Introduction

Top TWO things to back up

Hard drive key
Especially users of soft-mods. If worse comes to worst, having this information may be necessary prevent the need to purchase something (either a mod chip or a hard drive with the Xbox operating system, not sold separately from an Xbox) in order to fix whatever problem went from worse to worst.
EEPROM
Especially needed by anybody who flashes a BIOS (writes to the TSOP), for reasons that anyone planning to flash a BIOS should probbaly become familiar with before performing such an action.

Definitely back up these two important things which I do believe are unique to each Xbox and therefore absolutely can NOT be obtained elsewhere on the Internet.

Don't be cocky and consider backups unimportant. Some of this is small and easy to back-up.

Backing Up is very important on the Xbox

When hacking an Xbox, mistakes are easy to make. Many people have managed to repair their Xbox using techniques that were only as quick, and in some cases as cheap and as possible, as they did only because they backed up information from their Xbox.

This belief is widely held by the experts, both those who have had troubles and the others who have simply heard time and time again of those who have had troubles. For example, the first two things listed on BenJeremy's Things You Must Know About The Xbox has to do with... backing up! I often do not back up data on my computer, but after seeing enough horror stories I was compelled to back up as soon as I could.

I suppose this makes sense with mod-chips. My only disagreement with this is when soft-modding, because in that case the modding process is several steps and I would instead recommend backing up critical information from the hard drive DURING the modding process. The first thing to back up is the first thing you can back up.

Backing up is a process. On an unmodded Xbox and using official Microsoft-endorsed equipment, the only thing that can be backed up are saved games of games that do not place restrictions against copying in the saved data. After some hacking, access will be gained to other very important things (like the hard drive key) that should be backed up, and some data which isn't as important to have a backup of (like partition size information). Because backing up can be done in stages, there are multiple times when backing up is recommended.

Backing up is not just a process that is designed for those who are overly safe and/or paranoid, but in some cases may be required to ensure there is no data loss (such as backing up a legitimate saved game for an exploitable commercial game before writing a hacked saved game designed to exploit that commercial game), and backing up is also highly encouraged to make repairing problems a much easier and/or more possible task.

This page lists the things which are good to back up, listed roughly in the order that things can be backed up, and this page also describes why the data is useful so that a reader can understand the usefulness and/or importance of backing up the data sooner rather than later.

When hacking an Xbox, especially when soft-modding an Xbox, it is easy to make a mistake. I myself, in messing with some hacks, have many times made my Xbox unable to run unsigned code. I have made a couple of other people's Xboxes unable to boot the dashboard. Fortunately I advised them of the risk involved and they told me to proceed, and even more fortunately I was able to repair the problem.

What to back up

Some of this may depend a bit on:

Ease
Some stuff is smaller, and therefore easier, to back up. Fortunately this includes some of the most critical things to back up, such as the Hard Drive Key, the EEPROM, and the less important sound track index which may have taken some time to make.
Time
Are you in a hurry to complete the project of soft modding at somebody else's house?
Ability
Backing up the partition images may require quite a bit of knowhow.
Uniqueness/Value of data
Saved games that took a long time to make are likely more highly valued than saved games or a sound track index where there was not a bunch of time making it.

On my Xbox, I backed up everything. On other people's Xboxes, I may E-Mail them the hard drive key, and instruct them to grab the EEPROM when they are at home, but I let them back up the rest once they get home. I do act carefully to not destroy other people's data, but I'm not that concerned over someone else's saved game to be downloading all their saved games to my computer and offering to transfer them over the Internet to their computer. They are welcome to just transfer it to their computer once they get home.

Here is a general list of things that should/could be backed up, listed roughly in the order that a person can back these things up as they go through the soft-modding process.

An old list: