best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

17daysolderthannes · Post by **17daysolderthannes** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:24 pm

My friend offered to sell me his XBOX for $20 so now I will have a backup so I can go all out on the one I have now (or on his, depending on which one is in better shape). So two questions:

What is the BEST XBOX DVD drive? by that, I mean most reliable, fastest, and/or capable of reading CD-Rs. In order of importance I would say able to read CD-Rs, then reliable, then fastest. I have a Thompson now and from what I understand its pretty much the worst one.

and the other question:

what is the best method for upgrading an XBOX Hard drive? should I soft mod the XBOX first? is the softmod info stored on the harddrive or somewhere else (like firmware is on a PSP)? what is the largest drive I can put? what is the name of the connectors I will need or are all normal hard drives an industry standard (I don't deal with computer hardware much, so I don't know whats standard and what varies)? Can DVD drives be swapped from one XBOX to another with no internal modification or flashing done to the drive or would a firmware chip need to be swapped? I ask because XBOX 360s require you to swap the firmware chip and only the same model of DVD drive can be swapped (unless maybe you reflash the firmware chip). Can I do whatever needs to be done to the harddrive with a Mac (Intel iMac) or a Laptop (few years old Dell Inspiron) or will I NEED a desktop computer with a free hard drive slot?

I figure its worth upgrading the XBOX harddrive since the emulators are basically as good as PC emulators so I might as well enable myself to put EVERY retro rom and a good chunk of PSX games on it along side XBOX games and a few DVDs maybe.

Joes2Silly · Post by **Joes2Silly** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:41 pm

First off, the Thompson drive is not the worst, people just prefer the Samsung and Philips drives because they can read CD-Rs and CD-RWs easier. You can stick with the Thompson drive if you are on a budget, but if you really want to go ahead and look for another one, they are usually $15-20 if you know where to look. People swear by soft mods but I really don't like using them because they are limited, if you can go ahead and TSOP flash your xbox if you can, some xboxs don't support TSOP flashing, in that case you could probably go ahead and soft mod it. If you really want to make the xbox portable, throw out the DVD drive and just install a large laptop hard drive to store all of your "legal" copied games. If you need any more information just visit the nice people at xbox scene

17daysolderthannes · Post by **17daysolderthannes** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:51 am

i'm not really looking to make it a portable, or more portable for that matter (like anyone could make this thing hand held, lol), I'm actually trying to make it a media center (DVDs, emulators, etc). Is there a site like this one but more geared toward general console hacking rather than portable-izing? I always come here with more technical questions because its a PITA to track down a new forum with competent members every time I have a question for a different system and if you can make a portable, usually you know your way around the system, but I kind of screw up the flow of things because everyone else is asking portable-minded questions and I just want to know what I have to do to swap DVD drives on an XBOX or how to custom firmware a PSP and that kind of stuff.

Joes2Silly · Post by **Joes2Silly** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 4:39 pm

i don't know about PSP modding, but whenever I need anything xbox related I just go by the forum at xbox scene

17daysolderthannes · Post by **17daysolderthannes** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:35 pm

just to be clear here, you CAN simply unplug any XBOX drive and replace it with another XBOX drive without any other modifications, yes?

Joes2Silly · Post by **Joes2Silly** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:54 am

Yes you can

Crispy · Post by **Crispy** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:23 pm

Would a modchip be of use to you? It plays my legal backups on GO4/5 dye very nicely, and has done for a few (3/4?) years. I also have emulators, region free dvd player etc etc. I don't have an upgraded hdd though. aYou guys remember that old 133GB limit?

Yeah, i shoudl really put a new drive in as this limit of overcome years back.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:47 pm

My modded Xbox has a Samsung drive and a 40GB HDD. Unfortunately, the video chip has died and I can't see anything. Oh well.

You wanna buy my Drive?

Joes2Silly · Post by **Joes2Silly** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:55 pm

Crispy wrote:Would a modchip be of use to you? It plays my legal backups on GO4/5 dye very nicely, and has done for a few (3/4?) years. I also have emulators, region free dvd player etc etc. I don't have an upgraded hdd though. aYou guys remember that old 133GB limit? Yeah, i shoudl really put a new drive in as this limit of overcome years back.

If you have a version 1.0-1.5 motherboard and you can hold a soldering iron steady, just TSOP flash it.
I have done numerous different ways of modding xboxs' and I loved my TSOP flashed box until I fragged it

17daysolderthannes · Post by **17daysolderthannes** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:15 pm

my friend discovered he actually has a Samsung drive and he's selling me his XBOX for $20. I haven't decided if I'm just going to yank the drive and use his for parts or start over from scratch and archive my current XBOX. Krayzie's Ndure Installer is immune to the clock loop, right?

Tromoly4130 · Post by **Tromoly4130** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 4:26 pm

If you're looking for easy, just modchip it, super easy to solder the pin header and the d0 is a hair tricky but very doable. Plus you can swap in large HDDs no problem and run Slayer's on it and it'll be good to go (I have a 320GB drive in mine, formatted it with Slayer's and everything has been good for two years now).

As for software, I'd have to look in my machine and see exactly what I have, let me know what you're looking for and I'll get you some app names that you can "look up".

Turknatr12 · Post by **Turknatr12** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 5:42 pm

Samsung is the most reliable drive hands down, but it can be pricey on ebay.

17daysolderthannes · Post by **17daysolderthannes** » Sun Feb 01, 2009 11:12 pm

Turknatr12 wrote:Samsung is the most reliable drive hands down, but it can be pricey on ebay.

its ok, I already got another XBOX with a Samsung ver. B drive with 3 controllers and hookups for $20 and swapped the drive into my already modded XBOX. SUCH an improvement over that Thompson piece of crap.

Harlequin · Post by **Harlequin** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 11:59 am

Best DVD drive for an Xbox is the LG, if possible the LG 8163B. It is a PC drive that can be flashed with the original LG firmware and with a little soldering even an amateur can get it to work with the xbox (I'm living proof). Because the DVD connector uses odd pin head (2mm spacing instead of standard) I just soldered some pin heads directly to the wires coming out of the drive and pushed the pins into the female end of the connector head. A lot of people use a molex splitter for power to share between the HDD and DVD but I just took an old dead power supply and clipped a molex head off of it. The middle molex connector did the trick as it had two lines for each 12, gnd, gnd, 5 going in (one to go to next molex and one to go to PSU). I clipped off one of the GND and soldered smaller wire onto the remaining lines. The DVD drive connector for the xbox requires two 12v, two 5v, three GND, and four signals from the DVD drive (tray in, out, data ready, and eject). Just pushing the wires (with pins soldered on) into the connector head got her up and running. A little bit of work with a fine hand saw and razor blade made the DVD bezel fit like a dream on front. A wire connecting two points on the DVD PCB enabled full CD support (also works on the original xbox LG drive too). Final result is a power house DVD drive that can read any format including originals, and the only downside is that it sounds like an airplane everytime it's in use. Loud drive.

As far as softmod vs tsop, softmod is better IMO. It may not open up the same options as TSOP, but the ndure softmod is this side of fool proof. I even screwed one up once and it still let me get into the HDD and reflash it a dozen times. I have never encountered a problem with a hotswap that I couldn't fix by doing it all over again.

Modchip, of course, is the best method.

How to increase the size of your HDD. If you used Krayzie's ndure hotswap, boot the emergency dash that allows full access to C drive, FTP C and E off and get the EEPROM info off as well. Make new xboxhdm cd with those files in both C and E directory. include EEPROM in EEPROM directory. boot xboxhdm with new HDD conected, format for new xbox HDD and copy C and E from CD (options in xboxhdm are pretty easy to figure out). Format F and G if need be. reboot into xboxhdm again and lock the drive with the eeprom. Take HDD out of xbox, put in new drive. Start ftping your whole drive. Alternatively, if you have XBMC you might want to setup a share folder drive on your computer, connect to a router and copy everything without FTP, although I don't see any benefit to doing so over FTP. Let me know if you have any questions.

benheck.com Forums

best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

Re: best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

Re: best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

Re: best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?

Re: best XBOX DVD drive and best harddrive swap solution?