I want to start out by saying this will not ban you from xbox live, it will not brick your xbox, it will not erase your saved games but it will void your hard drive warranty. Perform at your own risk.

My motivation for this was the fact that I have two xbox 360’s. I purchased one as the ‘arcade’ model and it therefore did not come with a hard drive. I wanted to be able to play on xbox live on both of the xbox’s without having to run up and down the stairs to get my harddrive. In short, lazyness is my motivation.

I pulled much of how to do this from multiple online sources, none of which addressed the issues related to trying to do it in Vista.

Many of the files needed are from this site: http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index…_Drive_Upgrade

So lets get started:
First thing I did was go on ebay and buy a Western Digital laptop harddrive model: WD1200BEVS. This is the drive you need. You can pick one up for about $50.

Next I also bought from ebay a xbox360 harddrive ‘As Is’ for about $14. This was only necessary because I needed to have two drives, one for each xbox. If you just want to upgrade you can use your existing casing.

-When I recieved my WD1200BEVS, I hooked up a floppy drive to my Pentium 4 with a ASUS motherboard (two onboard SATA ports) machine running Vista. I then opened My Computer and right clicked on the floppy disk and chose format. I clicked ‘quick format’ and ‘make MS DOS boot disk’ then OK. I then copied the hddss.bin and HDDHackr program to the floppy, (after downloading from the above Wiki link I listed above.) HDDHackr needed to be extracted using WinRAR.

- I then rebooted the computer and immediatly went into the BIOS by hitting DEL a the post screen. From there I did two things and this is the hard part: I first changed the boot order under the ‘BOOT’ tab so that my floppy drive was first. Second and more involved, I went under the IDE devices control (which in my AMI BIOS is on the first screen) and changed the drive type to ‘Compatability’ (also known as Legacy) from ‘Enhanced’. It is important that you run in Legacy mode, look around in your BIOS it is there somewhere. I hit F10, saved and exited.

-Upon boot-up I was in a DOS prompt ("A:\") I typed ‘HDDHackr -f’ and waited. It asked me which drive I wanted to flash, I chose ‘1′, it asked me if I wanted to make a backup I SAID YES! and away it went. –In reality it did not go this smoothly. I actually wrestled with it finding the SATA drive. This is when I figured out the ‘Legacy’ mode thing in the BIOS. I also used WinHEX to edit the HDDHackr file in windows using this guide (Post #12) typing ‘msinfo32′ into run under start menu, but I don’t think this was even necessary in the end.

-Once the flash is done, I turned the power off on the computer then back on and let it boot into DOS again. I ran HDDHAckr -f again and it said my drive was now able to be used with the Xbox. Once you have finished this step your drive is ready to be used with the xbox (when you dissasebly the xbox drive as shown here and insert the drive, once booting into xbox you go under system blade and memory you can format it.) I however needed to clone my original 20GB drive so I can use either one, up or downstairs. This is what the rest of this account will deal with.

-Once my new 120GB drive was formatted (shows 107GB) I again removed it from the case. I hooked up my original 20GB drive to my computer and after changing the boot order back in the BIOS I booted into VISTA.

-Because I am using vista, I had to do something very important. I had to change the User Account Control to ‘off’. This is under the control panel and Users/Accounts. I unchecked the box shown here.

-I then downloaded the app ‘Xplorer360 xtreme 2′ from the Wiki link above. I right clicked on the exe file and chose ‘run in XP compatability mode’ under properties.

-After starting I clicked on ‘Drive’ then ‘open’ then ‘HDD/mem’ as shown here.

-I created an image backup of partition 2 using the ‘Drive’ -> ‘Backup Partition 2′ in Xplorer360 xtreme 2. Chose a spot on the computers HDD and it made a .bin file.

-I created a file backup of partition 3 by clicking on the partition 3 in Xplorer360 xtreme 2 and ‘Edit’ -> ‘Extract’. Also chose a spot on the computers HDD, however this time I got some errors. I let the errors go (clicked ok) and ended up with what looked like all or most of the files. Leap of faith…Then shut down the computer.

-Unplugged the 20GB drive and plugged in the 120GB then booted back into windows.

-Back in to Xplorer360 xtreme 2. ‘Drive’ -> ‘Open’ -> ‘HDD/mem’. This time some different partitions showed up.

-Then under ‘Drive’ -> ‘Restore Partitoin 2′. Now Partition 0 disappeared and only 2 and 3 showed. I opened the folder on my pc that had the Partition 3 files in it and one by one I dragged the files to Partition 3 in Xplorer360 xtreme 2. The dissapearance of Partition 0 concerned me a bit so I did some things that may not be necessary again. I shut down the pc, rebooted into DOS again using the floppy as before. Typed ‘HDDHackr -u’ and undid the flash. I then rebooted into DOS and redid the ‘HDDHackr -f’. Again I rebooted to DOS a third time and checked to see that it said "drive should work with xbox now" again. In the end after rebooting to windows Partition 0 still did not show back up in Xplorer360 xtreme 2. Again I took a leap of faith.

-At this point I reassembled both drives and started the testing.

-When I put the new 120GB drive into the xbox and powered on, it went the the update screen that I saw when updating to the new xbox experience a couple months back. I told it to go ahead and do the update…and Presto!! it worked. It automatically signed me into my live account as my other drive did. The only issue I found was one of my downloaded game trailer videos was currupt and so I deleted it. Everything else is great… Put the old 20GB drive in and it to logged me right into my live acount.

Hurray!

Against my better judgment, I’m about to endorse something that endorses an Apple product: it’s a new website called iPhone Kung Fu for the iPhone and iPhone Touch, from the affable editorial team behind the quality iCreate Magazine and the seriously entertaining (award-winning)  iCreate podcasts. It contains an enlightening selection of application reviews and previews, plus daily news and video tutorials. As the site develops, it will also contain a free iPhone application via the iTunes store and even more exciting features.

And now for those of you who have seen through my shameless plug - yes, I work for the same publishing company. My editor-in-chief is hovering nearby with a weighty replica .45 Desert Eagle, which might not pack as much punch as the real deal but still makes a good pistol-whipping tool.

But in all seriousness, the new site is easy on the eye, accessible and an omniscient source of iPhone information. Plus it has a Kung Fu theme, which always gets my vote - Check it out. I love it and I have no intention of ever getting an iPhone, though currently I am book-ended in the Total PC Gaming pod by the iCreate magazine team, iPhone-owners and Mac-using Imagine employees. God help me in my small oasis of PC gaming, I might turn to the dark side one of these days…