Cannot Install new Hard Drive!

What did you set your Xbox hard drive as in the BIOS? You use this little table here to determine which number you enter inplace of the # sign.

0 - Primary Master
1 - Primary Slave
2 - Secondary Master
3 - Secondary Slave

[edit on 5-2-2007 by bluesquareapple]

In the BIOS, the Xbox drive is listed as number 2, a primary slave.


If I run this unlock thing, will I be able to use the drive in my Xbox again?

Firstly, I'm rather amused that someone would refer you to me, as I'm more of a hardware guy... but I do perform data extraction from Hard drives for friends... so here goes.

Alright, from what I gather, you have extracted the HDD from the X-Box, placed it as slave (I usually place it as cable select, it just saves headaches)... but thats not the problem.

You have it properly set as slave, otherwise it would attempt to boot from it instead of the HDD with windows on it.

The fact that it shows up in device manager tells me windows 'should' be able to use it... however. There are a few things in my experience that can cause problems with Operating Systems mounting the HDD.

1. The formatting is in a language the Operating System simply doesn't understand. (VERY LIKELY) This used to happen with linux when trying to read windows NTFS partitions.
2. As mentioned above, the X-Box may place some form of proprietary lock on the Hard drive. Wether thats a soft lock, or a hard lock, I dont know. If it's a software lock, then you should still be able to format it regardless.

I'm willing to bet that if you took a linux disk and booted up with the HDD installed you would be able to read the contents of the Hard Drive with no problems.

What I prescribe you do :

1. Get a copy of a linux live CD, or an old copy of DOS.
Ubuntu is a live CD and runs stright from CD. You dont even need a hard drive to run it.
DOS, you can place on a floppy disk... I assume you know how to use dos, if not, use Ubuntu.

2. There are many instructions online as to how to format a hard drive with both linux, and DOS.

A: DOS.
Have only the hard drive you want to format hooked up, insert the dos floppy disk. Start the computer. Your BIOS should automatically boot into DOS... if not, make sure your BIOS knows that it should. (delete on most PC's to enter BIOS).
Once you are in, type: Format c: [ENTER]
It will ask you if you are sure. Say yes. Some versions of format in dos will give you an option to format to a specific file structure, for Windows select NTFS (Fat 32 and Fat 16 also work for windows XP, but XP prefers NTFS)
Once formatted, remove the floppy, place the original HDD back in your case, and boot up. It 'should' automatically recognize and mount the hard drive for you, unless there is a hardware lock on there.

B: LINUX
I prescribe Ubuntu instead of Knoppix because knoppix still has issues formatting to NTFS... Ubuntu does not. Plus, Ubuntu is my favorite OS.
Insert the Ubuntu CD, and start your computer like you would with DOS.
When you boot up, it will perform the linux checklist. You will see a bunch of stuff with 'ok' next to it. It's checking your hardware and learning how to use it, be patient.
Once it starts, open 'terminal'. (Its like a dos prompt. Its in the linux menu in the top left, accessories)
In there, type: sudo bash
This will give you administration privelages.
Once there type: man fdisk.
You will be looking at the instruction manual for the fdisk program. This should tell you how to do the rest. Read it.

Tell you what, if you take the linux route, just drop me another U2U when you get stuck, I can walk you through the rest.


But yeah, try a format to NTFS first, I'm assuming it's formatted as some other retarted file system at the moment. I know microsoft loves to make it difficult to pirate stuff, so a file format that cant be read by PC's is very likely.

Let me know of anything else you need to know.



Say, you don't live in Ottawa do you? That would make things really easy, I could do it myself in about 3 minutes.

[edit on 6-2-2007 by johnsky]