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Replace unmodded broken 360 drive w/ a new one?
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beavis123
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 18:52 |
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I have an xbox 360 and simply want to replace my defective drive with a new one. The 360 is fine and works perfectly, but loading discs is next to impossible. At first, I had to open and close the tray 5-10 times to get discs to play (occasionally with grinding noises, I assume are the head resetting), but now even 50-100 tray cycles will not usually get a game to play (although it's not impossible, it is impractical to spend 20 minutes to get a game to work).
Quite simply, do I just buy an identical model, grab a copy of the firmware on my drive (using my PC), and then flash my new drive with that firmware?
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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1. August 2007 @ 19:10 |
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It's best the swap for the same make of drive IMO, but it's not required. You can spoof it to match whatever drive you're replacing.
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beavis123
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 19:27 |
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Is there a guide or tutorial with information on this? It doesn't seem reasonable that the firmware would work from one drive brand to the next.
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BryanNH_3
Member
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1. August 2007 @ 19:47 |
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Why don't you just send it back ti microsoft? Even if its after the warranty period you pay the $$ to have them fix it - not much more than buying a new drive, especially if you include your time to get the new drive ready to go - and you'll get a new 1 year warranty on it ... its not modded yet, still has its warranty sticker ... I got my xBox at the beginning of 2006 and when i called to have my xBox serviced they told me my warranty was good until march of 2008 - so it somehow has a 2 year full warranty (I got this info BEFORE the 3 year extension for the red lights) ...
If you mod it yourself and then later have more problems and then have to buy a new xBox, you'll spend much more $$ than the $140 or so for the repair ... Let MS fix their defective hardware! Use the services available to you - and legal to you as well! Don't waste your money to void your xBox warranty!
blah
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beavis123
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 19:49 |
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I have purchased a Samsung M25 replacement drive w/ overnight air shipping, so hopefully tomorrow I will be able to figure out how to handle getting the encryption code from my current drive to the new one.
I don't want to wait for Microsoft, and am willing to pay to buy the hardware to fix it myself. Been building and repairing PCs for over a decade, so I just wanted to make sure it was going to be as straightforward as I anticipated.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 1. August 2007 @ 19:51
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BryanNH_3
Member
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1. August 2007 @ 20:04 |
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I hear ya ... I work with computers for a living, but with the xBox the individual parts aren't warrantied if you decide to mess with it yourself ... and you can't just call MS and have them send you a part like Dell would do if an individual part was broken - and at least with a PC if you change a drive/cpu/ram on your own, then it doesn't have a chance of being banned from being used on the internet!!!
blah
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beavis123
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 20:13 |
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In this instance, it isn't possible to have my console banned since I will not be doing any modifications. As to the warranty, the extension does not cover anything but red-light errors, so far as I'm aware, but regardless, performing a 1 hour operation on it is much easier than screwing with MS and being w/out the console for a couple weeks.
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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1. August 2007 @ 21:31 |
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Originally posted by beavis123:
Is there a guide or tutorial with information on this? It doesn't seem reasonable that the firmware would work from one drive brand to the next.
No it's not the firmware you'd be using, but the DVD key. Samsung drives get Samsung firmware and Hitachi drives get Hitachi firmware. You just inject to key into whatever firmware you put in the new drive. When making a firmware in toolbox you can make it report as any drive you want.
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theridges
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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2. August 2007 @ 03:35 |
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Originally posted by Memnock:
Originally posted by beavis123:
Is there a guide or tutorial with information on this? It doesn't seem reasonable that the firmware would work from one drive brand to the next.
No it's not the firmware you'd be using, but the DVD key. Samsung drives get Samsung firmware and Hitachi drives get Hitachi firmware. You just inject to key into whatever firmware you put in the new drive. When making a firmware in toolbox you can make it report as any drive you want.
yea you will need to get your dvd key from your original dvd drive..
if its another samsung drive then its pretty simple..
here is a tutorial if your original drive is hitachi and you have to spoof you MS25
http://caster420.360mods.net/SamsungWithHitachiMobo.pdf
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beavis123
Newbie
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2. August 2007 @ 13:36 |
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Thanks for the help. I am going from a Samsung to a Samsung, so it sounds like it should be pretty easy.
Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression I could simply grab the entirety of the firmware (incl'd would be the encryption key) and flash the new, identical drive with the old firmware. In a sense, it would appear to the xbox 360 to be the same drive. Sort of like moving the circuit board from the old to the new.
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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2. August 2007 @ 14:24 |
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If you are going from Samsung to Samsung I would think you would be able to take the firmware of the current drive and put it on the other. I've never done a Samsung to Samsung swap, but rather only a Hitachi to Samsung. You definitely can't swap the firmwares between brands.
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theridges
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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2. August 2007 @ 16:17 |
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Originally posted by Memnock:
If you are going from Samsung to Samsung I would think you would be able to take the firmware of the current drive and put it on the other. I've never done a Samsung to Samsung swap, but rather only a Hitachi to Samsung. You definitely can't swap the firmwares between brands.
yep he can take his orig.bin from his original drive and just flash his new samsung with that firmware..really simple.
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beavis123
Newbie
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2. August 2007 @ 21:27 |
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That was what I assumed. Thanks for the confirmation.
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beavis123
Newbie
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9. August 2007 @ 12:29 |
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Well, I'm done and it worked. Here are some things I learned along the way for anyone else that tries to do this (it cost less than MS repair and was faster). Since I got help from you guys, I figure it's
only appropriate to give something back:
1) Buy a SATA controller w/ the Via 6421 chipset if yours does not have it. Makes things a lot easier, and they can be found as cheaply as $10 US.
2) Make sure you have a working USB pen or Floppy Drive
3) The BIOS on the SATA card does not need to see the DVD-DRIVE, so don't waste your time trying to figure out how to make that happen
4) All of the guides that mention manually hexediting are outdated, in my opinion. Just get Xtreme Boot Maker and let it grab the information from your SATA controller and patch mtkflash with it.
5) In my case, the final thing that got it to work was moving the SATA cable from the secondary port to the main port while in DOS, while the 360 was on. No 10 second tricks or anything like that.
6) After you make a backup of the firmware, if you had trouble getting to that point the prospect of restarting doesn't look so good. You don't need to even though mtkflash seems to think you do...just hot-swap the dvd-drive with the one you want to write to at this point.
7) I think the troubleshooting emphasis on the Windows drivers is a bit misplaced. The only reason it is useful to do things with the card in Windows is to verify that the card works and retrieve information about the controller. After that, you ought to be able to uninstall the drivers, Windows, whatever you want. The mtkflash process should work. Don't forget, the DR-DOS environment can not read NTFS partitions.
8) You can use a small screw driver to press the pressure switch in the middle green-circle on the xbox so you don't have to have a controller laying around.
9) Interestingly, I posted another question when I was trying to access my Samsung with the NF4 chipset. No one seemed to know what I was talking about. If the green light flashes on your xbox 360 when you attempt to read it, but nothing happens, your SATA controller will not work. Get the Via 6421. From what I can tell, that is a visible indication that you have selected the right port and that mtkflash is edited properly. So if it doesn't work, chances are there's nothing you can do. Once you have the Via card, you'll follow the same process and when you finally go to read the firmware, the light will flash but a percentage will count up as it reads bank by bank.
10) Taking the case apart is irritating, at best. Those little case-opening tool-kits are handy and worked fairly well.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 9. August 2007 @ 12:39
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bL33d
Junior Member
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9. August 2007 @ 16:20 |
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I plan on doing the exact same thing soon so keep checking back as i might need help.
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bL33d
Junior Member
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16. August 2007 @ 09:40 |
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From what ive read if u get the same drive model and firmware u can just switch the pcb and it will work.
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BryanNH_3
Member
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16. August 2007 @ 11:15 |
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By this time you could have already sent it to Microsoft, had it repaired for FREE, gotten a new warranty on it, and you could have already been using it instead of trying to figure it out on your own and run the risk of voiding your warranty!
blah
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beavis123
Newbie
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17. August 2007 @ 20:58 |
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My swap went fine and cost less, even with overnight shipping.
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kevinko
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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4. September 2007 @ 22:18 |
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anybody have a link to a tut? i voided my warranty and messed my box up, i still have the orig key though, just dont know wat to do, about to buy a new drive from ebay but not sure how i would b able to do this.....any help would b greatly appreciated
i have a samsung ms25 btw
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 4. September 2007 @ 22:19
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