if i was to take another xbox, install an exploit on it so an auto installer would boot from the cd, remove the hard drive while the system is on and then install the ms dashboard to a new and bigger hdd do you guys think this method would work? or will it badly hurt the hdd or xbox itself? thank you

It would work if you could hot swap the drive, in other words, the drive would at least have to be powered up before switching the IDE cable. You can't have one drive powered up and switch the IDE cable and the power cable, the system would either lock up, shut down, or cause somebad corruption on the disk, or disks. I am assuming your also talking about a softmod as well. I use Ltools with a computer, after installing an exploit on the xbox, with evox I run the back up command to get the eeprom.bin file and get a copy of the c and e drive on my computer. Then I make the Ltools boot disk with my c and e and eeprom.bin file along the ude 1.4 package in their appropriate places. I install the blank hd in the computer with no other hard drives and boot the Ltools disk then I follow the instructions included with the Ltools download files and build a new disk from scratch. Then reboot and run the ude command to install the exploit, bios loader, bios and dashboard of choice. reboot again, this time choosing linux with locking and unlocking tools and run the command to lock the hard drive with your eeprom.bin file. Once it's done, shut everything down, put your computer back the way it was, install the new hd into the xbox and enjoy.

WoW thx alot for your reply sad. Ill try and see if i can do your method.