So if you have a flash storage drive lying around that you don’t use give it a try and make your PC faster. Not all USB flash drives are supported but it should work most of the times. If you want to take real benefit of the ReadyBoost functionality there are two simple rules:

• Find the fastest storage available with read speeds at least ~10 MB/s
• Use double the amount of RAM storage in size, so if you have 2GB of RAM, then you would want to use a flash drive of at least 4GB

But even if you don’t meet above specifications you can take huge benefit of ReadyBoost, the two rules mentioned are fist rules to get the most out of the  ReadyBoost functionality. Plugging in your old Flash Drive always helps quite a bit.

How to enable ReadyBoost:

1. Plug a flash drive or flash memory card into your computer.
2. In the Autoplay dialog box, under General options, click Speed up my system. (Right-click and then properties if autopolay is not enabled)
3. In the Properties dialog box, click the ReadyBoost tab, and then do one of the following:
   • To turn ReadyBoost off, click Do not use this device.
   • To use the maximum available space on the flash drive or memory card for ReadyBoost, click Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost. Windows will leave any files already stored on the device, but it’ll use the rest to boost your system speed.
   • To use less than the maximum available space on the device for ReadyBoost, click Use this device, and then move the slider to choose the amount of available space on the device you want to use.
4. Click OK.

Some devices  can not be used for ReadyBoost but don’t give up right away. Try formatting your USB flash storage device in different formats (NTFS, FAT32, FAT) and test it a couple of times.

More information:

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/readyboost
• http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/ (Compability list, a bit old and I got two devices working which are mentioned not to be supported).

It’s been a great ride and I want to thank the members and visitors of the website. Your input helped me a lot in maintaining the website. Hopefully you’ll find a new safe haven for your WD TV (Live) tweaks. Be sure to check out http://wdtvforum.com. As of now it is the best source for your WD TV tweaks and homebrew apps.

Thanks for everything, kind regards.

The idea: Dual tuners, combining DVB-S and DVB-T with the possibility to watch and record at the same time on multiple devices (TV, PC and mobile) with network streaming.

The hardware:

• 78cm dish  (4 LNB’s  w/ Diseq switch)
• Skystar USB 2 HD CI (DVB-S)
• Cinergy DVB-T MKII
• Infinity USB Unlimited (DVB-T)
• AMD Athlon dualcore 64-bit / ATI 1950XT / 2GB RAM / 2TB storage
• Nokia N900 (for bluetooth and IR remote control)

The Software:

• DVBLink TVsource (connected version)
• Windows 7 Media Center
• Hadu CCCam client (DVB-S)
• Acamd plugin (maybe Splug) (DVB-T)
• Infinity USB software (DVB-T)

For now you will find the list of default modem and router passwords I was talking about and a list of default ports for games and applications. I will add some nice content later on including: 5000 most popular passwords, WiFi security testing for Windows and some tutorials for beginners on how to forward ports in your network and some basic home networks setup instructions. Of course my most popular post about hacking the Thompson Speedtouch routers can also be found there. And last but not least, a download section with software for your home network will be added as soon as possible.

Visit Modemintel.com

]]> http://www.kaisersblog.com/2010/07/router-and-modem-help-at-modemintel-com/feed/ 4 http://www.kaisersblog.com/2010/03/lock-full-screen-video-with-dual-monitors/ http://www.kaisersblog.com/2010/03/lock-full-screen-video-with-dual-monitors/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:41:55 +0000 KaiserSoze http://www.kaisersblog.com/?p=806 You can never have enough screen space, especially when you are a multi-tasking addict like me. I have been using dual screen setups for years now and i’m not alone. A lot of  people use two, three or even more monitors  at work and at home. Thing is, in all those years using multiple screens I  find support for it in all kinds of software is minimal. I don’t know of any games that take real advantage of multiple screens, most software doesn’t have genuine supprt for multiple screens and what bothers me most, no video player has decent dual screen features.

I like to ‘watch’ video will i’m working or surfing the internet. My major problem is when I start a video and enable full screen as soon as I click in the other monitor the video player resizes to default resolution. All web video players do this. It doesn´t matter if it´s Silverlight, Flash, Windows Media Player or even Youtube´s new HTML5 player they all refuse to stay fullscreen when using the other screen. So, since all web video players show this behavior one might think the root of the problem isn’t in the web players but probably browser or operating system related. I’m a Windows user (Win7 at the moment), so that will be the start of my research. First test: Windows’ default player Windows Media Player.

A small success, with full screen enabled I’m able to use my other screen as I like. But my main focus is on web video players so this will prove it’s not the operating system being the problem. But let’s do a another quick test to rule out the OS. I’ll use the free open source player VLC Media Player. It works, again I’m able to use my main monitor while full screen is enabled in the VLC Media Player. I think it’s fair to say it’s not Windows preventing the player to stay full screen when using another monitor. This is good to know because this will come in handy when you have the deeplink of the video or livestream you’d like to watch full screen at that moment. Next up, browser testing.

For some, it might be obvious that the browser is the problem. This because your browser is continuously ‘listening’ for click actions. Once you click somewhere in your main screen you browser window playing the video will lose focus and exit full screen mode. I don’t think this is something developers can enable using their own build players because of this. Aobde and Microsoft claim it is because of security issues and it is not possible by design. The tests as shown below kind of explain this theory:

X – Video does not stay maximized when losing focus

Solution

According to a reply to a bug report on Adobe there’s nothing that can be done when using Flash Players:  ”We understand that many users would like fullscreen on one monitor and to be able to interact with your OS on another monitor. However, due to security requirements, we require that Flash and Browser must be the current focus of your OS. Apologies if this causes any workflow or usability issues. We will continue to review our security policy and consider changes in the future.”

No matter what Adobe might be saying there is a solution regarding Flash it’s players. You can replace npswf32.dll file for a modified version which allow you to have a Flash video player stay maximized while you are using the other monitor. Of course you can also hex edit a flash binary youself. (More info) (Download modified npswf32.dll) Apparently unchecking “Hardware Accelerating” also fixes it but I don’t want to disable my hardware accelartion. (Right click on the video, Settings…..)

Now how about Silverlight and Windows Media Player? In a podcast from december, which a can’t find no more, I heard that the Silverlight team is currently fixing this. Searching some more on this topic brings us the news this feature will not be released untill Silverlight 4. According to Mike Taulty “A Silverlight 4 application can go full-screen without those security limitations if that application marks itself as requiring elevation at installation time ( i.e. it’s a trusted application ) and in that case the security sandbox is relaxed and one of the things that enables is full-screen apps without those security restrictions.”

So i’ll guess we have to wait for Silverlight 4 for this functionality. On the other hand  Windows Media Player will play all video that a Silverlight player could show. So searching for the deeplink and copy/pasting it into Windows Media Player will also work. This because Windows Media Player will stay full screen when losing focus as said earlier in this article. Finding the source or deeplink can be done by looking at the embed code of the object in the source code of the webpage it is embedded in or look for it using Firefox web developer plugin Firebug.

It seems the solution stopped working in Google Chrome after the latest updates. Thanks to Henrik there’s a solution:

“Hey, i use chrome, and they recently applied an update, which invalides this operation to flash.

The solution is simple though:

In your chrome install folder (which usually is):
C:\Users\Heknu\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\5.0.375.86

Replace the gcswf32.dll with the file downloaded modified file (npswf32.dll) and ur good to go :)

U might want to keep your original chrome file, just in case. And if chrome release another update, the solution might just be the same :) “

But  even this little media monster has one big disadvantage, there is no DTS decoding. The DTS signal is bitsreamt trough the optical output so if you own a DTS surround receiver with optical-in you will be able to enjoy DTS audio with your movies. If you are connected trough HDMI only, as I am, you will here nothing.

Who’s to blaim for this? Western Digital? I don’t know. For only 99 euro’s this thing is pretty cheap and DTS certificates and licenses are very expensive so it probably was the only thing WD could do to keep the WD TV HD as cheap as it is now. I have sent an enquiry to Western Digital if DTS to stereo/AC-3 downmixing will be a possible feature for new firmware upgrades to come. Untill now they haven’t replied to my question.

After doing some reading on the WD TV HD it seems it is based on the SMP8635LF chip from Sigma Designs. This chip happens to be used in other Linux based devices like the HD200 (SageTV), Teac HDRM7250, TVIX6500 and the Popcorn Hour A-110.

The Popcorn Hour may be of interest, as it has a feature for downmixing DTS, and reportedly Popcorn Hour Linux modules were imported succesfully in the WD TV HD system.

Another hint of DTS downmixing being possible is in the firmware microcode that is used for the audio processing on the Sigma DSP:

/lib/firmware/xrpc_xload_audio_ucode_SMP8634_2.8.3.0_facsprod.mips.nodts.bin

So it looks like DTS was specifically disabled. Maybe it’s possible to just swap the audio_ucode with one that supports DTS (downmixing), like the Popcorn Hour. Altough this might be blocked by some encryption scheme. I don’t have the technical knowledge to answer this question. But I know that ISTAR doesn’t have DTS decoding neither but some of the users used the Popcornhour firmware and they can now successfully decode DTS. Since WD uses the same Sigma chip, I’m guessing there’s a chance. Still, we need confirmation from a person who has technical knowledge.

So is there anybody reading this with a lot of linux knowledge, serial access to a WD TV HD and willing to help a lot of people? Please let me know. I have Ubuntu installed on a virtual machine but I haven’t got the knowledge and serial access. I’d also would be way too concerned about bricking my device. The guys over at the AVS-forum haven’t got DTS decoding or downmixing working but they sure are making progress. They have reportedly got the WD TV HD running with an ethernet connection using a WiFi USB device!

I know the simple solution would be to buy a DTS surround receiver with optical in, but damn those things are still expensive. The best solution for me would be the HTX-22HD Home Theatre Package System. Since i do not want 5 speakers. Quality 2.1 will do for me. This system comes standard as 2.1 and has all the features you would like for watching high definition video/audio. E.g. TrueHD, DTS HD, HDMI 1.3 in/out, optical in/out. But untill I have the 330 euros for this great audio system I would like my WD TVHD to downmix my DTS. I’m sure you agree!

Update: I got a response from WD “

Dear *****,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

I apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing and thank you for your suggestion, we are gathering customers feedback to see how we can improve our product, unfortunately we do not have information on what will be changed or a release date for the upgraded product as of yet. I will forward this e-mail to our feedback queue to be taken under consideration.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,
***** *.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com

So we might all want to keep sending e-mail about how much we want DTS-downmixing!

What you need

• Phoenix Interface smartcardreader (I’m using: Infinity USB unlimited)
• Paid subscription card (I’m using my official Digitenne smartcard)
• DVB-T tuner (I’m using the Twinhan clone: Easylite DVB-T USB)
• Newcs 1.65
• ProgDVB 6.0.4
  
• WinCSC-plugin 4.0.0.2

Setup NewCS

• Decompress the files from the NewCS archive to some directory
• Go to the configs directory and find your config file or download my simple or advanced (rename to newcs.xml) config file.
• Copy the newcs.xml file to the win32 directory
• Open the newcs.xml file.
• Now the <node> and <newcamd_port> tags are interesting for us. Specify the serial port (COMx) on which You have a cardreader hardware installed (for infinity USB you can choose your emulated COM port here). Also, specify the debug port for the NewCS server (starts its numbering from 10001).
• Add some users. Find a user tag:

<user>
<name>username1</name>
<password>password1</password>
<au>on</au>
</user>

Modify the <name> and <password> to fit your needs. You can have multiple <user> tags, of course.

• Start the newcs.exe from the command prompt or by double clicking on it.

Note: If NewCS is not running properly and/or shuttin down, try setting debug output to none in your xml config file.

Connecting to you cardsever

• Install ProgDVB
• Extract WinCSC archive to some directory
• Copy the contents of the different folders to ProgDVB plugins folder, Main folder and the windows->system folder
• Start ProgDVB, activate your device and search for channels
• Choose plugins – -> Cardserver client –> configure server
• Delete all current configurations
• Fill out server details, mine where:

protocol: newcamd525
username: testing
Password: ********
Cardserver IP Adress: 192.168.1.101 (my server address in home network) choose localhost if cardserver is on same windows machine.
port: 15000

That’s it! Enjoy!

So what is Hulu? Hulu distributes video both on its own web site and syndicated to other sites. In addition to NBC and FOX programs, Hulu carries shows from other networks such as Comedy Central, PBS, USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, SPEED Channel, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, E!, G4, Versus, Noggin TV, Nick Jr., PBS KIDS Sprout, Disney Channel and Oxygen.

Hulu offers full episodes and segments from over 400 different TV shows, some no longer on the air, some in syndication, and many currently shown only in the United States. The TV content on Hulu is provided by NBC, Fox and their TV production subsidiaries Universal Media Studios and 20th Century Fox Television, respectively, as well as the aforementioned cable networks and other TV studios such as Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. Television, MGM Television and Lionsgate Television. Hulu allows users to share or edit these clips. Shows that get the most traffic on the site include The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Battlestar Galactica, The Simpsons, Naruto, Bones, House, Arrested Development, Prison Break, Family Guy, The Office, Saturday Night Live, American Dad! and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.Hulu  als offers over 100 motion pictures that range from classic to modern films. The movie content is provided by studios such as Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, MGM, Lionsgate Entertainment and Sony Pictures among others. Hulu also offers trailers for new and upcoming movies. R-rated and TV-MA content is available unedited but only for registered users.

In simple terms all the favourit shows on which we spend rediculous amount of money in buying DVD’s are now available on Hulu.com and you can watch it for free of cost. Hulu provides content directly from the network’s so the content is copyright protected and for legal reasons they have restricted its access around the globe, if a Family Guys Episodes is aired on Tv in USA it should only be accessible to the internet users from USA. They check this via our IP address.

And what about the iPlayer? The BBC’s streaming version of iPlayer, which makes use of Adobe Flash software, launched on 13 December 2007. iPlayer offers replays of programmes broadcast on all BBC TV channels during the last seven days. Programmes available are those from BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News, BBC Parliament, BBC Alba and BBC Wales programmes shown on S4C. Due to licensing agreements, international and some privately-produced shows or movies are not available on iPlayer. The fact that BBC TV productions are paid for by the UK television licence fee, as well as rights agreements with third parties mean that BBC iPlayer TV programmes are only accessible in the UK. TV programmes can be accessed using a UK based proxy server. These issues do not, however, affect radio programmes, which are available from outside the UK.

The main solution on how to watch Hulu or BBC’s iPlayer outside US or UK are proxyservers and VPN tunnels. Now finding fast UK or US based servers or setting up a usefull VPN can be quite a hassle. Some of you probably won’t even know what i’m talking about. So here are a few easy solutions that will work:

How to trick Hulu restrictions and watch Hulu outside USA

So far there are two solution to bi-pass restriction to watch Hulu :

1. The easy way to bipass hulu is throught HotSpot Shield , its a free internet security suit that encrypts and protects inbound / outbound Internet traffic (email, instant messaging, VoIP calls, web surfing, etc.) by creating a virtual private network. Thus hiding your actual location to a USA based IP as HotSpot Shield is its self for USA only. So after installing HotSpot Shield, run it and you will see a small icon on the task bar right click it and connect a window in IE or Firefox will open and will show the status if it gets connected then refresh Hulu and enjoy the kool episodes.
2. Second option is to use Ultrareach UltraSurf is the flagship software product from UltraReach Internet Corp. for Internet anti-censorship. It enables users inside countries with heavy Internet censorship to visit any public web sites in the world safely and freely. It automatically connects to the fastest possible US proxies. You can also set it up to route only one browser (IE for example) or tunnel other traffic such as BitTorrent
3. AlwaysVPN is a free VPN (virtual private network) that runs on Windows XP, Vista, Max OS X and Linux. It creates an encrypted link between your computer and their servers and then forwards all of your internet traffic through this link. AlwaysVPN is very similar to HotspotShield. Just install, connect and you will get a US IP address. There are 2 ways to connect to AlwaysVPN, TCP and UDP. UDP is faster because there is no form of flow control or error correction. As for TCP, it is slower than UDP but reliable because it offers error correction. Try both to see which would give you a better result in watching videos from Hulu.

Now all solutions have slight disadvantages, HotSpot Shield has a 8 GB bandwith limit and Ultrareach will probably make your antivirus software go mad. I have tested Ultrareach and altough it has the capability of breaking trough your firewall it definitely is no virus. There are only 2 cons about using the free AlwaysVPN. The first one is not all service are supported because AlwaysVPN only allows web traffic on port 80, 443, 110, 143, 587 and 8080. But Hulu will definatly work. The second is it shows advertising at the top of web pages that you view while you are using the AlwaysVPN network. AlwaysVPN is still in very early beta and released yesterday but it works without problems on my side. Do try it and give feedback to AlwaysVPN if you found any problems so that they’ll improve it better.

How to trick iPlayer restrictions and watch iPlayer outside the UK

Step 1: Download and install the latest stable release of Tor using the default options. You can uncheck Privoxy in the install if you like. We will be using another proxy tool. (Tor is a tool that allows you to browse the web anonymously by routing your requests through various servers/proxies)

Step 2: We now need to ensure that the last server your request is routed through is a server in the UK. Go to https://torstat.xenobite.eu/. Click on the pulldown next to “CC:” and select “GB” and hit “search”. Now click on the “>” under “Exit”. You now have a list of servers in the UK that are allowed to be used as Exit Servers. Take note of all the nicknames of the servers except those marked Unnamed.

Step 3: Go to Start Menu and open All Programs -> Vidalia Bundle -> Tor -> torcc. This will open the Tor config file. Scroll all the way to the bottom and enter the following lines:
StrictExitNodes 1
exitnodes <list of the names you found in step 2 separated by commas>
An example of the second line above would be:
exitnodes anonion,anotherlink,colinwillsdorkyahoo
Save the file and exit notepad.

Step 4: Run Vidalia. After a few seconds, it should say “Connected to the Tor Network”.

Step 5: Install the Foxy Proxy addon for Firefox.

Step 6: When you install Foxy Proxy, it’ll ask you if you want to add a Tor proxy to it’s settings. You’ll want to set up the Tor Proxy to have the following 2 patterns: BBC iPlayer pattern – http://*bbc.co.uk/* and Tor Check pattern – http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/*

Step 7: Check that you’re exiting through a UK server by going to http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/index.php

There you go – now, when you have Vidalia and Foxy Proxy running, whenever you go to the iPlayer site, you’ll be able to watch videos. Note, that you’ll probably have to repeat step 2 and step 3 intermittently, as the same UK servers don’t always exist.

An other solution which reportedly worked for a lot of people but didn’t for me is the following:

1. Highlight, right click and copy the code in this text file
2. Click on a video link, and wait for it to open and display error
3. right click in address bar, paste copied code and hit enter
4. video should start playing

or

1. Highlight, right click and copy the code in this text file and make a bookmark in your browser pointing to this code
   
2. Click on a video link, and wait for it to open and display error
3. click the bookmark you just made
4. video should start playing

If you know of any fast UK or US based yourself, please share them in the comments, and you can set these directly in your browser settings by doing the following. By doing so you’ll also be able to watch video’s on both servivces:

Proxy Settings in Internet Explorer 5.X – 6.x

1. Click “Service” \ “Internet Options”;
2. Click “Connections”;
3. If you use Dial-Up connection, choose your connection and click “Settings” button.
4. if you use LAN connection, click “LAN Settings” button in the “Local Area Network (LAN) Settings” group box;
5. Enable “use a proxy server”;
6. In fields “Address” and “port”, type proxy name and proxy port;
7. If nessesary, enable “bypass proxy server for local addresses”;
8. Click “OK”;
9. Click “OK” to close IE settings.

Proxy Settings in Opera 5.X – 7.x

1. Click “File” \ “Preferences”;
2. In “Category” choose “Network”;
3. Click on the button “Proxy servers…”
4. Set proxies for following protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc.
5. Enable proxies for corresponding protocols by enabling options “HTTP”, “HTTPS”, etc.
6. Click “OK” to close preferences

Proxy Settings in Mozilla Firefox

1. Click Tools->Options;
2. “General”, “Connection Settings”;
3. Select “Manual Proxy Configuration”;
4. Enter proxy IP and port to appropriate fields;
5. Click OK to close Connection Settings;
6. Click OK to close Options;
7. Reload browser.

Let me know if a solution mentioned above worked for you and if so, where you’re from.

DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites.

Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item

For instance, if you go to a YouTube page, you’ll be able to download the video directly on your file system. It also works with MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.

Since version 3.1, you can setup the extension to automatically convert the downloaded movies to your preferred video format.

When you are on a page containing links to images or movies, you can download some or all of them at once. Moving the mouse over the items in the menu will highlights the links directly in the page to make sure they are the ones you want to pick up.

DownloadHelper also allows you to download files one by one, so that you keep bandwidth to surf for other stuff to download.

To modify your preferences, like changing the download directory, right-click on the icon and choose “Preferences”.

When you first install the extension, your browser is redirected to a welcome page with links to a user manual at http://www.downloadhelper.net/manual.php and a faq at http://www.downloadhelper.net/faq.php

After talking to a few friends and reading multiple articles and discussion board posts, we found out that one could use a relatively cheap drive and some software to allow the Xbox 360 to accept a drive other then the “official” one. The legality of this hack is a bit questionable…but I feel like as long as you’ve bought one of the “official” 120GB drives, you’re okay…that said, I’m no legal expert so do not take my advice or anything in this article seriously! That said…how do you do it?!

What You Need:
1 Western Digital 120GB SATA HDD – Model #WD1200BEVS
1 Windows based PC w/ SATA connector(s)
1 Flash key (1GB in size is good)
1 Xbox 360 with drive module carrier
1 T6 Torx
1 T10 Torx
hddhackr 0.91
Xplorer360 extreme2
120GB HDD bin file
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool – v2.1.8
Windows 98 MS-DOS Files

Cracking the Xbox HDD Carrier:

This bit is really simple. There’s tons of videos on YouTube and guides…so you’re more then welcome to refer to those. Simply put, you’ll need to use your T6 to unscrew 4 screws on the bottom of the carrier. There’s one hidden screw under the silver sticker with the Microsoft logo. Now, life that up and you’ll be able to access 4 more screws. Use your T10 on those. Now, you can remove your drive from the carrier.

Flashing, Yayhie!:

Now…you’ll want to make a bootable MS-DOS USB flash key. Download the Windows 98 System files I posted above (just extract them to a folder) and then use the USB formatting tool I posted above to create a bootable MS-DOS flash key. It should only take a minute (so long as you check off quick format). Don’t worry if you can’t see files on the flash key (in Explorer). Now copy the 120GB HDD bin file and the hddhackr tool onto the flash key also. Those are probably the only 2 files you’ll see on the drive anyways.

Now, shutdown your computer, disconnect ALL drives(CD/DVDROMs, HDDs….etc…). Connect your flash key and the new 120GB drive. Turn the computer back on.

You might have to mess with some BIOs settings so that it boots from the USB flash key.

Once booted into DOS you’ll be at C:\>. Type in:

hddhackr -f

It might mention something about Sector 16, hit ‘y’. Then it’ll ask you about creating an undo file, again hit, ‘y’. It’s a quick process. Once it’s done, just shut off your computer. Then restart it again, and go into DOS. Again type in:

hddhackr -f

If the flashing was successful it’ll spit out a message with something to the effect of:

“Your drive will now work with 360!!!”

If you see that excellent, if not…well, try again.

Now, put the new 120GB into the carrier module. I didn’t bother sealing it up just yet…because if there was any issues, I didn’t want to have to pull it apart again, and also we still need to move our old data on the old 20GB (or whatever your old drive was) onto the new 120GB. So…with the 120GB in the carrier, plug it into your 360 and start it up. Make sure it’s firmly planted in there, the first time I did it, it wasn’t so the 360 didn’t see it, woops.

With your new 120GB connected to your 360, navigate to the System blade and go to Console Settings. Then view the system info and write down the serial number of your system. Then go back one menu item, so you see Memory. Click on that and your 360 drive should show up. Click it and hit format. It should now show up as 107GBs which is perfect!

Copying Old to New:

Now, if you’re like me, you’ve got demos, stuff from marketplace downloaded and other goodies on your old drive. In order to transfer it, you’ll want to open up the Xplorer360 software and your old Xbox drive connected up to your Windows system. If you’re in Vista take note, you’ll need to run the software as Administrator (right click on the app, and select Run as Administrator). When the application has launched choose File –> Open –> hard disk. It’ll open your Xbox hard drive and will show 3 partitions. Now we’ll start making a backup of the data. Choose File –> Backup Partition 2. Should only take a minute or two. I believe this partition just holds some emulation stuff for Xbox 1. Next, we’ll backup the partition with all the good stuff (your demos, downloads, etc…). This process can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more. Depends on how much stuff you have…

Do note, Windows (like if you look in My Computer) will not see the drive, but Xplorer360 should find it just fine.

Once it’s done. Shut down the machine and connect up the new 120GB drive so you can move the data onto the drive. Again, open the Xplorer360 application with Administrator privileges. Go to File –> Open –> Hard disk. Then do File –> Restore Partition 2. Then drag the files from the Partition 3 backup into Partition 3 in Xplorer360. Now shut down the computer, disconnect the 120GB drive.

Now, put it into the carrier, put that back together, and slap it onto your 360! You’re done!!

Thanks to the original developers of hddhackr, Xplorer360, and the 360 scene people.

And special thanks to Morgan (tehgeekgirl) for writing this very helpfull tutorial!