Hacking New FATXplorer tool "Xbox 360 HDD Maker" modifies firmware on HDDs to make them Xbox 360 compatible

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The Xbox 360 is long gone, but the homebrew and hacking scene of a console is always searching for ways to revitalize and keep older consoles alive, and such is the case for a newly developed tool for the Xbox 360 that aims to make hard-drives compatible with the console.

The original OEM hard drives for the 360 are getting scarce and more rare as time goes on, and it's only a matter of time before the vast majority of the original hard drives manufactured for the system begin to fail in one way or another given the usual HDD lifespan. One such existing tool, HDDHackr, managed to successfully make third party hard drives compatible with the Xbox 360. However, this tool hasn't seen updates in more than a decade, making it fairly obsolete, more so with the number of different and modern chipsets floating around.

Thankfully, a new tool has jumped up to the task of creating another solution for modifying already existing Western Digital hard drives into Xbox 360 compatibles drives, with this new tool being called "Xbox 360 HDD Maker". This new tool for FATXplorer gets rid of the annoyances of having to create a bootable USB, mess with BIOS settings and other things, with the only real requirement to run it being a Windows PC and a USB to SATA adapter for the hard drive.

Anyone who has done any sort of tinkering with Xbox 360 knows about HDDHackr. For many years, HDDHackr was the only way to make a hard-drive compatible on retail Xbox 360s. It has been an incredibly useful tool and was so far ahead of its time. The developers should be commended for their work. Unfortunately, development on it stopped more than 10 years ago and it has grown more difficult to use due to modern chipset compatibility issues. OEM Xbox 360 hard-drives are also no longer in production. As these OEM drives start to fail, the need for a tool to make compatible drives has been growing.

FATXplorer 3.0 beta 32 has a brand-new solution, a tool named Xbox 360 HDD Maker

This tool aims to be an easier and more accesible way to the already existing HDDHackr tool from years ago, and more importantly, it tries to reinvigorate and give options to gamers with their beloved Xbox 360 system to still have their console in a functional form with more accesible modern hard drives, without the risk of having their original OEM hard drives failing to the passage of time.

Xbox 360 HDD Maker Website