HDD Upgrade

[Arakon]

uhm.. no. if you had read up on it, you'd know there's MUCH more to it.

[Oneohm]

There is a tool offered by Maxtor that can make a larger PATA drive work on an older Bios version of a PC. The software puts a secondary boot tool which reports a larger LBA to the Software so it can be used to its fullest capacity. Would it be possible to put such a technique into place here to tell the original Bios data what the hard disk isn't and then have the software load to tell the console it is bigger than the original size reported?

Has anyone tried using the MHDD tool available for sector and Bios editing on Seagates?

[do0my]

Nope.  These tools are obviously intended for PCs, and not Xbox 360's.

Even if it was possible, we would be executing unsigned code, and there would be no need.

[Oneohm]

So you see no advantage to the MHDD tool to sector edit the drive?

[TheSpecialist]

So you see no advantage to the MHDD tool to sector edit the drive?

Why would you use MHDD ? It offers nothing that's useful here.

Changing size is not the only thing, you''ll also have to modify the serial number and ID string, please read up on it before posting more questions.

BTW, when I was doing research for the hddhackr, I wrote a summary with some results of some findings; info is very scarce and nobody wants to share info which pissed me off quite a lot (some people think they're SO cool when they know stuff that's not publicly available, I really hate that attitude), so I decided to change this and gave away the stuff I learned, so others wouldn't have to struggle like I had, it might be useful to you too:

http://forum.hddguru.com/post40734.html?hilit=#p40734

After you've read up on that: What the Hddhacker does is issue the vendor specific ATA command to read the firmware from the WD BEVS (more specifically: modules 0x2 and 0xD). Then it modifies those to be compatible with sector 16 and then it writes back the modified modules to the SA. If you want to do that for the Seagate (or any other drive), you'd have to find out which vendor specific commands to use, how to use them and which modules to modify (which can be quite a bit of work, since NO info is availabe, you have to find out everything yourself) or use available commercial tools like PC3000 (which costs thousands of dollars)

[Oneohm]

Nope.  These tools are obviously intended for PCs, and not Xbox 360's.

Even if it was possible, we would be executing unsigned code, and there would be no need.

Yes MHDD is a x86 based utilitry for DOS. It is not intended for the PPC core or the 360. The utility is actually developed by a hacker and is a freeware program. The advantages of it have been known for years by the PC community. It is a freeware utility that will crack passwords and do direct editing of sectors as well as low level formatting.

I have been aware of Hard disks in the realm that I am familiar with which is notebook PC architecture and that is where this utility came from.

So you see no advantage to the MHDD tool to sector edit the drive?

Why would you use MHDD ? It offers nothing that's useful here.

Changing size is not the only thing, you''ll also have to modify the serial number and ID string, please read up on it before posting more questions.

BTW, when I was doing research for the hddhackr, I wrote a summary with some results of some findings; info is very scarce and nobody wants to share info which pissed me off quite a lot (some people think they're SO cool when they know stuff that's not publicly available, I really hate that attitude), so I decided to change this and gave away the stuff I learned, so others wouldn't have to struggle like I had, it might be useful to you too:

http://forum.hddguru.com/post40734.html?hilit=#p40734

After you've read up on that: What the Hddhacker does is issue the vendor specific ATA command to read the firmware from the WD BEVS (more specifically: modules 0x2 and 0xD). Then it modifies those to be compatible with sector 16 and then it writes back the modified modules to the SA. If you want to do that for the Seagate (or any other drive), you'd have to find out which vendor specific commands to use, how to use them and which modules to modify (which can be quite a bit of work, since NO info is availabe, you have to find out everything yourself) or use available commercial tools like PC3000 (which costs thousands of dollars)

I will read your article. It would be good to see where the booundaries are. To get the info for each drive manufacture you would need to contact thew manufactures developer network. As long as there isn't something completely proprietary they can provide it. I have some contacts that might be able to help.