Softmodded HDD partitions

[ieblj01]

Hi Team,

I am working on cloning and upgraded the HDD from an existing soft modded XBOX to use SATA drive on TSOP modded v1.4 XBOX (tired of locked HDDs).  I did not modify the XBOX originally, so my knowledge of how this HDD was soft modded/setup is almost nill outside of knowing the HDD password.  I want to do as little as possible with the original, working modded XBOX in case something goes wrong and simply clone the drive and then do all the work with it to have it boot up correctly in the hard modded unit.

My existing HDD is 400GB IDE and I am wanting to clone it over to a 500GB SATA so choosing the Full Disk option to simply clone the drive is probably not the best option as I will lose HDD space.  From watching all the HDD cloning/upgrading videos using Chimp, I see that Chimp is looking for specific partitions, but when I FTP to this unit and see the drive partitions, they are not what is listed in the Chimp tutorials. 

Chimp of course asks about partitions C, E, F, & G, but my HDD has partitions C, E, F, Q, and R.  Has anyone see a setup like that before?  Will Chimp clone it correctly?

 

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

[KaosEngineer]

Q and R are two mapped drives to directories that exist in the other real partitions/drives on the hard drive.  They, Q and R, are only available when XBMC or one of it's variants (XBMC4Xbox, XBMC4Gamers, XBMC-Emustation) is running.

The real partitions/extended partitions for larger than 8GB stock hard drives are shown below.

Standard Xbox Hard Drive Partitions -> Drive letters:

Partition 1 -> E
Partition 2 -> C
Partition 3 -> X
Partition 4 -> Y
Partition 5 -> Z

Possible Extended partitions: 

Partition 6 -> F
Partition 7 -> G

Note: If the drive is over 8GBs in size, at least F will exist.  Use of G depends how big the hard drive is as to whether it is required or not.  For a 2TB hard drive, both F and G are required splitting the available extra free space in half creating F and G of 927.78GBs each.  Generally accomplished by running XBPartitioner v1.3; however, Chimp 261812 should create partitions of these same sizes too.

Using Chimp to Clone an already larger than 8GB Hard Drive to an even larger Hard Drive

Make sure you run Rocky5's XBP Table Writer app before you run Chimp 261812 to clone the current to new hard drive.

You want to use Selective Cloning and not the Full Disk option.  

The Full Disk option will create an exact duplicate of the current hard drive's partitions on the larger HDD.  Losing the additional space as the OP already stated.  So, don't do that.  Selectively clone the standard and extended partitions listed above that are on your current hard drive.

[SS_Dave]

4 hours ago, ieblj01 said:

I am working on cloning and upgraded the HDD from an existing soft modded XBOX to use SATA drive on TSOP modded v1.4 XBOX (tired of locked HDDs).

If the Xbox is TSOP flashed then you don't need to clone the old drive, Just fit the new drive and cold boot the OGXbox installer disk and setup the new hard drive

Also some softmods don't play nice with hard modded Xbox and will not boot or boot to a black screen

 

C and E drives are to 2 drives needed to boot the Xbox F and G drives are bulk storage, I think you will find Q and R drives are probably a shadow for C and E

You should be able to clone C and E with chimp then use Xbpartioner 1.3 to create F and G drives although with a 500gb you can make F drive (partition 6) use all the remaining space.

Or you could just clone the whole drive then use Xbpartioner to format G drive( partition 7) to get the extra 100mb

 

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

[ieblj01]

Thanks for the replies.  I will see what I can do based on those suggestions.  I also now finding that I am going to need a really old TV with composit inputs to see anything if I use Chimp (fun times! ).  I think I may just go with your idea SS_Dave and build out the new drive in the TSOP box and just rebuild it as best as I can to get it how the original HDD is setup and just FTP over all the emulators and roms.  I TSOP'd the other unit, so why not just keep going and enjoy the experience of building it all up from scratch!

 

The current drive boots right into XBMC with the following look and feel and I hope to be able to recreate this on the new drive or possibly try out XBMC-Emustation with the carousel menu.

It may be a while depending on my work schedule, but I will post an update once I have made some progress.

Thanks again!

Edited March 8, 2021 by ieblj01

[KaosEngineer]

5 hours ago, ieblj01 said:

Thanks for the replies.  I will see what I can do based on those suggestions.  I also now finding that I am going to need a really old TV with composit inputs to see anything if I use Chimp (fun times! ). 

I don't believe this is entirely true.  Many people state that they have used Chimp 261812 connected to their TV set using Component video cables.  It may require that you disable 480p, 720p and 1080i in the stock MS dashboard; thus, the video out is at 480i.  It may work at 480p too but I've not tried it.  I have my ogXbox connected to an HDTV set that has composite video in, component in, VGA and HDMI - via the standard definition AV cable - composite.

[ieblj01]

12 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

I don't believe this is entirely true.  Many people state that they have used Chimp 261812 connected to their TV set using Component video cables.  It may require that you disable 480p, 720p and 1080i in the stock MS dashboard; thus, the video out is at 480i.  It may work at 480p too but I've not tried it.  I have my ogXbox connected to an HDTV set that has composite video in, component in, VGA and HDMI - via the standard definition AV cable - composite.

Thanks  Kaos.  My setup is a component out from xbox (only normal video is allowed currently) to HDMI converter and HDMI to TV or monitor (none of my TVs or monitors support composite or component cables).  When I run Chimp, the loader starts its thing and there is some text output, etc and it just goes black.  Not a huge deal for what I am trying to do and I would like to know how it was all set up and recreate it on the new TSOP unit.  I was able to install the SATA drive in that and get it partitioned out and a dashboard installed and it boots up.  I am in the process now of FTP'ing everything off the original unit.

[KaosEngineer]

If the console is TSOP'd or modchip installed, you don't have to use Chimp to clone the original hard drive to build/use a new hard drive.  Simply install a new hard drive with IDE-to-SATA adapter if its a SATA hard drive and boot an installer disc such as @sweetdarkdestiny's OGXbox Installer 2021 v1.5.1 or Tru3HeXEn 2021.

or

If you want the files from the old hard drive to be on the new hard drive, first download them all from it then upload them back to the new hard drive after using the installer disc to prepare it.

[KaosEngineer]

8 hours ago, ieblj01 said:

Thanks  Kaos.  My setup is a component out from xbox (only normal video is allowed currently) to HDMI converter and HDMI to TV or monitor (none of my TVs or monitors support composite or component cables).  When I run Chimp, the loader starts its thing and there is some text output, etc and it just goes black.  Not a huge deal for what I am trying to do and I would like to know how it was all set up and recreate it on the new TSOP unit.  I was able to install the SATA drive in that and get it partitioned out and a dashboard installed and it boots up.  I am in the process now of FTP'ing everything off the original unit.

I believe Chimp's video output resolution is 480i. Your HDMI converter or TV may not support that resolution. The reason the screen goes blank.

[ieblj01]

Thanks for the updates Kaos!  Fun little project building up the new TSOP unit and learning how it all works.  Once all the files from the old xbox are off (CoinsOPS is huge!!), I will start moving them over to the new unit and playing around with it.  I appreciate all the insight so far!

[SS_Dave]

6 hours ago, ieblj01 said:

Thanks for the updates Kaos!  Fun little project building up the new TSOP unit and learning how it all works.  Once all the files from the old xbox are off (CoinsOPS is huge!!), I will start moving them over to the new unit and playing around with it.  I appreciate all the insight so far!

Once you have TSOP flashed the Xbox you can unlock the old hard drive and connect it to your PC and use Fatxplorer to copy the files to your PC, Its a ship load quicker than FTP (around 2tb in 24 hours compared to 2tb in 4 days for FTP).

 

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

[ieblj01]

Yes.  It took around 16 hrs to FTP off 390GB.  I will do that to move all the files over to the new SATA drive in the TSOP Xbox.

[ieblj01]

Wow!  FATxplorer is so much faster.  Copied over CoinOPs 8 in less than hour.  The new TSOP XBOX is up and running.  I appreciate all the insight.  Now I get to play around with the look and feel of it all.  Thank you forum!

[ieblj01]

On 3/9/2021 at 5:57 PM, KaosEngineer said:

I believe Chimp's video output resolution is 480i. Your HDMI converter or TV may not support that resolution. The reason the screen goes blank.

Just an FYI on this, I connected the unit to a Yamaha receiver with component inputs and I was able to see all of the Chimp menus, etc. through an HDMI only TV.  I ended up starting a Full clone just to have an exact copy of the current disk I built as it is almost exactly how I want it to be so I will have one complete duplicate back up hdd.  Once that clone is complete (going to take a really long time, 18+ hours if the countdown timer is anywhere close to accurate), then I plan to continue to play around with the original, copy off the files structures, etc., to a NAS on the network for safe keeping.  For any additional builds I plan to go the quicker route of preparing the new drive with an installer and then copying all the files from the NAS to the new drive and customize the look and feel.