XBONE Xbox One Durango Prototype Beta Only - Faulty HDD

[ThomasAdr]

Hello, i recently got an Xbox One Durango Prototype Beta Only but it seems the HDD didnt like the travel (according to the seller, everything was working fine when he sent it).
Except of that, the Xbox arrived thankfully in perfect condition. What happens exactly, is the console power up, i can hear the HDD clicking, i have a "Durango" logo in Ascii art apprearing on screen, then the console turn off. I think as the HDD is most likely faulty, the Console just cant boot on the OS.

So, in order to make it work again is it somewhere where i could find the Durango Xbox One OS i could install on a new HDD and a procedure to do it? Does someone else already faced the same issue ?

Thanks a lot !

 

[Damien]

This sounds like a Zebra XDK, they sadly have no means to be restored at this moment in time and most are supposed to be destroyed.

No recoveries/sdk has leaked that I'm aware off, not that we can link those here.

I would see if you can get the HDD repaired, as this seems to be the only option there is. If you can, make sure to take an image of the drive. It's also possible, that the nand has failed but as you said there's a clicking HDD it appears this is most likely the cause.

 

[ThomasAdr]

This sounds like a Zebra XDK, they sadly have no means to be restored at this moment in time and most are supposed to be destroyed.

No recoveries/sdk has leaked that I'm aware off, not that we can link those here.

I would see if you can get the HDD repaired, as this seems to be the only option there is. If you can, make sure to take an image of the drive. It's also possible, that the nand has failed but as you said there's a clicking HDD it appears this is most likely the cause.

Yes indeed, mine is regular black with some identification sticker on it, so it dont have the zebra look, but i think it's exactly the same thing but manufactured 1-2 month after the zebra one (end of May 2013). I know those are rather easy to find so i guess i might not be the only one owning one here. If someone else own one and have a clone of the HDD or anything else (which i would highly recommand to do as those HDD are becoming abit old now), i would be very happy to have it .

I'll also try to see if i can do anything to fix it yes, but the success rate of getting anything from a clicking drive who wont boot is rather low ! Probably some companies could do something with it but it would cost more than several of those units . That said, according to the guy who sold it to me, it's possible that the HDD contains some test builds of games, as the machine was used for testing purposes before the launch of the Xbox One.

 

[Rei]

Hey all, chiming in because I’ve worked with a few early Durango/XDK units.

From your description (ASCII “Durango” splash, HDD clicking, then power-off), the drive is very likely the blocker. On some early kits, parts of the OS lived on eMMC while other bits lived on the HDD, and the exact split varied by batch. In certain cases a transplant using unit-specific config + other components from the original NAND/eMMC onto a known-good base has brought a kit back to life, but it’s not guaranteed and really depends on how closely things match on that specific unit.

I don’t want to post instructions, but hands-on inspection would help a lot to confirm what’s stored where and whether a donor path is even viable.

A couple of tips in the meantime:

• avoid power-cycling a clicking drive; if there’s any chance of unique test content on it, that can make things worse.
• if you can, take a straight, read-only image of the disk before trying anything else. That preserves options for professional recovery later.

If you’re considering moving it on, I’d like to buy it and attempt a proper restoration myself
DM me if that works and figure out what makes sense