Xbox 360 Xplorer Can't Detect the Hard Drive

Xbox 360 Hard Drives

• An Xbox 360 hard drive unit connects to the side of the console via a proprietary connector not licensed by Microsoft for home PC use. The actual hard drive inside uses a standard SATA, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, connection, which means that you can remove the Xbox 360 hard drive from its casing and connect it directly to a desktop computer's motherboard.

SATA Connections

• A SATA connection has two components: a data cable, which is flat and usually red or orange, and a black power cable that extends directly from the power supply. Both cables must connect to the drive and the computer's motherboard or power supply for the computer to detect and access the hard drive.

Xplorer360 Procedure

• Once you connect the hard drive the motherboard and power supply, you can turn on the computer and run Xplorer360. After clicking "Drive" on the menu bar, you must select "Open" from the menu that appears, followed by "Harddrive or Memcard." Xplorer360 will attempt to detect any Xbox 360 hard drives attached to the system; if the program does detect a drive, the Xplorer360 window will become populated with information about it.

Troubleshooting SATA Connections

• If Xplorer360 doesn't detect a hard drive, there are a few things to check. After entering the BIOS of the computer according to the manufacturer's instructions, you need to locate the section regarding SATA connections and ensure that all SATA ports are enabled. The BIOS section regarding IDE/SATA disk drives should list the Xbox 360 hard drive as connected. If not, the SATA cables may not be attached securely to the hard drive and motherboard or power supply. Computer power supplies have several extension cables, each of which may have several power connectors. You can make sure that the drive receives sufficient power by using a SATA power cable that's not connected to any other device. You can also try a different SATA data cable.

Hard Drive Troubleshooting

• If the drive appears in the BIOS but still isn't detected by Xplorer360, the hard drive's Xbox 360 filesystem could be to blame. To check it, you can enter "disk man" without quotation marks into the Windows 7 or Vista Start menu search box. This will open the Windows Disk Management Console window and display a list of the drives and a graphical representation of their partitions, which are divisions of the space on the drive. You can determine which one is the Xbox 360 hard drive by checking the listed capacities. Xbox 360 hard drives generally have three partitions, so if you see fewer than three, or none at all, the hard drive may be damaged or corrupted.