Harddrive

From Free60 Project

Table of contents

1 General Information 2 Confirmed Facts 3 Speculation 4 Drive contents 5 FATX Partition Locations 5.1 Pre Live Update 5.2 Post Live Update 6 HDD Info Structure 7 Sata power connector 8 External Links

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] (http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Travelstar_5K100)

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 (http://lawgeek.typepad.com/04a0364p-06.pdf) four (http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1561.htm) separate (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&case=/uscircs/11th/933234ma2.html) cases (http://www.law.emory.edu/10circuit/sept97/95-1394.wpd.html)) that Copyright cannot be used to prevent interoperation.
• The 360's serial number is required when formatting a HDD. Possible encryption of serial # into HDD info (256 bytes change from console to console)
• The drive's capacity is reported as 13GB by the 360 immediately after formatting.

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 (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xbox-linux)].

Drive contents

Address	Length (bytes)	Contains
0x0000	8192	Null (0x00)
0x2000	68	Plain text hard disk info
0x2044	24	Static Binary Info (doesn't change console to console)
0x205C	256	Dynamic Binary Data (changes from console to console - possibly encrypted serial number of console)
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

Post Live Update

Address	Description
0x80000	Cache Partition
0x80080000	Unknown
0x120EB0000	Xbox Backwards compatibility drive
0x130EB0000	Main Xbox 360 Partition

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

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):

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

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