Installing a new hard drive.
Upgrading your Xbox's hard drive is a must.The stock hard drives only have a capacity of 10GBs on average. Although you're thinking "I'M GOING TO GET A 900GB HD! LOLZ!", think again. I thought the same every sunday when they'd get cheaper and cheaper until I finally did get a giant hard drive. I stepped up from a refurbished 120GB to a brand new 320GB drive. Great for storage space, has more capacity than my computer. The draw back is that because there are so many tracks and sectors layed out, it takes longer for the drive seek time. Comparing a 120GB drive to a 320GB, the load times are visibly slower, not enough to slow down a game or movie, but slow enough to make you pace as your Xbox is starting up.
Backing it up.
This isn't totally needed, but I'd insist doing this if you want to keep your Xbox Dashboard and all of your saved games.
What you need to do is boot the Xbox white holding the white button to get into X3's config live. Once you have the IP Address, FTP into the Xbox. Make two folders on your PC, one called "C" and the other called "E". Obviously these are the drives we're going to back up here. Copy all of the contents from the C drive on the Xbox to your "C" folder. Same goes for the E drive aswell. I'll add pictures to this part later
Removing the hard drive
Remove the screw that's holding the hard drive tray to the DVD tray. Now pull the hard drive tray up and out of its setting. Remove the four screws (two screws on each side) with your Torx. Once she's out of her cage, take care of those pesky data and power cables. The Molex plug is the one on the right (if looking from the back), it has a rectangular headed plug with four wires (yellow, black, black, red) in it. Grab both sides and give her a yank. Now for the IDE cable, (obviously the fat gray one) grab the cable itself near the plug and gently pull side to side. Once that's off, you're done with this part.
Adding the new drive
Honestly, just follow the same steps you took as when you pulled the drive out. Connect the Molex and IDE cables back up. Notice they will only go one way thanks to the curved plug on the Molex and tab on the top of the IDE. Throw those on there, then toss on the screws. You're set
Formatting/Partitioning the drive
Ahhhh, software. Easy way to avoid any physical labor. And the best part is, you have a really low chance of fucking something up! If you used your teeth to get one of those cables off, I'm mocking you. Lets get this started. Boot up your Xbox once again holding the white button. You'll come to the x3 Config Live screen....as always.
Now if you'll notice the space free on the drive above. It's nothing! There are no partitions so the space is lets say "absent". Wait till we're done formatting. Lets get a move on.
Rush down and hit "A" on "Disk Tools"
Enter "New Hard Drive Upgrade".
Now we're at the fork in the road. If your hard drive is larger than 137GB, you want to click "Click Here to set LBA48 Option". If you have a smaller drive, then you're all set to click on "Prepare and Format New Hard Drive". So take your pick, I'll cover each of them right here.
Setting the LBA48
Go ahead and hit "Click here to set LBA48 option". It will send you to this screen;
I'm going to be completely honest, I've done this twice and the first time I used the "F gets 137GB and G gets whatever's left" it never worked, it all went to F. The second time (actually in this tutorial) it didn't work again, so I ended up with 290GB in F and G with none. Don't worry though, aslong as you see what's intended, who cares? So we're going to try this again, letting it space out some of this massive capacity. So go ahead and select "F drive upto 137 - G gets the rest".
It should ask if you're sure you want to do this, otherwise you're all set, lets meet up to our friends with smaller hard drives.
Formatting
Congrats, you've made it through all of the hard parts. Now after a few simple clicks, we'll have your hard drive up and running with your drives partitioned.
If you're not already back at screen with the fork in the road, hit "B" until you're back at this screen.
Click on "Prepare and Format New Drive". Say yes.
You should end up at this screen.
Do what it says and hit "Y".
Partition 6 is a little late to catch up usually.
You're all set, hit "X" and you'll get thrown right back into X3's config Live. Now check out the drive space at the top of the screen!
Leave X3 Config Live running, you're going to need to bring your files back over!
Adding your old files
This is pretty straight forward aswell. FTP into your Xbox and mirror what you stole off your old HD. Dump everything from "C" into the C drive. (make sure you don't double folder, ex. "C:/C/msdash.xbe" it should be "C:/msdash.xbe") Same goes for the E drive, dump all those game saves over there.
From here you can boot your Xbox back up and see how it's identical to when you hard your old hard drive in it. The dash is the same, you still have all your music and saves, the only difference is you have alot more capacity. From here you can reboot into X3 Config Live and add a dashboard if you'd like, otherwise start organizing the F drive. Branch the F drive out so you can have spots for apps, movies, music, games, and photos. So start making new folders in the F drive ASAP. All of your content such as programs, movies, music, etc all go in F. E contains alot of game saves, screen shots, etc. Nothing terribly important. The C drive contains all of your dash information. Throw in your dashboards here and sort them out later in X3's Config Live.
Congrats, you've just upgraded your hard drive
If you have any other questions or comments, contact me through email in the "about" section.
