Original Xbox HD question????

[cgdm]

I had an original xbox hard modded.  I don't remember what kind of chip it was but I did have a 250 GB HD in it.   I kept the HD and was going to use it for something else but never have.   My question is, if I soft mod another xbox, can I just put my old HD in and everything still be there and work with the new soft modded xbox?

[lilshawn]

yes and no,

The drives are locked to that specific xbox and are not directly transferable to another xbox. but...you can unlock it, load it into another modded xbox and lock it to THAT xbox.

[cgdm]

Sorry, I'm new to this.  How would I go about unlocking the HD without the old xbox?

[ChadTower]

I don't think you can without the Xbox that locked it.

[ark_ader]

Yes it works if it has a chip.  Softmodded sometimes works if it is less than 120gb.  I popped a loaded 400gb IDE into a new chipped xbox that was unlocked.  Worked after I flushed the caches.  You don't need to lock it anymore as Xbox live is no more.

Unlock it with slayers or aid 4.  You could use xdm too

[cgdm]

I'm pretty sure it was a 250 GB HD.  Might be a 500.  The xbox it was in was hard modded with a chip.  Don't remember for sure but I want to say Xcuter chip or something like that.  It was a long time ago.  When I first got it, I could go on xbox live but turning it off but accidently tried to get on live one time and it was banned.  So then it is possible to retrieve or even reuse this then?

[opt2not]

Adversely, is there any way to get an SSD to run on a softmodded xbox?

And before someone says "why bother, it doesn't give you any speed benefits?"
...I'd be doing it for longevity not performance. SSD's have no moving parts to breakdown, and they generate a hellava lot less heat than a motor drive.

[lilshawn]

If it was hard modded it likely has the BIOS modded that eliminates the need for the lock. you can't hurt nothing by trying. worst that will happen is you get an error message.

Hard Drive locking isn't a XBOX live thing. It is an IDE Hard Drive option built into the IDE controller of the harddrive itself. That is why when you buy a hard drive for an XBOX to upgrade it you had to make sure that it is ATA lockable. Though the implementation of ATA lockable is really unused by most people and why it isn't something listed on the hard drive.

Basically ATA locking is a security that allows you to protect the hard drive from people looking at the information at it. Microsoft implemented it's use so that you couldn't yank the drive out, hook it to a PC and just view all the system files and hack the hardware.

back in the day, you had to boot the xbox and while it booted you unplugged the drive to plug it into the computer to mod it. this is because the xbox would unlock the drive during boot. the drive remained unlocked and you could write your data to it. (hot swap method)

I think any "IDE2SATA" adapter that will work. be aware not all SSD's will work though.

[SavannahLion]

Still has a finite number of writes. I can think of a few games that'll tear that new drive in short order.

Really ought to get around to actually getting an Xbox someday.

[lilshawn]

I have 3 Xboxes. All softmoded and have xbmc. Works great for music and sd video...not so great for hd...not enough power to do the decoding.

[ChadTower]

I used XBMC heavily for years.  Sometimes you can get it to stream 720p cleanly.  Depends on the container type.  Never anything better than that. 

[lilshawn]

I used XBMC heavily for years.  Sometimes you can get it to stream 720p cleanly.  Depends on the container type.  Never anything better than that.

works fine for streaming the kids cartoons off the NAS. it's a plain old composite TV anyways.

I switched out the one in our bedroom for an android box mainly for netflix. But i had softmodded that box and swapped out the harddrive.

Once i softmodded, part of the installation was to extract the HD key lock and write it to a file. I used FTP to access the file and drop the key onto my computer. I don't recall which program it was, but it involved burning a boot CD and adding the key file to it. (you could also manually enter the key but it's ridiculously long and i'd likely screw it up) then it just created a locked drive you could swap to the xbox and boot from it.

so i made a 250? 350? gb HD (it was the only one I had that was lockable at the time) and threw it in.

If i recall you can also use a jtag or something to pull the BIN out of the BIOS and obtain the key that way.

in any case, i'm sure there is some way to make that drive work with a different xbox. it's just a matter of what the status of the boxes are/where to begin with is how you are going to have to go about it.

[ballboff]

There did used to be a bootdisc available for softmod, but I don't remember the name of it.  I used it to clone an original xbox drive to a larger 250 gig drive and install the basic system on it. You could also softmod the 8 gig drive that came with it and then just clone that and voila.  It did have the facility to lock and unlock drives, the xbox won't boot without locking it anyway.  I think when you burn the disc you have to put the bin files in it from the xbox you are unlocking.  I think there is also an explorer program for pc which allows you to browse the files on the xbox drive, that enables you to get the bin folder that identifies the serial number of your xbox.  You'll probably need to make 2 boot discs, one to unlock your destination drive, and another which re-locks the new drive to your new xbox (if that makes sense?)

[kenzo42]

Hexen?