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How to Repair a Bricked Hitichi 360 Drive

Microsoft manufactures Xbox 360 video game consoles, which are equipped with internal DVD drives for playing games and movies. These DVD drives are made by a number of companies, including Hitachi, Samsung, and Phillips. Your Xbox 360 DVD drive may fail or become "bricked" if the drive suffers heat stress from overheating of the system's internal graphics and processor chips, which sit directly below the DVD drive unit. You can repair your DVD drive in the Xbox 360 by replacing the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU chips, allowing for more efficient heat conduction that won't overheat the DVD drive. Repairing your bricked Hitachi drive will take 15 minutes.

Things You'll Need

Xbox 360
Torx screwdriver (size 7)
Thermal paste

Instructions

- 1
  Unplug all accessories and power cables, then remove the faceplate from the front of the machine. Unclasp the tabs on the outer plastic case then remove it. Unscrew the Torx screws on the metal interior case then slide it open. Lift the DVD drive out of the console and locate the CPU and GPU chips (they both have large metal heatsinks on top).
- 2
  Unscrew each chip's heatsink and lift it off the chip. Place a small dab of thermal paste evenly on top of each processor, then replace the heatsinks and rescrew them. Return the DVD drive to its original position. The DVD drive should no longer be exposed to heat stress from overheating processors.
- 3
  Replace the metal interior case and rescrew the Torx screws. Return the outer plastic case to its original position then replace the front faceplate. Plug in all accessories and power cables before turning on the console again. The DVD drive will no longer be overheated or "bricked" and will now function normally.

Xbox 360