Tutorial written by : Intelligoth
Last edited: February 6, 2004

Credits: One of the pictures used in this tutorial is taken from Plagued's Rear USB Mod tut.

This tutorial outlines the steps to install a removable IDE drive bay to your Xbox. Notice I did not say INSIDE the Xbox. This is an external mod.

Requirements:
- 18 or 24 inch 40 conductor IDE cable.
- Removeable IDE drive bay and rack.
- Molex power splitter cable.
- Soldering Iron. (optional)
- Electrical Tape.
- Heat Shrink Tubing (optional).
- Hobby knife.
- Dremel rotary tool with cutting disc attachment.

1) The first thing you will want to do is open up your Xbox's chassis. If you don't know how to do this, there is a tutorial HERE.

2) Once your Xbox has been opened up, remove the hard drive per the disassembly instructions. Then, install the hard drive in the removeable drive bay according to the manual that came with the drive bay.

3) Using the Hobby Knife, separate the conductors on the long end of the IDE cable. Make a parallel slice along the length of the cable, between every 10th conductor. Be careful when you do this because you don't want to expose any of the conductor wires. You only need to make a cut about 2 inches long and then separate the cable strips by hand. Once you've separated the IDE cable, align each strip so that they overlap and use electrical tape to keep the strips together.

4) Now install the Molex power splitter cable in the Xbox. Connect the splitter to the hard drive power plug inside the Xbox.

Optional Step) If your power splitter cable is too short to reach the outside of the xbox, you can cut, splice and solder in longer wires. 8 inches should be plenty. Here is where you would use the soldering iron and heat shrink tubing. I'm not going to get into the specifics of lengthening a power cable suffice it to say if you don't know what you're doing, find someone who does.

5) With the Dremel tool, cut off section of plastic from the back of the Xbox chassis, directly behind the DVD drive. You don't need to remove very much, just enough for the cables to pass through comfortably. You may also have to cut through some metal shielding with some tin snips. I just removed the bottom metal shield from my Xbox instead of cutting the metal. Reference the picture to see what you have to cut.

6) You will have to remove part of the top metal cover to allow the cables to come out of the Xbox without any resistance or pinching. The piece(s) you will have to remove hang down from the metal shield. You can just bend them back and forth until they snap off. Use some electrical tape and cover the metal edge so there's little risk of the cables being damaged by sharp metal.

7) Run the power extension and the modified IDE cable out the back of your Xbox through the gap, then put your Xbox back together.

8) Connect the IDE and Power cables to the back of the drive bay per the drive bay's instructions.

9) Power up your Xbox and check that it's running normally.

10) That's it. You can now swap drives in and out of your Xbox as you see fit. Just make sure the power is off before you start swapping!

Tutorial written by : Intelligoth