Broken 360 drive, what to do?

Energize

Energize

Energize

Caporegime
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My brothers 360 has broken, 4 months after the warranty has ran out, surprise surprise. It won't read any of the disks and is scratching them, is it best to get a fix from m$ for £70, or to buy a replacement drive/laser and fit it myself?

I can't believe m$ still haven't fixed this problem.
 
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You could buy one of a number of replacement xbox 360 drives off an auction site for about £30 and fit it yourself (not straight forward), this may also mean that your xbox gets banned from xbox live as they think you have flashed your drives firmware to be able to play copied games.

Probably best to pay the money to MS and get them to fix it.
 
Fitting the drive isn't a problem for me, they just use a standard sata connection, and the firmware the drive has on it will be the factory one, so I don't see why m$ would think it was flashed with the homebrew one.
 
your better off getting a laser replacement, the drive swap your talking about WILL require you to flash the drive with your dvd key from your old drive. If not it won't work period. Lasers replacements cost about £15.
 
Taking the xbox apart so you can access the drive can be tricky but if you have the tools it's not too bad. Laser replaement is probably your best bet as suggested... Not sure about the disc scratching problem however
 
Energize said:
Fitting the drive isn't a problem for me, they just use a standard sata connection, and the firmware the drive has on it will be the factory one, so I don't see why m$ would think it was flashed with the homebrew one.
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It's not as simple as just plugging a new drive in. Each drive has a unique firmware key, you need to extract this key from your old drive and inject it into the firmware from the new drive. Fail to do this and the 360 will only play DVDs and CDs, games will just not work.

If they are the same drive type and firmware version then theres no need to get banned from live, as you just inject the key into the original firmware, but if you are changing drive types and firmware versions you have to 'spoof' the firmware, or the will 360 throw up an error code.

This 'spoofing' leads to a chance of being banned from live, even if you don't use 'modded' firmware.
 
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Energize said:
So is the laser what is causing the disk to be scratched as well?

I've found a replacement laser for £13.
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Yes. Replacement lasers are the cheapest option. A new drive costs around £30-£40 from the bay, depending on whether it's a Samsung or a Hitachi. A new drive would require that you inject the key from your old drive, not a hard process providing you have the correct SATA card and drive revision.
 
Energize said:
So is the laser what is causing the disk to be scratched as well?

I've found a replacement laser for £13.
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I believe the samsung drives are those that scratch due to there being no little pads around the lens. Mine is going back tomorrow for this same reason.
 
JBeck said:
I believe the samsung drives are those that scratch due to there being no little pads around the lens. Mine is going back tomorrow for this same reason.
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Mines going back tomorrow too, was also scratching my discs and giving me read errors. Guess I must have had a samsung drive too. Fingers crossed they put a new and quieter dvd drive in it.
Energize said:
I can't believe m$ still haven't fixed this problem.
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Shocking isn't it :eek: Btw you could look up the Sale of Goods Act and threaten the retailer who sold you the 360 with legal action if they don't cover the cost of repair. Complicated process but you would have a good chance of winning with the poor reliability record of the 360s.
 
Great, my last 360 died (Hitachi drive) with graphical corruption now my replacement has a Samsung drive. I see it was built in December too.

I hope it doesn't start hurting my precious games.
 
I just got a Disc read error in Forza. The Disc is perfect too.

GRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAATTTTT! I've playued this new console 1 hour, and that's two half hour sessions 4/5 hours apart! :mad:
 
Im dreading to think what i'll get back, first console i have had that didn't crash/overheat/die, damn dvd drive this time gah!
 
my 360 has always given read errors since day 1... usually only happens once per disc and on the 1st time of using it lol. anyone else had this experience?
 
Old Samsungs used to suffer from that problem. Search google for "rubber band trick 360" if you want to try and fix it yourself.
 
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