Ok, so recently the dvd drive on my xbox 360 went out. The current faulty drive that is in it is a toshiba/samsung drive. I ordered a new hitachi drive off of ebay. I've noticed a lot of talk about "flashing" drive and I have no idea what anyone is talking about. I've looked into the process a little bit, but do not want to perform it by myself. I am not really interested in playing backup copies of games or anything like that, I just want a drive that will play my games without the disc read errors. I have taken the current drive apart and cleaned the lens a few times, but it only works for a few days. I was just wondering if I could just hook up the new drive to my xbox without having to perform the flash process on the drive. I only want to be able to play real copies of games at the moment. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
no, you can't. you will have to flash the drive regardless. you will need to get the drive key off of your original drive, then "spoof" the hitachi with the new drive key and firmware that makes the 360 think it's the original drive.
with that said, although you will have to "flash" the drive, you don't have to flash it with ixtreme firmware.
in order to "spoof", you will need to download maximus toolbox and read the tutorial.
alternatively...you can buy the toshiba/samsung drive, swap out the drive firmware boards, and you should be good to go. no flashing requried.