Xbox – How to replace an Xbox 360 DVD drive

xbox-360

I am not entirely certain of the legality of this situation, and just smack me if it's not, but I have had a problem with my xbox 360's disk drive. After reading a number of guides and such I have come to find a few things.

  1. It's possible to replace a drive in the 360.
  2. In order to have the replacement drive work correctly (read: work at all), it must have the same lock code.
  3. In order to have the disk drives share the same lock codes, one method of doing this is to swap one of the internal boards from the broken drive to a new, replacement drive.
  4. There is another method involving getting the lock code itself out of the broken drive and putting it in the working drive. This, by contrast, is done by connecting the drives to a PC and doing something to each of them to transfer the code.

Now, in this whole process, I have already gone so far as to order the replacement drive and rip it apart to try to transfer the board. Much to my surprise, the board in this particular bad drive was non-separate-able from the board. The boards were physically soldered to each end of a wire. I opened the good drive to confirm, and it too was soldered together.

So I was left with #4 up there. After more research, I found that you need SATA cables and a PC that can handle it, plus some software. I haven't really found anything too much more specific than that. However… I did find that the same method to transfer the lock code is also potentially used to make the xbox read burned media… Just, instead of putting in your broken drive's lock code, you put in some pre-prepared file or some such stuff.

I want to make it clear at this point that I do not want the drive to read burned media. What I do want is for the drive to work and play my legitimately purchased games again.

Now, after all that information, my questions are as follows:

  1. Is this method legal?
  2. Second, if it is legal, how would I accomplish this?

Edit: After some talk of this issue the other day, my brother decided that he's just gonna go buy a new one since he doesn't want to wait for me to get mine fixed. So, as if this wasn't a low enough priority already, it's even lower now. I'd still like to get it working if only to have done it once.

Best Answer

To answer the first question: Yes, it is legal, but you'll also void your warranty.

Related Topic