Hot swapping IDE devices

[kahlil88]

My friend wants help soft-modding his Xbox, and the guide I found tells me that I'm supposed to hot swap the hard drive or the Xbox will lock it. It kinda seems like a terrible idea, and I don't want to destroy the hard drive or my computer. Is this actually safe and doable?

[Trail]

Last thing I remember I heard about hot-swapping an IDE drive was that while the Linux kernel supports it, the IDE drive does not; it is likely to freeze the system, destroy the drive, eat your children or whatever.

SATA drives should be hot-swappable, in comparison, but I certainly don't wonna try it at home :P

Actually, even hot-swapping an HD on a big bad server with drives that were designed to be swappable, froze it and killed the server when someone tried it out of curiosity...

I don't know about XBOX in particular, however.

[yamfox]

The conventional way (w/ Splinter Cell and Action Replay) is much safer.

[gn2]

Plug a live powered cable into an IDE drive and you will instantly convert it into a paperweight.

[kragen]

Plug a live powered cable into an IDE drive and you will instantly convert it into a paperweight.

Of course you wont!
That wouldn't be any different from turning the power on when the cable is already plugged in! :P

[gn2]

Of course you wont!
That wouldn't be any different from turning the power on when the cable is already plugged in! :P

Try it and you'll see the difference soon enough.

[kahlil88]

The tutorial says to press the pause key during the RAM check (before the computer looks for IDE devices) and suggests connecting the metal chassis of the Xbox to the PC case with alligator clips (I guess to ground it). I've also considered the IDE to USB adapter from my external hard drive enclosure.