Looking for some Xbox HDD Help

Hi all, i currently have a 200Gb IDE HDD in my XBMC Xbox.

I have now purchased a 400Gb IDE HDD, Thanks Davideo, to replace the 200gb as its getting old and very clicky and loud.

My xbox is TSOP flashed with X2 4981.06 and i would like to have one large F drive.

I have installed the new drive and booted the latest version of Auto-Installer Deluxe and it detects the drive and formats all partitions.

As far as i am aware any drive over 250Gb needs to be formatted in 32kb clusters to avoid data corruption so i have used xbparitioner which complains my current bios doesn't support LBA48 V2 and i should update to a newer bios.

Although it complains it does format the F drive in 32kb clusters.

I plan to use Chimpanzee 2.6 to clone my current drive to my new drive but it says it will format the new drive before it starts copying.

Anyway my questions are:

1. Will the fact that my current X2 4981.06 bios doesnt support LBA48 V2 cause me any problems and if so what bios would you recommend for a v1.4 xbox 256mb Winbond TSOP flash?
2. If i allow Chimpanzee to format the new drive will it format it in 32kb clusters or default to 16kb clusters?
3. If Champanzee defaults back to 16kb clusters are you aware of any other hdd cloning software for the xbox or is it just a case of ftp'ing the data off the old drive to my pc and then back to the new drive?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Mike

@Scrappy

I have an XBox here with a 500GB IDE device, its on an Executor 2.6CE (same firmware as above)..

Amongst the required partitions, the disk is set for two LARGE partitions F: and G: (about 240GB each)

I use XBMC and have spanned both disks for given directories like XBGames: Emulators: Movies: - each of these is linked to two (or more) directories on both disks.

I found that even with XBox Partitioner the data kept getting corrupted once it got past 250GB of data on the drive.

I have some new chips coming soon with the LBA48 support so we shall see if we can get any better eh?

Z, i tried updating my bios to Evox M8, apparently has LBA48 support, but once i flashed the TSOP and rebooted the box all i got was a black screen. I had to use a bios recovery disc to reflash my old bios.
I just want to get my xbox and CoinOPS Epic back up and running smoothly so i can play with my new arcade stick i recently bought lol

Ok time for an update here.

I installed the new HDD, set it up with xbpartitioner for 32kb clusters and then installed my dash.

Dash installed and i have a new blank drive.

Leaving the original drive as master and setting the new drive up as slave i ran chimp 2.6 and allowed it to clone master drive to slave drive then lock the new drive.

Got it up this morning to find its finished.

Installed the new drive as a master drive and booted, stuck on the X logo.
Inserted the old drive, stuck on the X logo.

As this is a tsop flashed machine i can boot Slayers or AID discs, booted one to find that my F partition on both drives has been erased and the reason it is stuck at the X logo is because my dash boots to F:\Apps\XBMC which doesn't exist anymore on either drive!

Its safe to say i'm a little more than Peed off at the minute and ready to throw the xbox out the window!

I used Slayer's 2.6 to prep, partition and install my old 250GB in my Xbox - worked first time, every time.

Nothing fancy, only used to install and play games direct from the HD

If cloning a drive, I personally would FTP the contents of the old drive to my PC then back to the new drive.

Hi Blank, i always used slayers too, but apparently with larger drives they must be formatted with xbpartitioner in 32kb clusters to avoid data corruption. Will have to rebuild my drive from scratch and see what files i can dig back up.

I was originally gonna ftp to my pc and back again but i don't have enough spare space to hold the contents of the xbox's 200gb hdd lol

after I screwed my 500GB xbox hdd 2-3 times I learned that only xbpartitioner is reliable to prep a big drive.... even the xecuter3 format tool that supported LBA48 failed... :o

@Keropi, that's exactly what i did.

I set the drive up using xbpartitioner then cloned the drive using chimp but it seems to have erased the f partiion on both drives.

The F drive is now completely blank on both drives.

Have now started from scratch and am trying rebuild my drive with what stuff i have available.

dang :( surely incompatibility reasons, I think chimp is to blame...
you'd are way safer to start from scratch, this way you are sure 99.9% that your HDD will be fine

I setup a 500GB drive under XBoxpartioner a few months back... under two partitions (F: and G: ) both about 240GB each...

I then Grouped Directories from both:

XBoxGames: F:XBGames/ & G:/XBgames
Movies: F:Movies/ & G:Movies/
Emulation: F:EMU/ & G G:EMU/

.. and so on...

works like a charm on the Executor 2.6CE - but totally bottomed out on the Aladdin XT (POS) and couldn't access anything in F: or G:... half the time it wouldn't boot!

So that should say something.... since the AXT chip supposedly had 48bit LBA support... (did it 'eckers like)


The new chips I have coming (Official DuoX2: not the knock of DuoX3) claim they can access up to 2GTB! so we shall see wont we =)