What if my DVD drive breaks or I get the ring of death After opening your xbox, you are pretty much on your own here. The warranty sticker must be broken to get into the dvd drive so once its opened, there is no sending it back to MS.
Is this a mod chip? No. I do not solder anything into your xbox. It does not allow you to run your own code. It is just a modified firmware that is on the dvd drive itself.
Ok, So what can i do with this? This mod allows you to play backup (burned) games. All you need to burn a game is the correct game image on your computer, a dual layer dvd burner that supports bitsetting (most seem to now), and some Dual Layer DVDs.
Will this work on my xbox? There is currently 3 drives used in the Pro/Core xbox’s: Phillips (BenQ), Samsung (MS25 and 28), and a series of Toshiba drives. In the elite there is only Phillips and Samsung. You can determine what drive you have easily by going to: http://www.xboxversions.com/images/360drives.jpg. If you have a Samsung you have the easiest to do and the safest. Toshiba is modable but you are at risk due to the technical aspects of this drive.
Will I get banned? There is ALWAYS a risk of getting banned by modifying your console. With a Samsung drive, the only real way is that MS issues a kernel update (Usually twice a year) that will cause different checks. Samsung drives have no way of running checks to determine if your firmware is modified so playing normal games will not get you banned (99% sure). The latest ban checks were some Toshiba drives had a sector on them where MS could run code and check to see if your firmware was modded. The latest software checks were things such as speed checking you drive to make sure it was reading the disc at the correct speed, disc size checks, and the latest was if the new firmware did not boot your game becuase it was patched wrong, it would have a log it and send it to MS. All these have been fixed with the latest firmware but there is always a risk of a ban.