Upgrade xbox 360 hard drive

@Dreamcast

Published in

xbox360

· 30 May 2021

1 Introduction
2 Parts List
3 Recommended Pre-Move steps
4 Hard drive Disassembly
5 Prep New Hard Drive
6 Transfer Your Save Games and content
- 6.1 Original Xbox 360 drive
- 6.2 New 120GB Hard Drive
7 Save Game Test
- 7.1 The Orange Box
- 7.2 Rock Band 2
8 Restoring Your 120GB Hard Drive for PC use
9 Final Notes
10 Acknowledgments

Introduction

This wiki was created by redcat to document the experience of upgrading a 20GB Xbox 360 to a 120GB Xbox 360. The process required many documents. This is an attempt to provide references to the original documentation and then tie it all together. Please use the Starting Point links prior to working on the steps listed here.

Parts List

Hardware
- Xbox 360 - This may be a no brainer, but you will need this
- Xbox 360 serial number - Required for formatting any Xbox 360 hard drive, you may want to write this on a piece of paper to make it easier to enter later
- PC - This is where you will connect your old and new hard drive for use with Xplorer360 xtreme 2 and hddhackr.exe
- Hard drive WD1200BEVS - Your new 120GB hard drive. Find on NewEgg
- SATA cable and power - Required for connecting your new drive to your PC. The drive uses standard SATA cables
- Floppy disk or USB thumb drive - Required to boot into DOS
Tools
- Torx T-8H bit - Required for opening the hard drive enclosure
  - A very small flathead screw driver from will work
  - According to How To Open Xbox 360 HDD video a T-6 will work
- Torx T-10 bit (or Torx T-15) - Required for removing the hard drive from the internal cage
Software

hddhackr.exe
hddss.bin
Xplorer360 xtreme 2

Recommended Pre-Move steps

The following items are recommended but were not tested as part of this upgrade

Delete any games which are installed to the hard drive
- This will greatly speed up the transfer
- Due to DRM you will have to reinstall the game once you replace the hard drive
Delete any downloaded content which you don't need /want (trailers, video game demos etc.)
Clear the 360 cache
- This should speed up the transfer and may help you avoid cache issues
- Using the Cache Clear Code was not tested with the Xbox 360 NXE, but should work
This was tested . Get a Memory Unit and backup your favorite save games. See technofranki.blogspot.com for games and saves that may not work after a backup/restore

Rock Band and Rock Band 2 saves are broken after a backup/restore
If you move your save game to the Memory Unit, create your new hard drive and then move from the Memory Unit to the new hard drive your save game will be preserved
If you are unable to copy a save game to the Memory Unit, move it to the Memory Unit. These save games will not work with a backup/restore

Hard drive Disassembly

Starting point Upgrade Your Xbox 360's Hard Drive on the Cheap How To Open Xbox 360 HDD video

Remove the hard drive from the Xbox 360
You will need to take out 4 screws to disassemble the hard drive enclosure, 1 screw is under the silver Microsoft sticker (this will void the hard drive warranty)
- On my hard drive, a T-5 bit was too small and a T-8 bit was too big
  - After searching around the Internet I found that a T-8H bit is required to get at these screws
  - In How To Open Xbox 360 HDD video he says to use a T-6 bit
- Since I didn't have a T-8H bit I used a small eye-glass flat head screwdriver. This should snugly fit in the star head of the screw
- If using a flat head, gently turn to avoid stripping the screw
- Be careful of the hard drive release button it is attached to a spring and may pop off. Reassembly of the button is easy, but make sure not to lose it
Once you are inside the enclosure there are four more screws that secure the drive to the internal cage
- I used a Torx T-10 to take out the four screws inside. However a friend reported that he had to use a Torx T-15
- Slide the metal cage up and off toward the release button being careful not to bend any tabs
- Remove the SATA interface and power cable
- Slide the hard drive out. You'll need to lift up slightly to get the drive to pass a plastic lip
Hard drive disassembly complete

Prep New Hard Drive

Starting Point Upgrade Your Xbox 360's Hard Drive on the Cheap

Build a boot disk or thumb drive
- Boot disk
  - Download a DOS 6.22 boot disk from bootdisk.com
  - Run the boot622.exe which will create a bootable diskette, then remove all files except io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com
  - Copy hddhackr.exe and hddss.bin to your boot disk
- Bootable thumb drive
  - Make a bootable thumb drive
  - Copy hddhackr and hddss.bin to your thumb drive
Power off your PC
Open your PC and connect your new hard drive using your SATA cables
Insert your boot disk or thumb drive
Power on your PC
- You may need to set your SATA controller to compatibility mode, or legacy mode in the BIOS
- If the following steps don't work, enter the system BIOS and see what settings you have for SATA
Once booted to a command prompt, type

 hddhackr -f

hddhackr will scan the system for hard drives. If this fails to list any drives, see change SATA legacy/compatibility settings
If your system is set up correctly, all the hard drives in your system will be listed. Choose the BEVS drive and write down what number drive it is
Create the backup when prompted.
- Ignore any timeout errors
- The backup file will be called undo.bin and is required if you want to flash the drive for use in a laptop of PC
Power off the computer ( DO NOT RESET ) and leave it sit for 10 seconds. This is required to enable the new hard drive firmware
Turn on your computer and boot from your floppy or thumb drive
Type the following:

 hddhackr -f

Choose the same number you wrote down, it will be listed as a Fujitsu drive
If eveything is successful hddhackr will tell you that your drive should work in an Xbox 360
Power off the PC and remove your hard drive and boot disk
Slide your new hard drive into the Xbox 360 enclosure. If you do it right you can secure the enclosure to the 360 without re-screwing anything
Use the Xbox 360 to format the new drive

You will need your 360 serial number
Once complete it should show 107GB free
At this point you should have a working hard drive for use with your 360
The only item untested is whether Xbox 1 games will work/save since we haven't created/restored partition 2

Transfer Your Save Games and content

At this point you could restore your save games from a memory stick, re-download anything you've purchased and skip the rest of this wiki. The only thing which is unknown is whether Xbox 1 games would work as you have not created/restored Partition 2. Please e-mail me if you find the answer.

Stating Point

Make sure you have done all the previous steps listed in this wiki
Trying following the recommended instructions at IVC WIKI - Recommended.
The tested installation had problems with the recommended and alternate directions.
The test Xbox 360 had the new Xbox 360 NXE dashboard and the IVC WIKI directions were written before the NXE dashboard was released
The following steps will detail any differences in the IVC WIKI documentation

Original Xbox 360 drive

Steps 1-3 worked perfect, step 4 did not
In step 4 you are told to extract all the files from partition 3
- When a file level backup was run from Xplorer360 xtreme 2 it started in the cache folder and would loop through a certain amount of folders
- Xplorer360 xtreme 2 would copy those same folders over and over again
  - The Cache folder contains game and dashboard updates
  - If you're fast enough you may be able to tell which game ID is failing
  - If you can ID the failing
  - To see if this is an issue or to try to identify the failing cache folder, browse to

 %temp%\xplorer\partition 3\cache

- - If there is a problem you will only see some folders, but no new ones being created
  - Refreshing the folder you can see the time stamp on the folders update to whatever the current time is
- During the file level backup of the Compatibility folder you might get disk cluster error messages
- If you are experiencing these issues try extracting everything but "cache" and "compatibility". Or try to identify the failing sub folders and copy everything but those

My upgrade was performed copying everything but the Cache and Compatibility folder

To try and determine which folder is failing look at Kingla's XBOX 360 HDD Folder List. You may be able to match your failing ID witch a game in that list.

For safety sake, you should take a full image of the original drive as described in IVC WIKI. However when the alternate directions to copy the files from the image were followed, the same issues and errors were observed.

New 120GB Hard Drive

Remove the original Xbox 360 drive from your PC and put it somewhere safe
Connect your new hard drive (which you've already formatted in the Xbox 360) to your PC
Open the drive as described in the IVC WIKI with Xplorer360 xtreme 2
At this point you may not be able to see partition 2 or 3. This is noted in Xplorer 360 image and backup method (recommended)" - "New replacement drive:" Step 3
Move on to the Manual method in order to create partition 0 and 2. However I did it out of order
Partition 3 was already there because I formatted in the Xbox 360, it's just not visible because partition 2 is not visible
I created partition 2 using the exact steps in the wiki (with WinHex)
Now i could see partition 2 and 3
Then I created Partition 0 using the exact steps in the wiki (except for hex editing the xplorer binary), the version linked in IVC WIKI is already patched
Now I had partition 0, 2 and 3 visible
I restored parition 2 as detailed in the IVC WIKI
I then copied the four folders to the new drive that I had copied off the old drive to Parition 3

Note! many times through this process Xplorer360 xtreme 2 appeared hung, however it was indeed working it just wasn't showing me progress bars Once the copy was complete I put the new drive in the Xbox 360 enclosure and connected it to the Xbox 360 I had to re-download only a portion of the new Xbox 360 dashboard My dashboard theme, avatar and profile were instantly available and in use I browsed the games folders through and everything was listed correctly.

 System -> Memory -> hard drive

I left "The Orange Box" installed to the hard drive during the transfer, when i attempted to play it it told me that it had been installed on another drive and had to be reinstalled. So I deleted and reinstalled. No issues after that.

Save Game Test The Orange Box

Orange Box started and required an update
Save game and progress was perserved

Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 opened and loaded a save game
All Rock Band 1 and Downloaded Content worked
Another save game which was backed up and restored with Xplorer360 xtreme 2 had to be deleted as Rock Band 2 would give "unknown errors" when attempting to use it

Restoring Your 120GB Hard Drive for PC use

Boot off your floppy disk or thumb drive
run the following to restore your 120GB drive to defaults (for use in a PC)

 hddhackr -r

Your boot disk must have hddhackr.exe and undo.bin

Final Notes

The cache folder is where game patches and dash updates go
If you watch the Xplorer360 xtreme 2 extraction screen you might be able to catch the ID of the failing cache folder. If so you can restart your file extraction excluding the failing ID
Losing the cache folder means that you will need to re-download all game patches
You may want to seriously consider using a memory card to transfer over your save games and skip the whole Xplorer360 xtreme 2 backup/restore