Tutorial by DBlock110. THIS TUTORIAL IS NOT FOR NOOBS. I would only use it if you have flashed a drive before! i made this tutorial because i could not find one that took you through these steps. i kind of had to put many tutorials together. also. the tutorial on this site is great but the process about the reading/flashing is not very descriptive for what you really need to do. no offense at all! OK, The drive in my xbox 360 would only read several games and gave me "disc read error" on 99% of my discs. I called microsoft, and since I was out of warranty, they wanted 100 dollars to do this. i decided to buy a new drive off of ebay and replace it to solve this problem myself. this tutorial will show you the steps of getting the key off your original drive, and flashing your new drive with custom firmware, and your old drives key. Putting your old drives key is very important, you cannot just swap drives and it will work, you must have the identical key on your new drive so your console can read authorized xbox discs.. NOTE: you can just swap the drives, but the new drive will only play DVD movies if you do not copy your original drives’ key to the new drive You will need: VIA SATA chipset PCI card (i have 6421A)(newegg.com) Iprep 101 v006 NTFS4DOS CD image Maximus 360 firmware toolbox (I used version 4.5) The appropriate custom firmware (I downloaded iXtreme 1.4 for samsung) you must acquire these on your own. i will suggest torrents or usenet to get the programs determine what drive you have. (you should remember from when you first flashed your xbox, if not open your xbox and get the model number) in this case, i had a samsung ms28. buy an indentical drive off of ebay or another source. i found an ms28 for 31.99 shipped on ebay, so i went ahead and bought it. (i was out of warranty and microsoft wanted 100 dollars to do this) wait until you have both drives in hand to continue download and install iPrep. after installation, go to tools>check for updates, and download the new ixDefinitions file. Find the appropriate firware needed for your drive. The latest firmware is current Ixtreme 1.4 for my samsung drive. You must find this on your own .open your firmware file. i chose samsung-ixtreme 1.4-12x (12x being the drive speed, by default, 360’s run at 12x). click PATCH MTKFLASH, make sure your VIA chipset is selected, and click prepare destination. this sets up a directory on your CD drive that will read, and hack your drives firmware Go to your c drive. There should be a folder called iprep_101. Cut and paste the contents of this folder to the root of your c drive to make the process a lot easier. (delete the empty iprep_101 folder) burn a copy of NTFS4DOS image onto a cd. leave the NTFS4DOS cd in your computer, and turn off your computer connect your console to your computer via SATA. I used the SATA port from the VIA card that was closest to the front of my computer turn on your console, then turn on your computer. Before your OS loads, you should something like "press f12" for boot menu. press the button you need to to get to the boot menu, and select your cd-rom drive that has the NTFS4DOS cd in it. let NTFS load, (type yes to agree to terms) you have an "a:/" prompt, type “c:/” , or “cd c:/” to get to a "c:/" prompt now, type “intro.exe” agree to the terms of the program now you need to read your old drives firmware type dSam XXXXXXX XXXXX (the X's being your consoles serial number, DON’T FORGET TO ADD THE SPACE) press enter , when you get to a list of the drives, turn off your console. select your consoles drive (NOT ONE OF YOUR COMPUTERS DRIVES!) , after u press the corresponding number, wait 5 seconds, and turn on your console. it will start to read your drives firmware. when its done, restart your computer. open maximus toolbox. open c:/backups/xxxxxxx/xxxxx and browse through the folders, there will be two files in there, the OFW(original firmware), and the CFW(custom firmware). find the file that says something like SAM-OFW.bin in the program(you want the original) it will open your old drives current firmware, but also display your drives key. copy and paste the key, (YOU NEED TO GIVE YOUR NEW DRIVE THIS KEY!!) save it in notepad for backup purposes to your desktop. Close maximus toolbox. Open up c:/backups, and delete everything inside ok now your are done with your old drive, disconnect it from your xbox throw it away or do whatever you want with it. hook up your new drive to your console. boot into NTFS4DOS the same way as before, and once again do the dSam 1234567 12345 command again. this will read your new drives firmware. dont forget the step of turning it off right before you select the drive, and then turning it on after you select the drive.!! after its done, it might have an error saying it could not get the drives key, this is fine, since we will insert the old key into it anyway. restart your computer into windows. go back to maximus toolbox and this time open the SAM-CFW file that is in c:/backups/xxxxxxx/xxxxx . the key will come up as "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF....". in that text box, paste your original drives key from notepad, and press REPLACE KEY. you should get a confirmation message. this will insert your old drives key into the CFW-(custom firmware) that NTFS made for your drive. boot back into NTFS4DOS. instead of the dSam command, do the fSam command that will flash your drive. select your drive. dont forget to turn your drive off BEFORE you select the drive! Then turn it on AFTER you select the drive the drive will be flashed with the CFW, and your old drives key! when its done turn off your console. then turn off your computer. you can reconnect everything in your xbox and test it out, it will play just as it should, including your backed up games!