you won't get full SATA performance but it won't be any worse than an IDE drive. You can improve xbox HDD read/write speeds (about 10MB/s to 15 or so MB/s) by getting an 80-pin IDE cable. I think you want a 15 or 18 inch one. Try to get a longer one cuz there's a lot of folding involved to get these things to be oriented correctly.
XBOX homebrew thread
Wyatt Barnes
James Rogers
are any of these actually still sold in stores? is there even a chance of getting one of these on european amazon or something?
Christopher Flores
You're gonna have to find a different one. Less than 4GB is key.
Xavier Miller
come to think of it, why doesn't any generic Harddrive work in the Xbox? anybody got a explanation on this?
Noah Anderson
I can't just find a different one dang it.
Austin Scott
I don't think IDE has been sold in stores for a very, very long time.
Ayden Lopez
use amazon and check out the page for the xbox to usb cables, check related purchases and the first 4 GB or smaller flash drive will be a good pick.
that or a PSP will always work.
during the boot process the standard Xbox BIOS does a hard drive unlock, reads an EEPROM key and compares it to the one on the motherboards EEPROM chip and if it's correct, locks the hard drive again and the system functions normally. Some hard drives do not support locking/unlocking to microsoft's Xbox specification so they do not work.
Julian Williams
It's a game of roulette. The lock drive is a common feature, but there's bound to be a HDD that doesn't have it.
Mason Taylor
Not in stores but you can buy them online, not cheaply though.
Gavin Harris
Not entirely related but be extra careful with people selling IDE SSDs for retro computer / console purpose, those don't always work with XBOXs and even if they do you will kill them kinda fast because of the amount of writes that happen, goes double with SD to IDE and CF to IDE not to mention you'll buy a half dozen adapter before finding one that works properly.