Lost original dump

[Mitaine]

First of all hi everyone, first post here, I'm happy to find a technically-literate forum about the 360 !
Here's my problem : I flashed my BenQ drive with iXtreme 1.4 (5x version). Not knowing what made the versions different, I thought the "middle" speed would make a nice compromise for a first try, and since at that time new releases were pretty frequent I thought I'd adjust when 1.5 came out.

Problem is, the USB key I used was super flaky and I couldn't save my original firmware dump off of it. Now some backups load too slowly, which sucks for games that stream textures etc. off the disc - so I'd like to upgrade to 1.41-12x or at least 1.4-12x, but I don't know what the best course of action is.

I see Maximus Firmware Toolbox has a "Recover lost original file" option, but I don't know how reliable it is. Should I use that or just get the key off a new dump from my (hacked) drive, and flash a new prepared firmware directly ? Are there risks with that method ? I don't know how complex the iXtreme patching process is... which leads me to the last method I can think of, hex-editing my current firmware to the 1.4-12x version, if the changes are trivial enough (see a few posts down). Thanks for any leads !

[Arakon]

the key is in the hacked drive too, just get it from there.
for benq, there is no patching involved at all, the entire firmware is overwritten.

[marylandmods]

The only thing you can do now is dump the hacked firmware, get your dvd drive key and replace with another drive if you want to update speed.

[Scarpa]

You don't really need your original firmware, just the key. The Samsung and BenQ drives do a full flash so all you need to do is get the key off of your modded drive and use firmware toolbox to inject that key into a 1.4 12X firmware. BTW it's good practice to always have a backup of important data like that, I suggest emailing your key to yourself just in case something goes wrong in the future =P

[Mitaine]

Thank you for the quick and informative replies. I know I've been careless but I really wanted to get the firmware flashed quick and only had that unreliable USB key lying around. I don't really understand the suggestion to get another drive, the other replies seem to indicate I won't need to do that unless I want to restore the console to retail state (and since I damaged some parts when opening the case, this unit isn't going to go through MS warranty anyway).

[Scarpa]

The only thing you can do now is dump the hacked firmware, get your dvd drive key and replace with another drive if you want to update speed.

I think marylandmods just didn't say that clearly, you don't need another drive. Even to restore your console to original functionality all you would have to do is flash an orig.bin with your key inserted. But yeah changing the drive speed is a simple task, good luck =D