External Hard Drive

[matt007]

Ok, so I have some material that I need to get to from an old hard drive (actually off an xbox 360) and the xbox itself isn't working so I need to get to it from my computer.

I bought a hard drive enclosre and removed the hard drive from the xbox enclosure.  I plugged everything up, and my computer can't find the hard drive at all.

I've tried plugging into both my laptop's usb ports and that isn't helping either.

I'm lost, anyone with any idea how I can get my computer to find it?

[DaveLembke]

You will need to find a way to interface with the xbox partition table ( file system ) its using FATX File system and only access to it that i have found is through Linux mounting to it.

PC can only access FAT, FAT32, or NTFS through external HD means without a 3rd party software to support FATX

http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Xbox_Hard_Disk_Partitioning

[matt007]

You will need to find a way to interface with the xbox partition table ( file system ) its probably not FAT32 or NTFS

I'm kind of not that good with computers.  So I'm not really sure what you mean.  I know on google searches it seems to be FAT32 (whatever that means), but I'm not really sure where to go with that.  Do I download something?

[DaveLembke]

FAT32 can be read by PC's, but I am finding that FATX is the File System which is not.

[DaveLembke]

The Xbox uses a hard disk partitioning scheme that is hardwired into the kernel. The hard disk consists of a header, 3 game cache partitions, a system partition and a data partition:

from: http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Xbox_Hard_Disk_Partitioning

[matt007]

So since it says FATX in there, should I download some sort of FATX reader?

[DaveLembke]

You will need a way to have the PC Read FATX.... I havent found a Microsoft based handler ( reader ) yet, will try a few more searches...only access to it i have seen in Linux so far.

What data are you trying to access?

[matt007]

I have some audio files that I burned onto the xbox from CDs, but no longer have the CDs.

I'm on Vista if that changes anything.

[DaveLembke]

Yah Vista doesnt help any unfortunately... And its a fine line legally if you dont have the CDs and are trying to get the music off of it.

Sites showing access to the data show a FTP link to a healthy XBox from a PC or people adding a external HD to the XBox to send data to the Fat32 drive which then can be easily read by the PC

[matt007]

So say I were to download linux onto my computer (it's my only computer no spare) and then install and all that fun.  Would that probably make the hard drive accessible?

They're not actually music CDs, but lectures from a class.  If they were music I'd be fine losing them.  There still might be copywrite issues I'm not sure, but it will cut my study time in half if I can get these materials instead of having to basically create them myself.  It's something like 45 hrs of audio and I'd hate to have to go and do that all myself.

[DaveLembke]

Yah I would probably give up trying to get that music since you dont have the means to get access to it without potentially damaging your own single computer.

[matt007]

So just off the current subject, since my computer doesn't even see the HD.  Could that be a result of the FATX or is it probably something bigger that's causing my computer to see nothing?