Hacker Releases Tool to Add Third Party HDD to Xbox 360

[M_Nabil]

Dailytech

A new tool allows WD hard drives to be used Microsoft's console

Microsoft?s advice to those with their Xbox 360 consoles filled to the brim with demos and videos is simply to just buy another hard drive. That solution may not be cheap, as the official 20GB drive retails for $99.99. The Xbox 360 modding community, however, has discovered a solution that could prove to be much more economical.

A hacker who goes by the handle ?TheSpecialist,? has released a tool that allows any Western Digital BEVS SATA hard drive to be used on the Xbox 360. A quick price search for WD hard drives find that twice the drive can be had for half the price ? the lowest-end 40GB WD Scorpio drive for $50 ? a cost effective, but adventurous alternative.

The software tool works as described in the documentation: ?x360 HDD's contain information on sector 16 about the HDD: the HDD serial number, the model, the firmware version and the size in sectors is stored here. The x360 asks the HDD to identify itself, by sending an 'IDENTIFY DEVICE' ATA to the HDD. It will compare the returned information to the info that is stored on sector 16. This information on sector 16 is signed and thus can not be changed. This tool will mod the FW from the WD HDD to comply with the information on sector 16, so that the 'identify' information will match the information on sector 16 and your x360 will accept the HDD as valid.?

A current limitation to this hack is that the source information from the original drive will dictate the useable space on the new destination drive. This means that sectors copied from a 20GB will leave a 40GB drive with only 20GB of storage on the Xbox 360. The process, thankfully, is completely reversible through the HDDHacker software.

The hack found today could be a gamer?s best solution until Microsoft either reduces the price of its 20GB hard drive add-on, or releases bigger hard drives. A larger hard drive for the Xbox 360 has been spied and rumored several times, though Microsoft denies that it is exploring the possibility of a larger drive with Bill Gates saying that 20GB should remain plenty.

TheSpecialist was also one of the first hackers to modify the Xbox 360 DVD drive firmware to play backup games.