Quote:
I cannot use larger or unlocked drives in my Xbox because it is soft modded and you need a chip to read unlocked drives (as my friend found out by pushing it a bit too far..).
False.
You can use
almost any IDE drive with an Xbox, even a softmodded one. What you have to do is lock the new hard drive using the same key as the old one.
Depending on where you got your softmod utility from, there may be a pdf about maintaining your Xbox included in the rar. In my copy of Ndure SID, there's a PDF which explains how to replace the hard drive.
It basically goes along these lines:
Copy the eeprom.bin from the TDATA folder. This is the key you need to lock hard drives to your specific Xbox.
Download a specific Xbox maintenance Linux-based LIVE CD and burn it.
Turn off your computer, and connect your new Xbox HD to your computer as the first IDE hard drive.
Boot from the CD, it should give you a menu.
From here, there's a process of partitioning the new drive and encrypting it. Look in the PDF.
BEFORE you burn the LIVE CD, there's the option of having the replacement drive filled in with a pre-existing directory structure. I recommend that you make a complete backup of your Xboxs C and E drives and use these as a basis for the LIVE CD. After you've done all that, you can put the hard drive in your Xbox and it'll work. You may have to do the entire soft mod process again.
Replacing your hard drive gives you the option of having all the space > 10gb made into an F partition (up to 120GB). After that, it goes into a G partition, but that sometimes doesn't work.
I had to replace the hard drive in my Xbox after it started clicking. Without the eeprom.bin backed up in advance, I wouldn't be able to replace it.