Xbox softmod HDD hot swap question

I want to soft mod my XBox, i've downloaded everything i need, the case is off my computer and i've opened my XBox, just need to hot swap,
but the XBox drive doesn't stop, i've read that the Xbox must be on (is this so the drive is unlocked?)
and that i need to wait for it to stop spinning, but it doesn't (well it goes quiet for a short time then it reads data again). Will i damage anything if i just unplug it when i think it isn't reading data?
Is there anything else i can do to make it stop?

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help,
Brad77.

 

hard drives don't really stop, they are spinning all the time... on PC's you can go into sleep mode and the drive will stop, but generally they spin all the time.

so you should be ok just pulling the ide lead at the correct time.

btw what xbox version and region are u using and which softmod ? i would like to know how it goes as i'm planning on doing the same with a new pal xbox soon

 

Thanks for your reply, I've unplugged it many times now and it still works when i plug it back in.
I've got a PAL v1.1 XBox.
I'm using the Signed Phoenix Bios Loader v1.3 which includes EvoX and bigFonts.

I'm still having problems, if i connect the hard drive before booting then windows starts to load and leaves the loading screen , it doesn't get to windows.

If i load windows, then connect HDD and scan for hardware changes in Device manager then sometimes it freezes and other times it takes a while but finds the harddrive. But then the HDD Driver program says it can't find the harddrive.
Need to find some info on HDD driver or hot swapping.

Think the problem might be that I've got 2 HDDs on PC IDE 0.

Back to searching online.


Brad

 

yes disconnect both pc hard drives... hit pause while booting after mem count and before hd auto detection.. then plug in the ide lead to the xbox hd and press pause again to carry on the boot...press F8 to get into the boot menu which should let you boot from cd (this is standard on most boards) or change the boot order in the bios

here are some links that might help http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=225796 and http://www.stonespnl.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1

 

I need a harddrive in my PC to run HDD Driver or FatX-Explorer so i can backup my XBox harddrive to one in the PC and also for copying stuff over to the XBox.

I've devided to look into xboxhdm, apparently its a bootable Linux CD that can be used for copying stuff over.

Thanks,
Brad

 

look up "complete uxe" .. this seems a real easy way to do it with xboxhdm, it works on all xbox

 

So the harddrive was still locked, i've unplugged the DVD drive so it gets to an error screen, this unlocks it every time.

HDD Driver, still gives errors, so do FAT-Explorer and FAT-X-Xplorer, so I'm using xboxhdm boot CD and using xbrowser.
I've done what the tutorial says, now i get error 21 if i try to boot to the dash, originals still work, so i'm gona leave it for a while (I've got Uni work to do).
Then I'm definately gonna look into UXE or possibly UDE with xboxhdm.

 

set the original c: drive up (i hope you made a backup) clear the files in drives x,y,z but not the drives and in e:\cache but not the folder (they are only cache files)

once back to stock xbox change all the settings back to default including video settings like PAL. don't leave it set at PAL 60 and make sure the language is set to its default ..everything back to default

then u can do the complete-c hotswap and it should run smooth ..use alcohol for creating the cd as it is bullet proof