Putting a larger hard drive in a 360

[rbudrick]

Hi folks,

A friend of mine was wondering if this is possible. He was wanting to put a 300GB drive in a 360, but he wasn't sure if it was doable. Is it possible? I realize it would probably be some kind of warranty violation, but since MS always asks you not to include the HD when you send a 360 in for repairs, I thought it may not matter.

If it is possible, are there any consequences of doing so? Does MS have a way of knowing? Does it harm your Live subscription (didn't know if MS probed for this kind of thing)? What kind of HD would he need?

Thanks!

-Rob

[segagamer4life]

how is your friend proposing to accomplish this? i think its possible, but I don't know what restrictions, if any M$ has placed on their systems to avoid people doing what your friend wants to do.

[otaku]

wouldn't need to be a notebook hard drive 2.5' in order to work? What do they go to 200 gigs right now? Its perfectly possible to do a notebook drive quite a few people have done it just search the net.

Why not just get the 120gig they released? still not enough?

[mailman187666]

I couldn't see needing much more than the 120 gig HD on the system. But if he just wants to do it to have the biggest 360 HD you can get, that would be cool. I bet if he did put it on there, maybe it would void the warrenty? They may screw with his live account because putting a non MS brand hard drive on there will take money out of thier pockets.

[heybtbm]

I would imagine it's pretty easy for Microsoft to detect if you've replaced their hard drive with another. The next system update your friend might have a big white brick.

[jajaja]

I've never seen or heard of anyone who have managed to replace the Xbox 360 HDD with another one except the official 120Gb Xbox 360 HDD. If it was possible, atleast in a easy way, i think it would be pretty known by now, so i would say to the current date that it isnt possible.

[JWKobayashi]

From what I understand, Microsoft uses a properitary SATA + power connection for the 2.5" hard drive. The Xbox also has two size limits hard coded into the firmware - the drive must either be 20GB or 120GB.

This seems easy enough to hack, but then they have a digitally signed file with what might be a unique key. In order to get this signed file onto a "new" hard drive, you'd have to clone one of the existing 120 GB models. If this is the case, they could feasibly tell that you "cloned" a drive, although I doubt they'd bother to mess with that.

Seeing as a 120GB 2.5" drive still retails for around $75 or so, once you hack all this shit together and risk them noticing that you have a cloned drive it kind of makes the $100 difference a moot point.

That being said, I'm hoping that someone comes up with a way that works well. I'd really like to use a driver larger than the 20 GB I have now.

[ProgrammingAce]

For all pratical implications, assume it's impossible to put in a larger hard drive on a 360.

[rbudrick]

Thanks very much, everyone. I appreciate it.

-Rob