Jump to content
OGXbox.com

Failing HDD and ODD on hardmoded Xbox, how to replace HDD


b8187604
 Share

Recommended Posts

I have Xbox moded with Aladdin XT Plus2 (I bought it moded few years ago). ODD started failing a while back (had much trouble to recognize disc and even if it did, it had trouble reading it to rip it to HDD). I eventually ignored it and started to upload games through FTP. But recently HDD started failing, it does clicking noise at startup, sometimes it doesn't start and displays error page "service required...", if it eventually starts then sometimes it works ok and sometimes it crashes during operation with HDD making those clicking noise. So, i opened my Xbox, connected HDD to one of my PC I use for older games (Core 2 Duo, WinXP, ATA connector on motherboard) and it started ok, it was seen in device manager, but disk management didn't see it. I googled around and it seems drives are ATA locked on Xbox and that is why I didn't see any partitions. So I run SMART Extended test using smartmontools and it didn't detect any errors, also SMART attributes didn't show anything unusual (I'm familiar with this since I do computer repairs). So I googled some more and it seems I could just insert another ATA HDD to Xbox and use recovery disc to prepare HDD. I had some spare Samsung 40GB so I inserted it in Xbox and I have disc labeled as "XBOX Master Installer v2 (recovery)" but I couldn't get it to work because ODD have trouble reading it. So I'm really in a pickle. Is there some alternative way to do this without replacing ODD?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have a couple of options

As the Xbox has a modchip you could use a PC ide DVD drive inplace of the Xbox DVD then load a Installer disk (OGXbox Installer V1.5.3 from here https://1fichier.com/dir/mX1kipIz) to setup the new HDD

Or you could use Fatxplorer Beta 3 to format and copy the required files to the new HDD on your PC.

When you make any disk for the Xbox always set the write speed as slow as the burner will go and use a good quality blank DVD-r.

 

Before you start with replacing the HDD check the red and yellow wires at the 4 pin HDD power plug you should have 12 volt on the yellow and 5 volt on the red.

You may have a PSU that's needs fixing or replacing, Also have a look at the caps next to the CPU heat sink for any sign of bulging.

 

 

Cheers

SS Dave


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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your suggestions. Right now I checked voltage on molex connector, it's within ATX tolerance (~5.05V and ~11.76V).

Fatxplorer 3.0 beta requires Win7 SP1. I could install Win7 on that spare PC, but first I will try to use PC ide DVD drive in Xbox, I think I can get one from a friend.

Capacitors look ok to me, I'm not an electronics expert https://imgur.com/a/xxxNeEx

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, b8187604 said:

Thanks for your suggestions. Right now I checked voltage on molex connector, it's within ATX tolerance (~5.05V and ~11.76V).

Fatxplorer 3.0 beta requires Win7 SP1. I could install Win7 on that spare PC, but first I will try to use PC ide DVD drive in Xbox, I think I can get one from a friend.

Capacitors look ok to me, I'm not an electronics expert https://imgur.com/a/xxxNeEx

Yes the voltages are fine and the caps look ok, it also looks like the clock cap has been replaced as well.

When I tested the PC DVD drive I left the yellow power lead connected to the Xbox DVD and just swapped the IDE cable you will also need a 4 pin molex power splitter cable to power the PC DVD drive. Once you have everything connected load the install disk and power cycle the Xbox to load from the DVD.

You really only need the DVD drive to setup the new HDD and then you can FTP any game backup's to the new HDD.

And as you are not fitting a HDD bigger than 137gb the BIOS file that's in the modchip will be fine.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


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

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

So I managed to get DVD-ROM ODD (NEC DV-5800C),  WD Blue 500GB (WD5000AAKB) and molex split cable. First I tested this HDD under Windows: full smart test, full write+read test using h2testw, then cleared partition table. In the meantime I burned OGXbox Installer V1.5.3 with verification using IMGBurn at 3x speed. After I verified that HDD was OK, I connected it and ODD to Xbox, turned it on, put OGXbox disc and right after EvoX startup animation ended it would add "Linux" at the bottom of the screen and ODD was constantly reading something, I left it running for almost an hour and it still was reading something (disc was spinning at max speed all the time and access led on ODD was constantly blinking). I powered down XBox, tried booting it agan and it was the same, after few minutes I powered it down, changed disc to "XBOX Mast3r Installer v2" and it booted fine, it detected at startup that there is a new HDD, partitioned it and booted to main menu where I tried to install UnleashX but it was stuck at the beginning, it said "Coping", but it was stuck at 0%, ODD was not reading anything, waited for a few minutes and powercycled xbox, ran master installer disc again, this time it booted straight to menu, I tried again to install UnleashX but it was the same. So I powered down xbox, changed hdd to Seagate 40GB, tried Master Installer again and it was the same as before, detected new hdd, partitioned, tried to install UnleashX and was stuck at copying at 0%. So I booted OGXbox and it started without problems this time, then I tried option "4.2. Install Default Dashboards AiO" and it was also stuck at 0%. Power cycled xbox and tried "4.3.3. Install Unleash-X." and it copied some files, asked if I want to setup UnleashX as default, I chose Yes and then was stuck at copying C:\mslogo.bmp. Power cycled again, this time I chose "4.3.2. Install Evolution-X." and it was the same as with UnleashX install. Power cycled again, I tried booting of HDD and it booted original xbox dashboard. Right now I don't know what else to do. Here are two photos: https://imgur.com/a/jlkE90u

I also have two different 500GB SATA HDD and SATA-> ATA converter like this https://aliexpress.com/item/32823861195.html so I can test this with SATA HDD (or even SATA ODD)

Edited by b8187604
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not familiar with "XBOX Mast3r Installer v2" do you have a link for downloading it?

Are you using a 80 way IDE cable or the original IDE cable?

It looks like the 500gb hard drive is not formatted correctly as in the 2nd pic it looks like you have 10gb free on F: drive and the other thing is have you updated the EvoxM8 bios file to handle a drive bigger than 137gb?

Can you confirm the F Drive is formatted correctly

2 hours ago, b8187604 said:

I also have two different 500GB SATA HDD and SATA-> ATA converter like this https://aliexpress.com/item/32823861195.html so I can test this with SATA HDD (or even SATA ODD)

I have not had a lot of success with that type of adaptor, The one's I use have the 2 capacitors like this

603936372_satatoide.PNG.5f2af7299a754d35b682958141e9a16e.PNG  

Or get a Startech  adaptor.

ide2sat2-b.jpg

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I only found it on Polish websites (I'm from Poland) and all the links are old and not working, here's a google translate of old forum post describing it

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&u=https://xboxforum.pl/threads/autoinstalator-xbox-mast3r-installer-v2-gangst3r.51117/

 

Yes I use 80pin cable, and that photo I took with 40GB hdd. I didn't update bios and I don't really know how, I saw something about it in OGXbox but I didn't try, that's also why I put photo of bios checker.

I don't really need to use SATA hdd, I just considered it an option

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the HDD you are planning on using is bigger than 120gb then you will need to update the bios as even the brand new Aladdin chips have a old bios file flashed in them.

On the OGXbox installer disk there is live app section that you can use to flash the mod chip with.

Have a look in the live app and if you get stuck come back and I can step you through it.

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, SS_Dave said:

I am not familiar with "XBOX Mast3r Installer v2" do you have a link for downloading it?

Are you using a 80 way IDE cable or the original IDE cable?

It looks like the 500gb hard drive is not formatted correctly as in the 2nd pic it looks like you have 10gb free on F: drive and the other thing is have you updated the EvoxM8 bios file to handle a drive bigger than 137gb?

Can you confirm the F Drive is formatted correctly

I have not had a lot of success with that type of adaptor, The one's I use have the 2 capacitors like this

603936372_satatoide.PNG.5f2af7299a754d35b682958141e9a16e.PNG  

Or get a Startech  adaptor.

ide2sat2-b.jpg

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

 

 

Hey mate what actually happened did it kill your hard drives, I think the adapter i used didnt have caps killed 2 hdd's

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, kgm316 said:

Hey mate what actually happened did it kill your hard drives, I think the adapter i used didnt have caps killed 2 hdd's

No damage to the HDD. I just had issues with booting and if it did boot it was slow to boot/load.

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, b8187604 said:

Let's ignore bigger hard drives for now, I just want to make it work with that 40GB hdd.

The 40gb HDD should work with a stock IDE cable, I wonder if there is something in the MBR (Master Boot Record)of the 40gb that's causing a problem.

There is also a PC program that should make a HDD suitable for the Xbox I have not used it but it might work for you

It's called xboxhdm23usb beta2

https://1fichier.com/?tev1c7k338upo9eu2e9m

Or there is xboxhdm 2.3 beta4

https://1fichier.com/?rj6gcdrfwzdr5k4vmx9p

 

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 8/15/2021 at 2:29 PM, SS_Dave said:

The 40gb HDD should work with a stock IDE cable, I wonder if there is something in the MBR (Master Boot Record)of the 40gb that's causing a problem.

There is also a PC program that should make a HDD suitable for the Xbox I have not used it but it might work for you

It's called xboxhdm23usb beta2

https://1fichier.com/?tev1c7k338upo9eu2e9m

Or there is xboxhdm 2.3 beta4

https://1fichier.com/?rj6gcdrfwzdr5k4vmx9p

 

 


Cheers

SS Dave


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

Today I decided it's time to try again at getting this Xbox to work. After a few power cycles, Xbox booted with that failing HDD. I then used FTP to copy everything from it to my PC, I then swapped HDD with 500GB ATA HDD, I used OGXbox Installer to setup HDD with option "3.1.3 AIO Setup a new small HDD with F & G (2x250GB)", it showed on the right that F & G have ~230 GB free space, then I copied everything from PC to Xbox using FTP, power cycled, and EvoX dash launched, but one thing was wrong, F drive showed ~127 GB and G showed 0 GB. So I downloaded  EvolutionX dash v3935, uploaded it on C, power cycled, it loaded, but it also saw only F 127 GB and G 0 GB. Then I remembered you said that I should update bios to support bigger HDD, but honestly I don't know which one I should choose. EvolutionX has Flash BIOS with three different bioses to choose, can you help me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, b8187604 said:

Today I decided it's time to try again at getting this Xbox to work. After a few power cycles, Xbox booted with that failing HDD. I then used FTP to copy everything from it to my PC, I then swapped HDD with 500GB ATA HDD, I used OGXbox Installer to setup HDD with option "3.1.3 AIO Setup a new small HDD with F & G (2x250GB)", it showed on the right that F & G have ~230 GB free space, then I copied everything from PC to Xbox using FTP, power cycled, and EvoX dash launched, but one thing was wrong, F drive showed ~127 GB and G showed 0 GB. So I downloaded  EvolutionX dash v3935, uploaded it on C, power cycled, it loaded, but it also saw only F 127 GB and G 0 GB. Then I remembered you said that I should update bios to support bigger HDD, but honestly I don't know which one I should choose. EvolutionX has Flash BIOS with three different bioses to choose, can you help me?

If you have a version 1.6 you will need to use the EvoxM8 bios that can be found on the OGXbox installer disk and that bios will also work on all the other versions.

If the board is a 1.0 - 1.4 you could use the iND5004.67 or the iND5003.67 patched but I would just stick with the EvoxM8.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


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

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, b8187604 said:

I checked and board is 1.1 and according to "bios checker" there is EvoX M8+ v16 06 256k. Should I still flash bios from OGXbox?

https://i.imgur.com/NqqWllx.jpeg

 

The bios file you have is what's shipped on the Aladdin mod chip and back in the day it was all any one needed as not many people where fitting a HDD above 250gb.

 

With the 1.1 board that has the Aladdin modchip is a 256kb size and you can flash either the  Ind5004.67, Ind5003.67 patched, EvoxM8 plus.67 (all these are 256kb) the .67 means it's setup for using F(Partition 6)and G(Partition 7) drives on a 2tb HDD. Or if you reflash the onboard bios chip it's a 1024kb so you can also use the X2 5035.67 (512kb)

The bios that on the Xbox at the moment is good to use for a 1tb or smaller hard drive and if you don't plan on using a HDD bigger than 1tb you can keep the bios as is.

If it was me and keeping the Aladdin chip I would use the EvoXM8+ 67 or I would reflash the on board bios with the X2 5035.67 and remove the modchip to refit to a version 1.6 board.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

The bios that on the Xbox at the moment is good to use for a 1tb or smaller hard drive

So you're saying that 500 GB HDD should work ok with current bios. But it's not, OGXbox shows that F & G both have ~230 GB, but if I boot EvolutionX from hdd then it shows that F has ~127 GB and G has 0. Is it really bios fault and I should update it, or is it something else?

And I don't plan to change to a bigger HDD, and I prefer to not remove Aladdin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@KaosEngineerI totally forgot about LBA48, I just remembered that you had to set jumper on larger drives to limit them to 137GB if you wanted to use them with older PC

@SS_Dave So I flashed Evox m8+ CEE FG noDVD 256kb and when I boot Xbox from HDD it just stays on blue Xbox logo (no EvoX logo in upper-left corner anymore). OGXbox boots fine. I tried to install default dash (EvolutionX), but copying part was still stuck at 0%. Then I did something I should have done from the begining: I disconnected power cable from xbox dvd. I had it connected all the time, I only disconnected ATA cable to connect it to DVD-ROM. So after I disconnected it, I boot OGXbox, tried again to install default dash and the process started right away, but then it was stuck at copying skins and E drive showed 0 free bytes. So I reboot and tried XBPartitioner and it was stuck at black screen. I rebooted after few minutes of waiting and ran OGXbox and it was also stuck on black screen after initial loading. I powered down Xbox and disconnected it from power, waited a few minutes, booted OGXbox and tried XBPartitioner again, this time it ran. I changed extended partitions to single 458 GB, power cycled, then ran AIO Setup a new large HDD, it formatted partitions (I skipped formating G) but it's still stuck at copying 0%. Power cycle again, then I ran XBPartitioner and changed to two 229 GB partitions, then tried AIO Setup a new small HDD with F&G but it was still stuck at Copying 0%. So, another power cycle, XBPartitioner, single 458GB, and I used ftp to transfer everything from backup of my old hdd, and voila, it just works. I checked and it's UnleashX 0.39.0528A Build 584. So finally I have a working Xbox with 500GB HDD 🥰

As a side note, I think OGXbox has problem installing Dash when it's running from dvd drive other than xbox.

Thanks for everything, I couldn't have done this without you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, b8187604 said:

As a side note, I think OGXbox has problem installing Dash when it's running from dvd drive other than xbox.

Nope. Works like it should. Proof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di7MQsqAFag

Edit 2 : And the only difference between small and large is that the small HDD willl be formatet with UnleashX instead of XBP. How ever, it should formatet at least one time before with XBP.

Edited by sweetdarkdestiny
Looks like the forum didn't show videos anymore? How ever added the link.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

Board Life Status


Board startup date: April 23, 2017 12:45:48
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.