Xbox Original (2004) repair

CanadianCrafter · October 15, 2021

This device is currently fully operational but the hard drive is clicking and I want a backup of all the data on it. I’ve repaired consoles before but none with an internal power supply and I believe the difficulty is beyond me and I wouldn’t feel confident working on this device myself due to the unique risks. I f you could direct me to the correct forum or a company that works on old devices that’d be great. My goal is to preserve the device and extend it’s longevity as long as possible. With the Xbox hard drive backed up this’ll make things much easier to emulate and make the device last much longer. Thanks in advance!

Helpful Tech Witch · October 15, 2021

just unplug the psu for a while, let the caps drain.

THen it will just be like working on a pc with a enclosed psu.

Replace the hdd and clone it to a nee hdd, while your at it replace the cmos cap thing that always leaks (on some models you can just cut it off)

flibberdipper · October 16, 2021

12 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Replace the hdd and clone it to a nee hdd

Not quite that simple. The OG Xbox puts a lock on the drive so you'd have to unlock the drive with the Xbox and then hope you can clone it to another drive with the key and have it actually work.

Master Disaster · October 16, 2021

You don't need to go anywhere near the PSU to replace the HDD. You remove 6 Torx screws from underneath and the lid pops off then another 2 inside to remove the HDD tray. That's it.

As pointed out above though, if you haven't unlocked the drive then you cannot back it up and unlocking the drive requires you mod the console to load something like Slayers AIO Xbox Tools disc. You'll also need Slayers to partition and format any new replacement drive since the XB uses a proprietary filesystem (called XBFS). There are Windows tools for this but they're written for XP and I wouldn't recommend you touch them these days.

If you can get one, a hardmod is the much better option but I doubt you'll find one for a reasonable price these days. You can 100% do a HDD swap from a softmod but IIRC it does come with a few caveats.

My Xbox has an Xecuter 3 in it, its my pride & joy tbh, I love it more than my PC for playing games.