Matthew Knott

After becoming an Xbox 360 owner for a second time, a 20gb hard drive didn't seem enough, and the upgrades were a bit pricey. Time for a bit of DIY.

Equipment Needed

• 1 x usb pen drive
• 1 x sata enabled computer capable of booting from usb
• T6 & T10 Torx Bits
• 1 x old Xbox 360 hard drive / hard drive caddy
• 1 x Western Digital Scorpio Drive (I got mine here)
• Smallish Phillips Screwdriver

1. Preperation Is Everything

Firstly, go to http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm and get your pen drive prepared for booting.

Once that's done, get yourself over to http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EX8A3SWW and get the hdd tools. From this rar file, take hddhackr.exe, and the hddss.bin files and copy them to your bootable drive. You may also want to have a look at PCWorld's take on the upgrade process for nice pictures. Note that the HP utility they link to is the wrong one.

2. Open Up The Xbox Caddy

Now, remove the 4 torx screws from beneath the caddy (one's under a sticker) and the case should crack open, remove the 4 torx bits holding the drive in place, and finally the two phillips screws holding it in place.

3. Flash The Drive

Put the new WD Scorpio Drive into your computer, I used an old laptop for this bit. Boot from your pen drive. At the command prompt, just type hddhackr, and press return. The app will scan the ports on the computer, when it comes back with the WD hard drive, press the corresponding number, then press return.

At the next screen, press F. When prompted for the firmware file, type hddss.bin, and press return. For the backup, type undo.bin and press return. The app will flash the new firmware onto the drive.

When finished, shut down the machine, and disconnet the hard drive.

4. Moment Of Truth

Put the new hard drive in the Xbox chasis and put it all back together and connect to your Xbox 360. In the xbox, go into system settings and memory, and you should be staring at a lot of storage space.