click Here to download FlashFXP
6. Another program called 'ConfigMagic' which you can get Here

Get the EEPROM
You need to FTP the uncompressed folder for "ConfigMagic" to your Xbox (it should go under 'E:\Apps' but you may need to modify its location for your Dashboard) Once done Reboot your Xbox and you should have access to it under the 'Applications menu' in UnleashX (or whatever dash your using).

The purpose of the program is to retrieve your EEPROM information which is needed to get the password used to lock your Hard-drive. Once you've launched 'Configmagic' you need to press 'start' to continue, when it shows the warning screen (We won't be changing anything that could cause problems so continue). to bring up the main menu press 'start' again now select "Create Backup Files". Once this is completed press 'start' once more and select "Exit Config Magic".

Switch to your PC and FTP into your Xbox (IP address is on your Dashboard screen) Transfer the file called "EEPROMbackup.bin" which should be on the root of drive 'E:\' to your PC Hard-drive and rename it to "EEPROM.bin" copy this file to floppy disk and set it aside for later (we'll need this later don't loose it)! For those of you who are running a PC that has no Floppy drive skip this step.

Update April 19th 2006
Important this section is only for those who have used the newer Ndure softmod installer

if you are attempting this upgrade after installing the Ndure softmod you will need to proceed differently as Krayzie's Ndure is a newer version of the softmod that creates a virtual drive C: by doing this any updates to the dash are on the Virtual Drive C: not the real one, this protects your Softmod from getting buggered up but when you back-up drive C: your getting the Virtual C's contents not the actual drive C: which means this procedure will not work.

You have two possible options here and the first is directly below:

1. Heres what you need to do.
2. There is a shadow partition, So unlock the factory drive (you should already have the eeprom.bin ).
3. Mount /dev/hda50 (drive E) to /mnt and /dev/hda51 (drive C) to /c. And then: tar cf /mnt/actualc.tar /c/* After a while it creates a copy of the files on drive E, in a single archive.
4. Lock the drive and put it back on xbox.
5. Take new hard drive (previously prepared) and mount /dev/hda50 (drive E) to /mnt, /dev/hda51 to /c
6. FTP to the Xbox and retrieve from drive E "actualc.tar"
7. Decompress (tar xvf actualc.tar) and place the files in the proper partition
8. lock the drive, swap old for new, and your're done it should work fine!
   

Option two
Create the new larger HD to factory then install the Ndure softmod but you'll need the contents from a pre/un-modded Drive C: (If you don't have this check around you should be able to find one somewhere) You follow the same instructions as outlined below and perform the Ndure softmod after the new larger HD is installed!

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Prepare your Files
If you haven't uncompressed the 'Xboxhdm' program then do so now, inside the base 'Xboxhdm' folder you'll see a 'C' folder and an 'E' folder, FTP the entire contents of the Xbox 'C:\' drive into the 'C' folder and of course the entire contents of the 'E:\' drive into the 'E' folder on your PC.

Users without a Floppy will have to include the eeprom.bin file but it MUST all be in lower case for the xboxhdm program to detect the file, place the eeprom.bin file into the "eeprom" folder, Floppy users can try this but if you have an issue you can just use the Floppy instead.

Now look under the root 'Xboxhdm' folder and you will see a file called 'make-iso-win.bat' run this file and you'll end up with an '.iso' image that you can burn with your favorite CD Burning tool such as Nero, if unsure how to burn the image file refer to your documentation that came with your Burning software.

Create the new Xbox Hard-drive
You need to make sure you can boot from your CD/DVD Drive, this may require a settings change in the Bios.

Once you've powered off the PC you will need to disconnect all your Hard-drives (ensures you don't format the wrong one in error) and attach the Hard-drive you plan to install into the Xbox as the Primary Hard-drive on the Primary IDE controller, also make sure that any jumpers are set to 'CS' or 'Cable select' (default for most drives). Power on your PC and enter your Bios screen under the drive setting section try and disable any auto-detection features for the drive and if needed enter the parameters from the drive into this section. Save your changes and reboot hopefully your CD/DVD drive will prompt you to press any key to boot the disk or it will enter the boot process automatically.

You should see a menu with various options we want option 1) Boot VGA console with xbox-drive utilities select this option and wait for the Linux system to finish booting (3-7 Minutes) when done your 're dumped to a command prompt. Type in 'xboxhd' (without quotes) to start the program now choose 1) Build a new Xbox HD from scratch and it will ask you some questions. you need to type 'yes' or 'no' (without quotes) to each question it asks (you most likely want an 'F' drive and everything formatted). When this is all completed you will need to reboot.

Load Linux again but This time when the CD loads, choose 3) Boot linux with locking/unlocking utilities after you get to the command prompt type in 'lockhd -a' (without quotes) the program will run and complain no valid EEPROM file was found if it was named incorrectly or not included with the build. It will then give you three options choose 1) read from Floppy it will then ask you to put the floppy into the drive, put the floppy from step one with the EEPROM.bin file into the drive and hit enter. If all goes well it will report it found the file and proceed to lock your Hard-drive, if it reports an error about a 'Frozen drive' read the section below. Once done Linux will ask you to shutdown so power off and remove the locked and prepared hard-drive and install it into your Xbox!

You can find instructions on opening your Xbox Here
Refer to the sections about opening the Xbox and re-connecting the hard-drive only.

Frozen drive
If the process reports 'drive has been frozen' you most likely have a bios that is preventing the lock command from working. You can try to disconnect the IDE cable while booting and attach the cable before Linux boots but chances are you'll need to resort finding a computer that will allow the lock command or as a last resort to a much different process that involves the use a TSOP flashed or Chip modded Xbox, to attempt the hard-drive Lock using this method click Here

As always I hope this article has been useful
biline

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