Xbox:FATXplorer
FATXplorer is a Windows-based PC utility that allows users to format, read, and write a hard drive. Its main use is to construct new hard drives for use in a modified Xbox. Version 3.0 of FATXplorer is the first version to support the original Xbox, with previous versions only supporting the Xbox 360.
Only unlocked hard drives are supported, as the contents of locked hard drives cannot be read or modified by any software. In order to use a FATXplorer-formatted hard drive with unmodified or software modified Xboxes, the user must lock the hard drive using a hard drive locking utility. Before using an already-locked hard drive with FATXplorer, it must be unlocked first, using a hard drive unlocking utility.
SATA and IDE hard drives are supported. All SATA-to-IDE adapters that work with Windows will work with FATXplorer.
Using FATXplorer
- On a Windows PC, download and extract FATXplorer 3.0 Beta.
Troubleshooting
- Apps, emulators, or other homebrew do not work with a hard drive that was recently formatted with FATXplorer
- This issue may occur if the software you are trying to run makes use of the cache partitions (X, Y, and Z partitions), but does not format them if they are unformatted.
- A workaround is to simply play a retail Xbox game (not homebrew). The retail game will format the cache partitions. This fixes the issue permanently, so you can use any apps, emulators, or other homebrew. You only need to play a retail game once, because once the cache partitions are formatted, they do not need to ever be formatted again.
- FATXplorer creates the cache partitions but does not format the cache partitions; it leaves that task for the first Xbox game you play. A future version of FATXplorer will format the cache partitions so that people do not experience this issue when running some Xbox software without playing a game first.
- When trying to unmount the hard drive, FATXplorer says that the drive is being used
- This can usually be ignored, meaning you can just unmount the drive anyways.
- This issue seems to be caused by having any Windows Explorer window open, even if the window is not viewing a directory on the Xbox hard drive. So, you can close all instances of Windows Explorer, and FATXplorer will no longer say that the drive is in use.