formatting xbox drives?

[nimbles]

hey all, My bros xbox is just behaving worse and worse- not only is avalaunch taking ages to change any settings- and most apps taking a load of time to load up. his ripped cd music folder is now corrupt somehow.

I'm thinking i'm just gonna reformat each parition and reinstall everything from scratch. ITs a stock 10gb hd with no games on it so i don't think it'll be as painful as if i were to have to reformat my xbox ;).

Whats the best prog to do this with? Slayers (or does that FF X-disk do the a similar kind of thing) I'm assuming i could wipe/reformat each partition separately, and then boot to a dash that i've burnt to disc (as bios will still boot to d:\ if nothings on any of the partitions right?), and use that to ftp back all the progs that he requires?

I have backed up his C:, and all the apps he may need, i'm just a little unsure as to what to do for e: partition re: the Tdata and Udata folders- can i just get away with creating the two folders named t & u (i'll get any gamesaves he needs off the the hd with a memcard or with the game save manage if he has built up a load of them), or are further sub folders required for it to work properly?

[burpy]

ok basically you said it,backup Tdata and Udata folder and that will include all subfolders onto PC,format xbox hardrive with slayers,reboot xbox,will boot from dvddrive even if xbox harddrive has nothing on it,then install slayers.

Setup your ftp details in slayers after install then ftp over the Tdata and Udata folders replacing the orginals,so you have your game saves back on xbox.

will take about 15mins

[nimbles]

cheers burpy- do i need to unlock the hd? the fact that the ripped cd's are corrupted means tha i'm not sure if its the tdata and udata folders that are the problem- would i be able to use the tdata & udata folders from my xbox? or is there stuff in there thats xbox/eeprom specific?

[old engineer]

No don't worry about t and u data folders on E:, they are nothing special.

...Basically gamesaves live in udata.

...music data bases live in tdata. (theres a bit more to it than this but basically speaking theres nothing to worry about :)

[nimbles]

cheers old engineer! :t_up:

[smokafatty]

You might want to think about formating the drive in a pc first. By slayers or anyother method its like doing a "quick" format and if you have problems it might be a good idea to throw the hdd into your pc and do a 'full' format that would probably do a better job, then reformat for xbox.

[nimbles]

how would i do that smoka?

unlock the hd with something like evox,
bung it in the pc
format- (isn't that gonna do it in ntfs?)
bung it back in the xbox and then? (will i be able to boot a disc with an unparitioned and unformatted hd?- if so i use config magic with the eeprom, and hdkey from his original setting to lock again right?)

[smokafatty]

right, it won't boot an unpartitioned/unformated hdd. So unlock it, throw it into your pc and go to [control panel/admin tools/comp mngmnt/storage/disc mngmnt] and reformat it with a new partition(ntfs is fine). Make sure you don't use quick format. Then after its formated throw it back in the xbox and boot up slayers and reformat for large hdd. Then just use config magic to lock the hdd. It should be like new after that.

[old engineer]

U could unlock it and format it in a p.c if u want, all that would accomplish is to write in zero's.

...'Slayers' is by far the better option, as u don't, should never need, to write every sector to zero in an Xbox.