Close to a year ago I thought my Xbox died on me. It smoked a little bit and smelled like the board had burned up and no longer turned on anymore.

So I took the HDD out and used it in my sons PC to store his MP3 music for his Ipod on it. I then saved the Xbox and all wires as replacement parts for my son's Xbox he has.

The other day my brother was at my house and my son's Xbox started doing the same thing. It was smoking a little and making little crackling noise so I unplugged it quick. My brother then took it apart and said the plug connections where all screwed up and he re-soldered them and fixed the issue.

I told him that was what my Xbox did before it died. So I got the Xbox and he took it apart and re-soldered the plug connections and low and behold it started right up.

So I then transfered over my son's MP3 music to his other hard drive on his PSP and reformatted the Hard Drive with xboxhdm using the C and D partitions of my Sons Xbox and then locked it with the EEPROM I had stored on my PSP (thinking it was my EEPROM). But of course it was my Son's Xbox EEPROM backup and I had deleted mine thinking I didn't need it anymore.

Now I have a few questions.

I am getting a DUOX2 Modchip (cheapest and only 1 I could find in stock).

Should I use the C and E partition of my sons Xbox (softmodded) with xboxhdm or should I use Slayers stock C drive with xboxhdm and rebuild the drive as stock then use Slayer to install the dashboard?

Also what do I do without the eeprom backup? Will the Modchip boot the HDD even if it isn't locked? After I install the Modchip can I recover the EEPROM backup?

I'd personally just use Slayer's and start from scratch. There may be complications restoring the HDD from a softmodded Xbox. For one, the softmod bios will be useless, modchips store the hacked Xbox bios straight on the chip. There also may be differences with how the bios partitions the HDD, most newer bios are set so partition 6 (F) takes the rest of the HDD, meaning that F takes the remainder of the HDD space after the other partitions of been allocated according to the bios specifications.

The eeprom backup shouldn't matter as far as I understand the situation. When upgrading the stock HDD with a modchip, an eeprom backup isn't required, so I don't see why it would matter in this case. I'm not positive on that, but I've never read an eeprom backup is required when dealing with modchips.

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I will use Slayers then.

So what would be my best option to restore the HDD?

Can I add the HDD as is (with my son's Softmod C and E drive on it) then use Slayers to rebuild the HDD inside the Xbox?

Or do I need to use the stock C on Slayers disc and xboxhdm to create a stock hard drive then place that into the Xbox?

You should be able to just throw your son's HD in there and format it with Slayer's straight off. I don't see any reason that wouldn't work. Make sure to backup anything you want to keep beforehand. With a modchip, the only reason the HDD needs to be locked is for booting into the official MS Dash. You can boot into a hacked dash with the HDD unlocked.

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Alright I will try that when I get the Modchip.

Thanks

larrylje, nice to see you back. Has been a while.

I agree with all the advice. I have the same chip in my Xbox and you can just take one drive out, slap a new one in (hopefully a big one) and then use slayer to format the drive and install all the programs and dashboards you want. And as above mine uses C: and F: as the two main partitions.

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I used the EvoX tool to idiot-proof my M8 bios. I set the top three xbes to boot to dashes I have installed, so short of hardware failure, there is no way I will get boot errors.

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