Xbox Series X SSD Replacement & Cloning Experiments

[@loplos2242]

The first rule of clones is to never clone a clone

[@ModernVintageGamer]

i believe that there's a custom ASIC that is preventing this .

[@ultraenergy313]

Wow even MVG is watching this. Mistakes weren't made.

[@BlaineOliver]

Could it just be that the sabrent drive uses 4k sectors only and doesnt do 512 byte emulation? I had this issues where I couldn't clone to a sabrent because of this. Unrelated to it being in an Xbox.

[@bezimienny5149]

Wow, hi MVG

[@WhiteG60]

@@BlaineOliver I had a similar issue with this drive going into a 2017 MBP. It refused to see the drive to the point that I thought it was dead. Put it in a Windows machine and it worked fine, though. I formatted it, deleted the volume and put it back in the Mac and it worked fine from then on.

[@verpejas]

@@bezimienny5149 pozdrawiam ;))

[@Wink_FingerGun]

Why didn’t you attempt to clone the series S on to the 1tb and see if that allowed you to increase storage size?

[@NorthridgeFix]

invaluable information and nicely executed.

[@leggomyeggo9088]

I value the information 💯😎

[@Tronicsfix]

Thanks for stopping by!

[@windowsxpprofessional]

Hey northridge fix

[@solidsnakeandgrayfox]

Love your videos north ridge

[@johny1220]

Yoooo it’s Alex! 😄🥳

[@sigma682]

Cloning will also partition it exactly the same as the cloned hard drive, so a 1TB SSD cloned from a Series S’s 512GB SSD will show up as a 512GB, not 1TB. You may be able to partition and format the excess space on a PC.

[@naaitsab]

As it's a PCI-e based SSD (NVMe) it interfaces at a different level with the CPU/chipset then SATA. I've seen quite a lot of laptops getting stuck at CPU initialization (no image output or anything) because of a faulty NVMe SSD. Keep that in mind when testing consoles/PCs

[@DaTruAndi]

As others have noted, you should have used a better cloning tool. Just get some USB to m.2 NVME type enclosures or use a computer with multiple SSD slots and clone with a Linux distribution. Also gives you the opportunity to analyze the partition layout, and so on.

[@retrogamereviews7323]

One thing to try with the new SSD, put it into the Xbox as it is and let the Xbox create the partition table and "bless" the drive (if the Xbox even turns on). Then try to clone it with the donor drive.....

[@Tig3rj]

Won't work..People on Reddit have already tried it...It just turns on and off again as was shown in the video when he just swapped them. People even tried to partition them as NTFS and GPT and tried...same thing...Even tried to do the external USB Files and try to boot into recovery as you did on Xbox One..No go. I haven't been able to find anything on even replacing the internal drive. People state you want a bigger drive? Buy the external one to plug it in!!

[@AbdurazakZakieRamedies]

@@Tig3rj what about a full clean without partition the hard with diskpart and clean the drives?

[@Tig3rj]

@@AbdurazakZakieRamedies The 1TB drive is already like that when he took it out of the package..thus he then tried to initialize it..All drives are pretty much zero sector and not partitioned new in package.

[@TheCod3r]

Awesome Steve, really covering all bases here 😁

[@IslamicTalksPodcast]

Love you 🇵🇸❤️

[@michaeldunn5788]

Im guessing the issue is Sabrent 512e vs 4k sectors. I'm guessing Sabrent is still using 512e sectors. He needs to use a tool Sabrent makes to change the sectors in order to clone that SSD.

[@trooper2708]

'There is nothing that ties the ssd to the motherboard' Microsoft : hmm interesting

[@mspeter97]

Was the same with the Xbox One.

[@robertt9342]

It’s not like they hadn’t tied it before, like in the OG xbox and to a lesser extent 360. I am hoping that MS isn’t going to go back to locking it down again.

[@jefferygrantham5582]

While MS didn't "lock" the drive from being read externally, they could have tied the drive/partition table signatures of the SSD to each box SS and SX. That could have potentially been copied to the replacement from the donor by the cloner. That would explain why the SX didn't boot with the donor drive prior to cloning.

[@solidsnake6405]

The fact that it won't boot with another xboxs ssd tells me that it does in fact have a software key lock just like the 360 did. And just like the 360 those hard drives had to be cloned or hacked to get their key on to a different hdd. The xbox one would still boot under these test conditions, but you'd have to reinstall the software from a USB drive or the internet to fully boot.

[@whatif8741]

@@mspeter97 that was fixed in a patch though

[@cdurkinz]

I have a Nintendo Switch that collects a lot of dust as you might imagine, recently went to mess with it and it wouldn't turn on or charge or anything. Was able to take it apart and test a bunch of things, thought maybe the USB C port died from a couple very short drops it's had while in the dock, but ended up just replacing the battery which brought it back to life. Thanks to your vids!

[@notafantbh]

Almost a million subs already, how fast this channel has grown in the last year

[@GforceMI1965]

Looks to me that the Sabrent SSD cloner can only handle cloning similar sized drives, unlike Acronis True Image which can resize/expand/shrink the target drive partition while cloning the source drive partition image, I bet if you used a new non Xbox SSD that's the exact same size it would work.

[@Beowulf6666]

yeah...what he said...just get a ssd hub...and use acronis to clone the drive contents....its a software issue, not hardware

[@LuisChavez-qq8sv]

I agree. Acronis or good old Symantec Ghost should work.

[@Jorti1boomboxvideos]

In a follow up video if you make one, can you clone the series s ssd onto a series x ssd to see if we can upgrade the storage? Since the series s ssd is only 512gb, you will create the world's first 1tb series s if it works

[@SandroSmith]

That was exactly my thoughts after viewing.

[@KevinCastillo-hh1fn]

@@SandroSmith x2

[@LarryNgetich]

Following

[@AxelStrife93]

That's what i was hoping to see in the video once he brought the series s out.

[@LarryNgetich]

Yeah, this SSD swap makes the most sense on the Series S

[@IbsenRogerGomesRego]

Hey, just one question: did you also clone the series S' SSD into the donor SSD? I REALLY REALLY want to expand my XSS' memory.

[@FranciscoGoodface]

you just won to post what I had in mind, to clone the small into the bigger :)

[@martinhammerton8157]

Was going to ask the exact same question

[@dopamine2655]

Don't think you will have much luck atm, 2230 SSD are rare and cost more than the console itself.

[@Adam20622]

@@dopamine2655 i think what he means is at the end where he put the series X card into the series S he didn’t clone the series S data over to the donor series X card so maybe it would work cloning the S card to the X first

[@Ultimagicarus]

1TB Series S!

[@david3199]

I do have to say it's nice that PS5 has the additional storage readily available(whenever they update it to work) and won't have to use a proprietary piece of hardware.

[@Disrek]

You should have cloned the 512gb xss ssd to a 1tb xsx ssd and check if that works

[@KennyChu]

It prob will. But the problem with those "physical" cloners is they don't clone to the full size. So you will prob end up with 512gb free partition on the 1tb drive

[@Rain_Zima]

you could probably clone it and expand the filesystem with clonezilla. Gparted would probably be a big help too.

[@eivis13]

@@KennyChu Just a thought - can't he clone the drive to get it booting then reformat via xss? Don't have either device but it's just a thought since you can format sd cards on any android phone with an microsd slot

[@chrisrutley1332]

@@KennyChu True, but he could get two separate NVME enclosures, hook them up to a PC, and try something like CloneZilla.

[@sirbonesalotdp]

Great Video. All of your videos are super helpful and you have gave me the courage to fix and repair instead of replacing. So far I've fixed my PS4 that was just paperweight that actually needed a new HDMI port and the perfect amount of thermal paste . Keep up the great work.

[@Tronicsfix]

Love hearing this! Nice work.

[@jasondowns2778]

It would've been nice to see the Series X (or S) go into recovery mode with a blank SSD, and if you can successfully recover one.

[@MIK33EY]

First time witnessing a tear down of the Series X - it’s definitely more cumbersome to take apart & put back together than what was implied in that Austin Evans Xbox “behind the scenes” pre-production preview video we got to see about 12 months ago. 😂😂

[@jarrettjacobs7873]

The Series S is a completely different console. You should have tried cloning the Series S SSD data to the 1TB SSD from the X and seen if that worked. *edit I also wanna see larger SSDs cloned and installed thru the Expansion Card slot. Since i would love to see one of the 7gb/s nvme SSDs installed through the expansion slot and get even faster loads speeds

[@ShamblerDK]

Those cloners are dependent on the target disk being equal to or larger than the source disk. SSDs from different brands will have small variations in available space thus in a lot of situations they'll "break" the functionality of the cloning tool.

[@MikeeVee]

Ahh, Friday, the best day of the week. I always look forward to these videos every week.

[@Tronicsfix]

Glad you like them!

[@Astristul]

Same for me! 😁

[@cooldw22]

Someone needs to come up with a universal caddy to insert into the Xbox Series expansion slot where you can use any m.2 card size in the caddy.

[@robert1547]

Damn that ssd is so small and so hard to get to. Edit: You Should've tested to clone the brand new ssd with the original ssd.

[@technicmasters7936]

I think that the problem with the clonning was that these cloners usually need 1 to 1 drives, so they need to have some things the same... like Partition scheme, File system and cluster size, maybe even tha name of it, not sure about that, try to put the cloned doner ssd in your computer and check it, maybe in the next video check what cluster size, partition scheme, and file size it has, and if you would replicate all of those parameters on the new ssd, it would maybe work, that would also make sense why the doner worked, because it had these things the same.

[@lgk82ramgb26]

I meant filesystem, not file size (writing this on my phone)

[@ThePenhalionsPost]

The XBox drives have a custom encrypted formatting that is tied to the pcb. It's similar to the drive lock in windows. Where the drive encryption is tied to your motherboard.

[@bpcgos]

SSD have a lot of varieties in them, from controller chip, Nand type and size etc. Maybe we will found it someday the one that truly match the series x ssd

[@jonathanpope8675]

I suspect MS are using a custom partition size to stop you cloning to a "normal" ssd, bigger than a regular ssd can take, you can imagine MS doing this by creating custom silicone. Reduces the support complexities but also stops repair (other than through a donor device). Great video. :)

[@killertruth186]

Sounds like they are trying to make it impossible to get 3rd party drives from being used internally.

[@robertt9342]

@@killertruth186 . Well they’d re then doing a pretty terrible job at it. They had done a better job with previous consoles and hardware restrictions.

[@hcpitcher]

i'm wondering using a xbox box one with a ssd to a m.2 adaptor and format the drive for xbox one then use that m.2 in a a cloner and maybe it will clone over to the replacement drive since it will see a form of a xbox filesystem.

[@ilya_mzp]

I doubt that was intentional. If they wanted to stop people from replacing SSDs, they would store SSD's serial number somewhere. Many SSDs differ in size by a bit, that makes it harder to clone them. You probably can find an SSD of the same size and it would probably work ok. I'm not sure if it would work with a bigger SSD. You might have more luck cloning it using a PC instead of this dedicated tool.

[@AlfaPro1337]

That's is literally an off the shelf 2230 M.2 SSD, I think it's PCIE based.

[@qlum]

A reason the cloning might not work is because while both sdd's are 1tb that does not mean they are exactly the same size so if the new one is just a tiny bit smaller, cloning may fail.

[@KOSMOS1701A]

man that thing is buried, you weren't kidding.

[@zurran00]

the problem is the model of nvme you are using. its has to be the NVMe PCIe 4.0 Equivalent drive. Also, you only need to clone the boot file manager. The S and X have different managers.

[@N_0_I_Z_E]

Try jamming an m.2 ssd in the expansion port on the back as far as I can see the pins should line up

[@TheCoolDave]

Hmmm.... would love to see 2-3tb options and that would be sold to me !

[@devnol]

Great video, but something you didn't try was cloning the 512gb drive from the s into the 1tb donor and then expanding the free space using some linux tool or something that could do that and see if that boots so you effectively end up with a 1TB Series S

[@TheCod3r]

This is very odd how it didn't work. I might need to investigate lol

[@TheCod3r]

Also, I'd say these will probably need to be partitioned before cloning onto a new ssd

[@Tronicsfix]

Possibly. I'm not sure what the issue was with the brand new SSD. I feel like it's something more than that but I don't know at this point.

[@TheCod3r]

@@Tronicsfix I definitely need to investigate, got my spider senses tingling but I do have a few ideas :)

[@IbsenRogerGomesRego]

Maybe cloning from a software could work?

[@technicallyreal]

I imagine the cloner didn't work with the off-the-shelf drive due to minor differences in actual capacity between them, or something along those lines. Ran into that before with 2 drives that appeared to be the same capacity but the new drive was very slightly smaller.

[@stevinnagle1]

No lie i love the way the xbox series x is built. Looks complicated but simple at the sametime.

[@tpj807]

It’d be really interesting to see how the SSD from a Seagate Xbox Expansion Card would work in the Series S, maybe having been used as an expansion first with the same console

[@jmugurr994]

To your comment at the end of the video, if you want to replaceyour Xbox ssd, you need to clone the ssd from that Xbox not from another one.

[@randallbro6749]

Interesting! Good info! I hadn't seen anyone try this!

[@jaycircuits]

Great vid. Just realized i didn't have your bell ON, not sure why. Its ON now.

[@Tronicsfix]

I appreciate that!

[@rrutter81]

pretty cool tests! i like how you show us what is or isnt capable doing these swaps.

[@mattiolli8644]

You can get the Western Digital 1TB SSD, which is also the right size. I've found it somewhere. It costs about $350 if I remember correctly.

[@thunderbyetronics]

I miss the buying big-lots and repairing them videos 😭.

[@twintwotastic3743]

Have you thought about cloning an external SSD card to see if it works? Cheers

[@kennethconnors5316]

you save us ALL so much time with your experimentation with these devices, so we do NOT have to find this out

[@musselicious]

Check on the computer if you can see what partitions and fileformat they have. When you have a new ssd you probably need to format it to the same filesystem before trying with the clone device. It all depends if the cloning device can clone no matter what is on the ssd. Would also be good if you can show us and compare what is on each ssd from Series X, Series S and PS5 if possible 😊👍🏻

[@nullmind]

That would be very interesting to see, hope he will make a video about it!

[@kamild_]

I was wondering why didn't he try to clone it on a PC, plenty of software to try that with, no?

[@mattfollowell6631]

That shouldn't matter. These cloning devices don't even read the partitions, they just copy the block data. That's why you are able to clone encrypted drives without decrypting them first. Well drives that are software encrypted that is.

[@Tronicsfix]

Yes, I did format it first to make sure it was formatted correctly.

[@musselicious]

@@mattfollowell6631 Yes I suspected that but never tried a cloning device like this one. Thanx for the info 😊👍🏻

[@jamesmoore7858]

Can you clone the series s ssd card to the 1TB from the x? Then put the cloned 1TB back in?

[@PenguinYayOne]

You can use the "dd" command on Linux to clone the SSD easily

[@diosyo8176]

I just went for the expansion xbox Ssd card of 1 tera and it works like a charm 😁

[@johncameron4194]

Just discovered you channel and am really enjoy it. Keep up the great work

[@madsn1852]

I'm here because I enjoy watching you repair when someone broke something.

[@awilliams1701]

It's crazy how hard it is to change. I thought it was bad on my computer. To get to them I would have to remove my video card (not trivial since it's in my liquid cooling loop) and then remove the motherboard heat sync. In this you have to fully disassemble it and even then some.

[@xtrasweet8890]

THIS IS BY FAR MY FAVORITE VIDEO! I LOVE THE TESTING! KEEP UP the GOOD WORK!

[@mangoppola]

When I have to clone drives reliably and quickly, I always get a linux distro (VM, live OS or full install) and use the command "dd". That will clone the drive bit to bit, so it's extra precise and realiable. You can also use some parameters to tune it and only make it copy a portion of the drive

[@SeriesXM]

I wish I had seen this video 2 weeks ago since this comment probably won't be seen now, but here goes... When I wanted to upgrade the storage of my Xbox One to an SSD, I noticed that there were some complicated guides, but I tried a different approach and had success. I first took the SSD and hooked it up externally to the Xbox and when prompted to use it as storage for media or format it, I chose the latter. I have a device similar to yours, but for sata drives, so I then took that formatted drive and cloned the original HDD to it with no issues. I was kind of surprised this worked so easily since I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. I hope someone can please try this with the Series X.

[@barnhartmd051977]

Question is when will they allow us to upgrade the ssd's? Or is there anyone out their smart enough to help bypass all this stuff so I can throw a 4tb in mine?

[@wolfpaws8985]

A lot of good information very detailed in processes involved also. Been watching your channel think for 2 year's now and some of the video's have helped me trouble shoot and to save money.

[@adapalis]

Replacing xbox drives has been a nightmare since xbox 360. no idea why, Sony has had this figured out from day one

[@Wahinies]

Xbox one not too bad I did have to reset but installed games remained with a drive taken from a broken console to a working one. For my next trick I will clone to a sata ssd

[@AlfaPro1337]

PS5 SSD is soldered to the board.

[@Tronicsfix]

Replacing the HDD on the X1X is actually pretty easy now. Wish that was true for the XSX

[@AlfaPro1337]

@@Tronicsfix I still think it's possible to replace the SSD on the XSX, it's using 'off-the-shelf' part. I think the next experiment is putting a 2280 PCIE SSD of the same capacity on the XSX.

[@adapalis]

@@AlfaPro1337 PS5 has a m.2 slot basically right behind the case, upgrading is possible without removing 30+ screws and tearing it down to actual motherboard. I mean the average consumer can replace the PS drives, on Xbox not even remotely.

[@chrisgreen521]

Good to know great video👍💯

[@b3ats]

Why didn’t you clone the ‘S’ SSD onto the ‘X’ SSD?

[@TheFirstRealChewy]

I'm sure this is just the beginning. What would be great is being able to use the expansion port.

[@okc405sfinest]

You should look into making a custom ssd memory card that's what everyone really wants

[@pauls635]

The main problem is the new drive is slightly smaller when you compare the exact mb on each drive. You can try to clone the Series S drive onto the new drive and that should work. Will like to see that video if possible. Even though it is different sizes, it should be good.

[@vnen]

I would also like to see a test with a blank SSD. Take the donor SSD, zero it out on the PC and try on the Xbox. Also maybe with some formatting going on. Now I also think it would be interesting to put the SSD in a PC and see how the partition scheme and filesystem look like.

[@chriscarter4461]

Love your videos and all the knowledge you give your viewers:)

[@sparkz1554]

Considering SSD's have limited write cycles I'm glad to see the internal SSD is replaceable. In the future I can see them being easy enough to replace once Microsoft's deal with Seagate expires and they just update the firmware so it can be user replaceable. That being said I'm going to skip this ps5 model as the storage is soldered to the board and I expect it would not be cheap to get a new one soldered back on. Hopefully the newer model fixes this.

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

doubt it, that deal has been going since 2009, both sony and microsoft use seagate, initially they had hitachi or toshiba. but both are seagate

[@sparkz1554]

@@NonsensicalSpudz yeah, they will most likely continue to do business. I was just thinking of the contract they might have with the external expansion card. But by then 3rd parties would probably have there own external drive so disassembling the console wouldn't be needed anyway.

[@michaeldunn5788]

Sabrent use to use 512e sectors on Nvme ssd's so they could not be cloned easily. Sabrent makes a took to change the sectors to 4k....... But I never got it to work. I'm guess that's the issue.

[@Tronicsfix]

Interesting...good to know.

[@fabianslyszewski2132]

Steve this is sick keep the amazing video up

[@WarriorProphet]

According to the cloner documentation it won't clone in offline mode if the target disk is smaller than the source disk even by 1mb, it won't even try. Plug it in by USB and see if Acronis can image it over. Cool video though. Good to know it works kind of.

[@SpeedyGoneFroglegs]

The reason I haven't bought a new system. 1TB was pathetic last gen, it's a crying shame with current game sizes.

[@coincollectingtime821]

I forgot to mention that I am A huge fan, even though I got interested in your channel 3 months ago.

[@brkngaming5549]

This is first video i watch on this channel, nice job sir..👍

[@deadly134]

Noooo I want to see someone make an ssd to fit in the expandable storage not the Xbox itself!

[@gruntes11isttt]

If the ssd dies how can it be replaced, is there like a generic boot os that can be put on any ssd that the xbox can sign and make it unique.

[@thealien_ali3382]

Xbox made such a missed opportunity, they could have easily allowed people to change the internal SSD, and have some flap accessing the drive

[@saifalameeri]

We want 2 videos a day

[@muaries12]

Nice to see the SSD is not married to the xbox. Maybe the xbox didnt turn on originally because of outated OS and efuse? The larger ssd is phisically different. It Would never clone Great video steve!

[@TheOldest]

Already better than Sony's SSD installation on PS5 because it's not directly saudered to the board, that's called future proofing people.

[@zakixbox]

You're the first one doing this! Thanks ^^

[@HamoSenpai]

excellent video friend, in a time where everything is obsolete, this is the best option to repair change and improve the SSDSSD on the great Xbox series x,a great console that I loved for its repairability

[@zcalot]

Even the sponsors are great

[@FreakyBeaRTV]

Man I wish u were nearby, or in my country. Your console repairing skills is tooo good

[@FreakyBeaRTV]

@Tronicsfix u also doing international service?

[@FreakyBeaRTV]

@Tronicsfix cool, i saved ur contact

[@Tronicsfix]

That’s not me. They’re a SCAMMER. You can tell because I’m verified and they aren’t.

[@FreakyBeaRTV]

@@Tronicsfix aaahhh luckily I havent contact. wait but did u also do international service?

[@antonioramirez4671]

Could need a software update or it could be married to the motherboard the ssd

[@SteveCowboys55]

How come you didn't clone the Xbox Series S SSD to the Donor SSD and then try... or would it resulted in the same outcome as trying to clone the donor SSD to the new SSD?

[@Hthebiller]

there is a small 1tb ssd. linustechtips did a video on it a while back.

[@CameronGrumet]

Yup. Put one in my surface laptop 3.

[@Tronicsfix]

Yes, there is one but not widely available or easy to purchase.

[@CameronGrumet]

@@Tronicsfix Huh I got mine pretty easily

[@random_gamer_guy82]

Just a small question, you do know how to put together the beast surely 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️

[@aftab277]

So does that mean a drive failure will also give that symptom of turning on and off? I have the same issue with my one s (with drive) the repair guy couldn't figure it out, sure it might be some other component failure but this video gives me a doubt that a drive can also cause the the same symptom.

[@biohazarddream710]

Like many others said it would of been cool to see you clone the series s ssd to the x ssd to see if you could expand the storage. Its not practical but would be cool to see. Also maybe use a pc program to clone the new off the shelf ssd and see if that works! Good content!

[@alexanderjohansson2671]

This. Could be a limit to the cloner he used, as a software should be able to properly clone it.

[@raymorin7726]

I thought id take a drink every time he said ssd but now im wasted what a miscalculation

[@shadowflyerFX]

You know your stuff :) Great job!!!

[@Tronicsfix]

Hey, thanks!

[@jairoalexandermaldonadogon2966]

Muchas gracias por compartir las experiencias de tus pruebas, son de mucha ayuda.

[@antoinesteam9939]

Very interesting! Good job

[@SoheiJayce]

What's the max capacity the Series X can do? Cuz I know the Xbox Ones can do 2tb and maybe more on internal storage swaps.

[@jack_crutons]

Your videos are so cool as a person who has 0 knowledge of PC hardware

[@sobertillnoon]

That's an insane amount of work to get at the SSD

[@nicholascarithers2297]

need to make sure both xboxes have the same firmware and the ssd swap might work.

[@vinumsabbathi4207]

He should have tried cloning the 512gb to the 1tb and seeing if you could upgrade the series s to 1tb!

[@giancarlolugo7048]

Something you could have tried was to clone the Series S drive into the donor drive and try if it works. if it did then the next step could have been to resize the partitions after you clone it and see if it works again.

[@squallneko5004]

That was very informative. If I ever get my hands on a new gen xbox I would know what to do

[@killertruth186]

I guess that Microsoft had purposely choose that size of SSD on purpose so that way it would be harder to replace it. Since it isn't a standard NVMe SSD.

[@dankolord]

is it the same as the one on the PS5?

[@AlfaPro1337]

What? That's a 2230 M.2 form factor. It's pretty much within the M.2 specification.

[@dred05m61]

Interesting video on the technology of the Xbox 20th anniversary. 1 experiment has been missed: namely cloning 1tb from the Xbox SX --> use 500gb SSD from the Xbox SS as source and the clone it on the 1tb SSD. I wonder if it is possible to have the Xbox Series S (SS) equipped with an 1tb SSD.