As I noted earlier in the morning on Twitter, we’re doing an in-town office move Monday. So, I’m up late preparing for a smooth transition tomorrow. Anyways, on to the post…
Sunday’s are becoming more of a day of rest for me. As a recovering workaholic, I don’t really have that balance down quite yet. So, I’m going to work… to take more of a break on Sundays.
And, I figured I’d kick this trend off right by hacking my Xbox 360 hard drives. Buying in to one of the deals that I covered over on CheapenGadget.com, I picked up one of the last good deals from Circuit City. Basically, the deal was a refurb combo, leftover from one of their (failed) Xbox 360 bundles. Essentially, it was an Xbox 360 wireless controller and 20 GB hard drive for only $36. As commenters noted at the time, it was an okay deal, made less hot because Microsoft reserves 7 GB per drive.
And, as I’ve blogged quite a bit in the past, I think it’s pure antitrust that Microsoft will ban you from Xbox Live, if you put your own SATA hard drive into the Xbox 360. Sony, on the other hand, welcomes you upgrading your own hard drive.
Thankfully, a well-known trick works around this. Buy buying just the right Western Digital 120 GB 2.5-inch hard drive (WDC WD1200BEVS), you can flash the drive with Xbox firmware. Then, Microsoft sees the blasted drive as an Xbox drive, and you don’t get banned from Xbox Live.
Sure, this is an old hack at this point, but what can I say? I haven’t actually taken the time to play an Xbox 360 game in weeks. Okay, months. When you see what I’ve been up to, I’m sure you’ll understand.
As the staff has warned me, it’s easy to wreck the latches in the process. But, even PC Word whipped up a photo gallery (even though they made a typo on the drive model)… so I doubt it will take very long to do.
Update: Upgrade was a breeze. About the hardest part (and I’m not joking) was putting the hard drive back onto the Xbox 360. When you have an HD DVD drive on top, clearing everything off to pop it back in is a pain.
Seriously though, there were no real hassles, aside from having to unplug everything SATA from my PC. The hddhackr tool didn’t play well with my PC until I had unhooked all other devices (many DOS tools don’t like simply turning the ports off in the BIOS).
I’ve already installed all of my games to the hard drive, and queued up all the downloads. Even with all of that, I only managed to fill about half the drive. Like many, I found a T6 and T10 torx screwdrivers to be the right tools.
Oh, and I do encourage every Xbox 360 owner to undertake this hack, even if you have the 60 GB hard drive. Even if you have to hunt down a tech-savvy friend to do it for you.
You might also like...
So you will not get banned from xbox live? Let me know.
Microsoft has said XBL bans will only be related to console modification, not unauthorized storage units.
The company has also said that they reserve the right to block unauthorized storage units, but to-date nobody has been unable to use a WD1200BEVS when flashed properly with Xbox firmware.
I have yet to see one confirmed report from anyone with this modification reporting that their Xbox has been banned (and is otherwise unmodified). That’s the farthest you’ll ever get me to promise you something from Redmond…
no bans i have a “spoofed hard drive” .
i HAVE PLAYED BORDERLANDS, MW2, AND LEFT 4 DEAD 2 , ITS ALL GOOD,
[...] few select drives can be hacked to work with the Xbox 360. Trackback | Permalink [...]
chris could u please send me step by step instructions for this to my email?i have a WD 1600bev 149 Gb passport,im sending this so my kids can have a bigger HD without paying alot.they would love to play Borderlands DLCs.please reply.thanks
lisa… you’d be better off to plug it in the xbox via usb, and set a 16gb partition as idk if you can use that drive for a “sppoof” drive.