I had this problem. It helps if you can loosen the cable as much as possible. I'm assuming your xbox is already modded? I loosened the cable a bit, but didn't pull it out until I selected chimp from my menu. Have your new drive ready and sitting on your dvd drive. Select chimp swap the cable as quic...

The in game reset combos in IND-5003 can be turned off. If you use the auto config program they won't turn off but you can edit the config file that is produced manually. You can open it in wordpad and find the line for in game reset and change the number to zero. I've been using it that way for yea...

Psyko Chewbacca, the WD red version is not a good choice for an xbox drive, they are designed to work in a nas raid style, they don't handle error correction properly when used as a single drive. In a raid setup they can allow some errors because there is more than one drive in the array to compensa...

Use Ind-5003 it comes with an editor and has all the tweaks you can shake a stick at. Some people don't like it because of the in game reset issues, but it is possible to disable that, I always use ind-5003 pushing the power button to rest is not a big deal to me.

I've upgraded a hard drive with chimp on a softmod with a third party controller before, its possible but tricky, and it may depend on the particular third party controller, I know timing is key, You have to be ready to put the ide cable from the dvd drive into your new drive as soon as you start ch...