HDD
File:Hard Disk front.jpg The Xbox 360 harddisk, a Samsung HM020GIFile:
Xbox Hard Disk Connector.jpg MISSING
The hard disk inside its caseFile:
Hooked up to a PC.jpg MISSING
The harddisk hooked up to a PCFile:
Hard disk at bios screen.jpg MISSING
A PC showing the xbox 360 harddisk as recognised
General Information
- The drive is manufactured by Samsung (Seagate Drives have been used in some systems. Unknown if contents are the same) and is required to play backward compatible Xbox games.
- Samsung details:
- Model: SAMSUNG HM020GI
- Revision: YU100-06
- Serial Number: S0A8J20YA44356 (of course this is different for every HD)
- Capacity: 18.63 GB
- Seagate details:
- Model: ST920217AS
- Revision: 3.01/LD25.1
- Capacity: 20 GB
- Hitachi details:
- Model: HTS541020G9SA00 (Travelstar)
- Revision: C60D
- Capacity: 20 GB
- Vendor Support URL: [1]
Confirmed Facts
- The harddisk is not locked in any way. A completely zero drive will only be read by the Xbox 360 if the relevent headers are in place on the disk.
- A FATX partition exists on the drive
- For a drive to be considered valid it must have the 'Plain text hard disk info' and MS logo PNG. If these elements do not exist then no HDD is detected. So there is no way for third parties to manufacture hard disks without a license or without infringing Microsoft's copyright. (The Gameboy used the same idea for cartridges). US courts have held (in at least four separate cases) that Copyright cannot be used to prevent interoperation.
- The 360's serial number is required when formatting a HDD.
- The drive's capacity is reported as 13GB by the 360 immediately after formatting (20Gb HDD only).
Speculation
- There is no information at this time that leads us to believe the harddrive is encrypted, there are plenty of clear text entries that can be read.
- The FATX partitions on the drive seem to be a Big Endian version of the 1st Generation XBOX's FATX filesystem. Work is underway to modify the linux kernel driver to verify this. There is some initial support for this file system in [CVS].
Drive contents
| Address | Length (bytes) | Contains |
|---|---|---|
| 0x0000 | 8192 | Null (0x00) |
| 0x2000 | 68 | Plain text hard disk info (includes hdd serial, changes from hdd to hdd) |
| 0x2044 | 20 | Static Binary Info (doesn't change from hdd to hdd) |
| 0x2058 | 4 | Dynamic Binary Info (changes between different types of hdd (20gb, 60gb, 120gb)) |
| 0x205C | 256 | Dynamic Binary Data (changes from hdd to hdd) |
| 0x2202 | 2 | Size of following PNG file |
| 0x2204 | 2754 | MS logo in PNG format, made with Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 on the 19th of July 2005 |
FATX Partition Locations
Pre Live Update
Address Type 0x80200 FATX16 0x130EB0000 FATX32 [edit] Post Live Update Address Description Format 0x80000 Cache Partition FATX 0x80080000 Game Cache Partition STFC 0x120EB0000 Xbox Backwards compatibility drive FATX 0x130EB0000 Main Xbox 360 Partition FATX [edit] HDD Info Structure Address Length (bytes) Contains 0x2000 0x14 Drive Serial # padded with spaces 0x2014 0x08 Firmware Rev 0x201C 0x28 Drive Model, padded with spaces
Sata power connector
File:Satapinout3.jpg MISSING
A large view pinout referencing the internal ata adapter to the external onePin # Signal Name On XBOX 360 Signal Description
1 V33 Not connected 3.3V Power 2 V33 Not connected 3.3V Power 3 V33 Not connected 3.3V Power, Pre-charge, 2nd mate 4 Ground Connected 1st Mate, Pre-charge, 2nd mate 5 Ground Connected 2nd Mate 6 Ground Connected 3rd Mate 7 V5 Connected 5V Power 8 V5 Connected 5V Power 9 V5 Connected 5V Power 10 Ground Connected 2nd Mate 11 Reserved Not connected - 12 Ground Connected 1st Mate 13 12V Not connected 1st Mate, Pre-charge, 2nd mate 14 12V Not connected 2nd Mate 15 12V Not connected 3rd Mate
This (probably) explains why normal 3.5" sata drives won't even spin up (missing 12V). So if you want to use a 3.5" drive you need to connect your own 12V.
This table plus more info can be found in the electrical specification here (the table is found on page 178, table 17):
1.http://www.sata-io.org/docs/PHYii%20Spec%20Rev%201_0%20052604.pdf
External Links
1.http://watertastesgood.com/xbox/delta.py Tool to help do binary diffs of HDD images, courtesy of Daeken 2.http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Xbox_Partitioning_and_Filesystem_Details 3.http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Differences_between_Xbox_FATX_and_MS-DOS_FAT