Using HDD RAW COPY to clone an Xbox drive

[nidge]

I don't know if this has been covered before? But using the Windows program HDD RAW COPY from http://hddguru.com/ and a USB All in 1 HDD Docking Station, I cloned an Xbox 10gb IDE drive to a 500gb SATA drive.
I put the 500gb in my Xbox and it booted up straight away

This picture shows two drives inserted in the dock.


I am now cloning a 250gb IDE to a 500gb SATA, I started the copy at 2.15 this afternoon, it is now 5.15 and it is 64% complete.
So not lightning fast really, I will report back how long it took and if it works in the Xbox

A few specs, HDD Station is USB 2.0, 1 IDE and 1 SATA port.
I am using v1.02 of HDD RAW COPY but the latest is v1.10.
OS Windows 7 Pro 64bit.
Source drive is unlocked.
My Xbox has an X3 modchip.

So is this a is a quicker method than using FTP or CHIMP?

[hawsey]

Nice post , thanks , that's really weird , I was in a guys house today ( my job) and he had one of these exact docking stations and I noticed it was ide in one slot and sata in the other and I wondered if this would be possible .
You have answered my question my friend it does seem a little slow but this has to be a great solution for someone without a second Xbox .

[nidge]

Finished the cloning about 7.15pm, so took about 5 hours! The hard drive booted up ok, however the partitions don't seem to have copied correctly
I think it has made an exact clone ie: 250gb only is being recognised by the 500gb. Like for like cloning wouldn't be a problem, but cloning to a bigger drive doesn't appear to resize to use the extra space.
Perhaps the cleverer members on here knew that would happen

I will try the updated v1.10 over the weekend, to see if that is any quicker and if it can resize the space.

HDD RAW COPY will also clone to a file, I presume this would take twice as long as direct disk to disk? As you would have create the file, swap disks and then write back to the new disk?

I haven't tried with locked disks? Not sure what would happen, if the program could read a locked source and clone to a new disk, would the new disk be locked or unlocked?

Any thoughts guys?

[spicemuseum]

Whilst I've never tried this myself for xbox drives (I might now, though), those familiar with a linux command line (a number of us geeks round here) will be thinking about the dd command.

For example:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 conv=noerror,sync

will copy HDD a to HDD b, assume a block size on the drive of 512 bytes, it'll blindly write any errors across, and it'll work around broken sectors by filling HDD b with converted zeroes to maintain sync with the original drive.
And, of course this all assumes HDD b is at least as big as HDD a in order to work properly.

[spicemuseum]

I think it has made an exact clone ie: 250gb only is being recognised by the 500gb. Like for like cloning wouldn't be a problem, but cloning to a bigger drive doesn't appear to resize to use the extra space.

Yes, the same will be the case for the linux dd command.
If you're willing to accept the contents of your F (and G) partitions(s) being nuked, then you can use XBOX partitioner afterwards to make the additional space available.

I haven't tried with locked disks? Not sure what would happen, if the program could read a locked source and clone to a new disk, would the new disk be locked or unlocked?

Ah I assumed you were working with an unlocked drive pair. It won't work if either of the drives is locked.

[nidge]

HDD RAW COPY will also clone to a file, I presume this would take twice as long as direct disk to disk? As you would have create the file, swap disks and then write back to the new disk?
)

Cloning to a file seem to take less time, about 2 hours I think? I wasn't keeping an eye on the time
But of course if cloning back to a new drive takes the same amount of time, it's quicker to do disk to disk
A way to backup your drive though?

I use Macrium Relect to backup all my PC drives. It does partition copying and resizing. Pity it won't recognise the Xbox file system

Another factor is the whole process maybe quicker with USB 3 (my HDD Dock is USB 2) or using the IDE/SATA ports on your PC motherboard, not an option if you only have a laptop though I have both BTW, I'm using my PC to do these tests.

#spicemuseum thanks for the input I think this method would work quite well if you were upgrading the same size drive from IDE to SATA.

[Dan Dar3]

You've got both drives plugged in at the same time, and your process gets and sends data back and forth on USB between the drives and your computer. I would try to read / write separately, that is imaging the source the disk / partitions on your computer's internal HDD first, then plug the destination drive and restore the image. This might give you better performance and reduce the time it takes, but you will need to thave that amount of disk space internally.

I've used in the last few years Macrium Reflect Free as well to image partitions (not only FAT or NTFS partitions, but also even Linux partitions that neither Windows or Macrium Reflect recognize, it does RAW copying), if you want to see the process see these 3 posts in my Backup label on my blog: http://dandar3.blogspot.com/2012/10/mac ... ition.html If it appears to not do it correctly, uncheck the "Intelligent Sectory Copy" cause for that it needs to understand the file allocationt table for the particular partition type, but i'd say that is disabled by default when it doesn't recognize the partition type. http://www.macrium.com/help/v5/Advanced ... r_Copy.htm

There's no "direct disk to disk" - the docking station doesn't have an internal bus, it's just two HDD to USB controllers that convert data and commands packets so they can travel to your PC through USB, then they get converted back from USB and act like HDD data - they both communicate with your PC separately to be processed by the cloning program, and they use the USB bus at the same time, creating you more delay than you need to.

[GhostOfTemujin]

Hey Man, I was Just thinking What your Talking about here.., It's great but I'm seeing a logical next step that could save a lot of people a lot of time and effort..., If a person can clone an xbox hard drive, why can't a person run some program with a copy of the cloned hard drive, Do you see what I'm getting at..., If a person can take a softmodded xbox hard drive and clone it, why isn't there a cloned copy available for download so that henceforth from then on all a person wanting to mod an xbox has to do is copy stuff over to a hard drive by running a program to format and copy over the cloned data..., I'm just wondering if anyone has already done this and if so where can I find whatever I need to download..., Well I am also interested in a simple way to copy all my stuff so I can upgrade from my 250gb hd to a 500gb

[shloader]

If a person can take a softmodded xbox hard drive and clone it, why isn't there a cloned copy available for download so that henceforth from then on all a person wanting to mod an xbox has to do is copy stuff over to a hard drive by running a program to format and copy over the cloned data...

Well some rather obvious reasons jump to mind. 1st, lets start with the size of the committed user base and honestly admit it's not huge. 2nd, people here use drives ranging all sizes on up to 2TB, there's no 'one size fits all' (some of us grab whatever's taking up shelf space and call it an Xbox drive). And then, even if 2TB were settled on, who in their right mind would want to maintain the availability of such a hypothetical download?

So we're taking a very small user base and each time we decide on some logistic of it, we're fracturing that user base even further. So this would only happen in a microcosm. i.e. next door neighbor modding. I suppose I and Toxicmedz could clone each other's 2tb drives, ya know... for perspective. But that's as about as far as an idea like this would go.

[GoTeamScotch]

Offering my two cents. I have a modded HDD image for the stock 8GB + 10GB size drives that I clone onto stock drives over a USB3 adapter. To copy the image onto a stock drive takes about 5 minutes which is pretty quick. That's been my typical process lately for going from stock to modded. The only downside is I can't lock drives through the adapter.

As far as bigger hard drives go, I haven't had much luck personally with cloning if they're different sizes.

[XC-3730C]

I have a Inateck FD2002 dual SATA dock that has the offline clone feature. When I insert a 500GB Xbox HDD, the dock doesn't even mount the drive. When I insert a 2TB Xbox drive and a blank 2TB HDD that is exactly the same as the 2TB Xbox HDD, I initiate the offline clone option, the cloning process starts, then the whole dock resets itself.

Has anyone gotten the offline clone feature to work with an Xbox HDD?