Today’s word is hotswap, kids. What is hotswapping? Aside from some sex joke I could poorly attempt to make, it’s changing hard drives in a device when the power is on, either to the drive, or the system. In this case, stonewalled by my mobo’s draconian bios freezing all hdds attached by default, it would seem, I’m onward to using either Auto-installer, or something I’ve seen around but never had to rely on before called Frosty’s Xbox Rescue disc.
Supposedly any other power source will do, but you boot up the xbox with the stock drive, load the disc, then swap the IDE ribbon connector from the stock hd to the new one you wish to lock.
Seems for a good section of the populace xboxHDM quickly became useless, since bios settings would ‘freeze’ the drive and deny HDM any hope of locking it. HDM didn’t suck completely, I don’t know if I need to clone anything. I believe this hd is prepared and ready to fly. The only thing it lacks is the elusive detail of being LOCKED.
I’m about to forego the pc altogether, go the hotswapping method, boot the thing up with the stock drive, detach the dvdrom connector, have the new upgrade hd nearby with the usb housing powering it, then connect the dvdrom’s ide ribbon to the new hd.
Currently making progress here. I ditched the pc and decided to try the hotswap method with Chimp’s Tool. This is an on-xbox post-softmod app. it’s analogous to Ghost for the pc in that it clones the original stock hd to the new one you intend to use after upgrading. The rub here is that it doesn’t get hung up on the hp pc bios that kept referring to this drive as frozen.
!!! I actually did it! I just saw the little white macrohard logo appear at the bottom of the boot screen ON MY bigger HD!!
Hotswapping with the powered usb enclosure worked. Chimp cloned me a hd. Now to go see if it’s all allocated and check the other details. But it might be time to put the screws back in and start moving into this new box.
Ripping Serious Sam II, will go to Buffy next. This rocks!
Maybe the dvdrom still needs a cleaning. It didn’t read buffy, but we’ve ripped serious sam ii, and it’s 3/4 the way thru counterstrike right now. Thinking that if I installed Chimp on the old xbox, I could just clone up from there. Of course copying everything would take some time, but if I dumped everything except the saves, it’d go faster. But considering the Chimp’s ease of use, I could/might be able to clone my first xbox’s current hd to an even bigger one.
The process should go roughly similar to this. Softmod to load the apps, run the apps, then hotswap the target hd with the dvdrom cable and the usb housing, blammo, it’s done. This box’s dvdrom ripped Serious Sam II but choked on counterstrike, buffy, and tork. I think I’ll need to clean it. If that doesn’t work, I can clone the other HD to this one, or find another way to repair or recondition it.
I knew the dvdrom was dirty or something. I copied over a game and some Futurama, but then I decided to at least see how the dvd looked inside. It’s a samsung replacement drive from what I can see. I watched a few yt videos for reference, one that just cleaned the upper surfaces of the lens and the drive. I didn’t get at the underside and the lower mirror, but I did wipe the dust from the gears and rails, alcohol + qtipped the lens, disc hub, and surrounding housing.
I also blew out the rest of the inside of the xbox, under the dvdrom and hdd trays. I’ve now taken the thing apart down to the mobo, both drives out. And after cleaning it up, I reattached the housing and connected both trays, both drives, reattached the lid, and plugged it back in.
Now it’s reading 5.71mb per second, somewhere around 2x as fast as it went before. It read Buffy on the first try and is now ripping it. I’ll keep going. But at last I’m grinding away on my own mod from the bottom up. And bing, Buffy’s done. Counterstrike reads almost as fast.
Philips VAD6011 is the model in there. It wasn’t even all that dirty when I opened it. I wiped a big wad of dust off the innermost rail that the lens assembly slides back n forth on. Dabbed at the lens with rubbing alcohol, around it and such, but most of the dust in the unit I blew off with the spray duster outside.
Now that the dvdrom is playing ball, plugging along at 3.3 MB/sec or better, I’ve ripped the first games I grabbed from the shelf, Buffy, Tork, Beyond Good & Evil and Half Life 2. I want to see how much I can fit in what I have before I go off the deep end and try to buy any massive hard drives for this thing. There’s another patch that needs to be installed or enabled before anything above 160gb can be used. But I’ve partitioned correctly and made F partition 65+gb out of a 74.5 once C and E drives had each taken a bite.
According to what I’ve been reading this morning, the xbox can usually handle cloning through a IDE>SATA converter. This is important b/c nobody makes IDE drives anymore, and they’re either used, refurbed, or really expensive. I think they max out at 750gb and then usually only over $100.
I did a little comparative searching and I could have a 160gb IDE drive that the xbox compatibility list has several users verify it locks properly, from newegg refurbed total price shipped $35. Including an adapter I could probably have a 500-750gb SATA for the same price. These be the shifting sands of supported standards and the prices they sell for.
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