Viewing the contents of your XBOX harddisk

[Babulmiah]

Hi,

OK this is going to be a strange one, but does anyone know how to view the contents of the hdd contained in an XBOX?

Being bored, I took apart my XBOX to see what it contained and noticed that although the DVD drive could not be connected to a PC, the harddisk could (it was a seagate ST310211A and the details of the drive are at http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,277,00.html).

Anyway I connect it to my PC (Gigabyte GA-7DXR Mobo, AthlonXP 1800 CPU, WinXP Pro) only to find the details (drive partitions or files/folders) of the drive cannot be seen.

So, I run FDISK from a boot floppy only to find that when I chose to view the partitions on the drive (option 4 on the FDISK menu) it states there are no partitions, and when I try to create a primary DOS paritition on the drive (Yes I know this will render my XBOX useless as it'll remove any data the XBOX needs to run, but I don't care as XBOX is fairly cheap and I can buy another one), FDISK hangs whilst trying to verify the disk.

I also tried using ParitionMagic (version 3, then version 5), but this also failed to view the actual hdd with a messgae "Int failed: Error 100 - The partition table is bad" which presumably means it couldn't initilise the drive.

So anyway, this really intrigued me and I'm interested to know...

1.
Does microsoft use some sort of exotic disk format on these drives, hence the parititions cannot be seen under common tools like FDISK and PartitionMagic?

2.
Is there any way to view the contents of these drives using a PC (assuming any paritition has a PC compatible file format like FAT).

3.
Why can't FDISK or similar tools be used on these drives and hence the drives be reparitioned for say PC usage (I'd love to run games on the XBOX and then examine the drive to see what changes the games make to the data on the drive)?

Any comments, insights or general feedback (even if it is to sya that I'm mad ;)) would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Edited to correct a few typos]

[Sark]

YOUR INSANE! jk, but what I really want to know is how much money you have. 200$ to waste because ure broed wow.

[optic_pro1430]

Maybe the HDD was optimized for gaming... Hence there was copy right protectuion on the HDD as well?!

[AllGamer]

Babulmiah
yes you can do it
but you'll need to run the Xbox Linux Proyect to do so
check this out for files and details:
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
:p :t

[Babulmiah]

Hi,

...Yes I'm probaly insane doing this, and certainly have too much time for my own good!

Well anyway what started off as a bit of fun got a bit more serious when for the life of me I could connect the harddrive to any PC I had (under win 98/2000/XP etc.).

Using FDISK and a variety of other tools (partition magic version , version 5, tiramau, Ontrack recovery, and Seagates own DicWizard HDD setup and config tool), the drive loooks to be empty as there are not paritions defined on it and if you try and create one suing FDSIK etc. the program just hangs e.g. FDISK either hangs or reports ther is no psace available for a DOS partition!

The incredible thing was the MBR of the drive was non existent (I used PowerWuests PTEDIT tool to view and try and edit this) and when I tried to construct one using some tools, they all failed as they could not write to the drive.

Anyway, so I went out and got 2 more Xboxes and found they had different HDDs (8GB Western Digital Protege's which are ATA 33 drives compared to the ATA100 seagate drive) and tried the same process.

Again under all the various tools i got no joy. Anyway, I'm now itn the process of reading Allgamers link to the XBOX-Linux project to see if I can find so info there.

Although no-one probably cares ;), I'll post back if I find out anything interesting.

For the mean time, I'll point out doing what I've done so far invalidates your XBOX's warranty so if your XBOX does not work afterwards, oyu wont get a replacement i.e. don't do what I've done (unless you're insane :D ).

Thanks all

[Recordlord]

If he could get that HDD to boot then he could play XBOX games on his computer. He would have better graphics and faster game play probably!!

[Babulmiah]

...well after lots of testing, a little research, and a lot of time I 've found the following...

1.
XBOX hdd are loced using a special ATA command which means they will not boot or work on a standard PC, and once more they cannot be reformatted or omdified in any one when locked.

2.
Each XBOX hdd has a encrypted password unique to the serial number of the XBOX and the hdd in question. This p/w is coded into the XBOX ROM and is transmitted by the XBOX to the hdd on power on.

3.
To unlock the hdd, power on the XBOX with the drive connected. Then disconnect the IDE cable and connect the IDE cable from your PC. You'll have to install linux on your PC as Windoze will not recognise the hd configuration and it will be invisible to the OS and windows based tools like Partition Magic and Drive Image and Norton Ghost etc. etc.

4.
With linux installed, its possible to access the XBOX hdd content and backit up and modify it, but I'm still unable to much else with it. Ideally I'd like to run linux on the XBOX (as shown on the link give previously by Allgamer) and have a dual boot option so I can have and XBOX games console and a cheap 733MHz Intel CPU, 64MB+ DDR Ram, nVidia GeForce based computer as that'd be fun.

If I get it to work I'll let you know.

Also, with regard to running the XBOX hdd on a PC for improved performance, I don't think it can be done (atleast not from what I've read so far) as the XBOX DVD and PC DVD game and command formats are very diffent as is all the custom hardware/sfotware-instruction sets in the XBOX. If you could put and XBOX hdd in a PC and play form it, we'd all be doing it now now, wouldn't we? ;)

Thanks.

[AllGamer]

the Xbox actually has the nVidia GeForce 3 :t

[Babulmiah]

...yes, sorry it was a typo! But there you have it, where else can you buy such a spec computer for that money.

I got a USB keyboard and mouse, so all I have to do now linux-up the XBOX and see what happens :)

[AllGamer]

Yup, it's quite a Sale :p

a DVD + a GeForce 3 + 9 Gig HDD + 733 mhz CPU + RAM for $200, not even Wal-Mart can beat that :D

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=1957333&cat=3951&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951

:t