What, so you are saying that all you need to do is to take the new liteon drive, and shove it in the Xbox without needing to reflash the firmware or change the drive key?

That doesn't sound right

I think BenQ is better, easier to flash, and is the younger sister of lite-on

my place sells samsung and benq drive, here's the link for the benq drive:
http://www.modchip.ca/store/product.php?productid=16630&cat=284&page=1

Oh great, first you have erased the firmware without dumping the key, and now you have burnt your drive.
Might as well buy a new Xbox, there are nothing you can do now

It's most likely that the backup you made was not good, or the media itself is not a very good brand

Did you power cycle the drive right after you press "get key" (or whatever the button is called)
it seems to solves the issue

No. Gigabite is an idiot (which lots of people agrees), and that's the only time when I bring up a negative attitude. It doesn't mean you can use this as an excuse to act like a jerk.

I think JF is more reliable now, but i still wouldn't take it the chance to flash my Hitachi... I had to get out my external programmer 3 times previously

whoa, what's with your attitude?

either way, i don't use jf to flash hitachi as well, fwtoolbox works better imho (at least it doesn't brick drives)

I was having a similar issue a few days ago, check out this thread:

http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=11998.0

apparently, degraded 1.1b solved the issue

Very funny, there's dosflash.

You still need the unlock CD, even for JF

No, you didn't.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=replace+xbox+360+laser

You can probably try and swap it with a SATA Kreon drive, it might fit/work

Copyright header must be the culprit, because when i hexed the "2004-2005" to "2004-2006", degraded crash. if not, "cannot open file"

I didn't buy this drive, the customer did.
Also, as I have mentioned in the previous post, a friend i know living in the states have a 83850c drive from a retail xbox bought from the store. I have instructed him to attempt the dumping procedures using the alt points, but keys still return CC.
He said that he will be able to dump the firmware by decapping the chip, but this is yet unplanned.

Yes. My colleague reports that it still returns CC

I found a video of gigabite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VADExD1566k

in that case, it wouldn't be possible, since the drive is smaller than a pc drive for once restriction, as neon mentioned. you can try cutting off the the black legs, and secure the drive into a 5.1/2 inch bay by using slightly longer screws, and also by using a connectivity kit to power the drive.

Take a look at this thread, this guy is pretty much doing the same thing as you are stating:
http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=11943.0