How to install a new Hard drive in your Xbox

Hogaba

Hi all, having trouble installing a new harddrive in my xbox. Have softmodded my xbox using the excellent guide I found here with little or no trouble. I recently purchased a 500GB SATA drive (Seagate Barracuda ST3500418AS) and an IDE/SATA converter. This drive doesn't appear on the Xbox hard drive compatability chart but I thought I'd chance it anyway.
Anyway, using xboxhdm and this guide everything seemed to be going well until it came to locking the drive- doesn't seem to be working at all so my question is this- are there other programs I can use to try locking the drive? I've read about config magic and evoX but I can't seem find a decent guide online- can anyone point me in the right direction or help me out with this problem?

witnessmenow

MrSparkle wrote: »

Has anyone gotten Code 9 when the xbox started up after putting in the new HDD?

I bought one of these sata to ide adapters off dealextreme http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12537 and this HDD off Komplett: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343054

Ftped the files off my softmodded xbox, made the linux CD and made the new HDD for the xbox. It all appeared to go ok, but it won't boot properly, just comes up with Code 9, contact support.

Looking around various forums it looks like the xbox can't communicate to HDD properly but nobody has an exact solution to it. I was thinking it might have something to do with the Master/Slave settings as i wasnt sure what way they should be. I know it supposed to be set at Cable Select but the HDD has nothing on it to tell you which is C/S and looking at the samsung support website there's nothing either.

Does it have to be on C/S for both the adapter and the HDD? The HDD only has 4 pins(2 rows) aswell. Anyone have any ideas? If i pop back in the original xbox drive it works fine, brings up xbmc. Thanks!

Did you ever get sorted? Is your xbox a 1.6 by any chance (Crystal ones are 1.6, so are some black ones, google "what version is my xbox")

MrSparkle

Nope never got it sorted. I didn't bother checking what version it, I'd be pretty sure it's a 1.6 one, I'll check later on.

Is there much hassle involved in putting a switch in to power the hard drive before the xbox? i saw you mentioned it in this post http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055482464

I'm thinking of just leaving the xbox as it is with the original soft modded hard drive and connect it to a NAS to stream stuff.

witnessmenow

Could you let me know what version it is when you find out, im pretty curious whats the story with it

I havent really checked the versions of xboxs when i was putting HDs into them, so i have to go back over what I've already done to check it out

All I've figured so far is that 1.6 seem to be the worst, as I've had 2 crystal xboxs (1.6) refuse 500gb sata HDs the same way as yours while I've had no issues with 500gb in any black ones(any version). I have quite a few xboxs between my own ones and ones I've done for friends and family so hopefully I have all versions.

Its not that hard but I have to stress Make sure the Xbox is plugged out!

I have a 1.6 beside me here and it works like this:

Link Because Picture is massive!

Basically you need to put the switch between the two points I've circled on the power supply and disconnect the white wire from the connector going to the motherboard. I'll try explain it the best i know how.

The power supply has 3 modes - Off , Standby , Active

When the xbox is plugged in and off the power supply is in standby mode. When you press the power switch on the xbox the power supply is set top active and the xbox motherboard turns on. The white cable is the cable that tells the power supply to go to active mode

If the xbox is off and you connect orange to white it will turn on as normal, but this isn't what we want as we dont want the xbox booting up until the hard drive has had some power so we separate white from the motherboard (you can plug it out of the connector or cut it)

So you flick you added switch, this puts the power supply into active mode which powers the hard drive, then a couple of seconds later you press the xbox power switch and it should power up fine for you.

When turning off the xbox you will need to press the power switch , then press your added switch (pressing your added switch when the Xbox is on kills power to the xbox, so it will turn off but i think it would better not to do this )

MrSparkle

I checked there last night, it's an Xbox 1.6a with Samsung RAM, it's the normal black xbox, not the crystal one.

Thanks for the detailed reply, that sounds like way too much work for my liking though!

Would it be the SATA to IDE adapter that's causing the problem? I messed around with the jumpers on the adapter like Nick_oliveri was saying but it just came up with error 9 each time. You said that you've had no problems with any black ones so I'm probably doing something wrong!

witnessmenow

MrSparkle wrote: »

I checked there last night, it's an Xbox 1.6a with Samsung RAM, it's the normal black xbox, not the crystal one.

Thanks for the detailed reply, that sounds like way too much work for my liking though!

Would it be the SATA to IDE adapter that's causing the problem? I messed around with the jumpers on the adapter like Nick_oliveri was saying but it just came up with error 9 each time. You said that you've had no problems with any black ones so I'm probably doing something wrong!

Sorry didnt explain that part clearly, I have had that problem on at least one black one, but im not sure what version it was. What i ment was that the crystal ones are always 1.6 so i know for sure that they are, while the black ones could be any version. I've done at least one xbox that does not require any switch (going by just the serial number it is a 1.3, but its the last week that 1.3s were made so it could be 1.4)

I use an adapter from dealextreme (red one), I completely remove the jumper pin from the adapter. I don't think this is your problem, its your xbox. There before Christmas i was doing a 500gb sata HD xbox and tried it in a crystal one and it did not work (error 9), this was the first time I had issues with a 500gb sata HD, so i tried the exact same drive and adapter in a different xbox(all i did was change the eeprom to suit the new xbox) and it worked first time. I've since had a second crystal one do this to me.

It could be the adapter, I've tried two diffrent ones and both had the same problem.

It could be the samsung spin points either, I havent tried any sata Hd bigger than 320gb that wasnt a samsung spinpoint

MrSparkle

Thanks again man. I'm going to take a few hard drives from work here(a lot of people let go and crappy PCs left after them) and test it out with them.

If I can get it going with a SATA drive and the adapter from dealextreme then the xbox doesnt like the Spinpoint i bought. If i get it going with an IDE drive then i'll probably just stick with that. I dont really need a big internal hard drive, it'd just be cool to have so much space in the Xbox, i've plenty to fill it with!

I'll let you know if I get it going with those hard drives.

witnessmenow

Yeah that would be great thanks.

I have a 1.6 working with a 320gb Seagate Sata drive using that same red adapter from dealextreme and it works perfectly so i'd say the IDEs will be no hassle at all.

MrSparkle

Finally got the xbox HDD upgraded, it's only an 80GB one but it's better than nothing. It was a right pain, the first 80GB drive i tried wouldn't lock as it didn't support ATA security spec, the second one did but I had to use 3 different computers to lock it - they said it was frozen and leaving out the IDE cable on startup wouldnt work. Anyway it's working fine, now to sort out the fan noise off the xbox and get more scripts, emulators etc.

I think it was the jumpers that were causing the problem with the 750GB hard drive.

Sorry to drag up an old thread but I can't find a good value IDE hard drive to save my life? Where can I get one please? Cheers!

witnessmenow

Just get a Sata one with an adapter, much better value.

thanks for the reply witnessmenow. I thought I read somewhere though (maybe here) that that method was unreliable?