Harddrive
From Free60
File:Hard Disk front.jpg
The Xbox 360 harddisk, a Samsung HM020GI
File:Xbox Hard Disk Connector.jpg
The hard disk inside its case
File:Hooked up to a PC.jpg
The harddisk hooked up to a PC
File:Hard disk at bios screen.jpg
A PC showing the xbox 360 harddisk as recognised
Contents |
[edit] 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]
[edit] 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).
[edit] 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].
[edit] 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 |
[edit] FATX Partition Locations
[edit] 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 |
[edit] Sata power connector
File:Satapinout3.jpg
A large view pinout referencing the internal ata adapter to the external one
| Pin # | 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):
[edit] External Links
- http://watertastesgood.com/xbox/delta.py Tool to help do binary diffs of HDD images, courtesy of Daeken
- http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Xbox_Partitioning_and_Filesystem_Details
- http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Differences_between_Xbox_FATX_and_MS-DOS_FAT
