Hi .friends!!

I just ditched my PS2 and now have the old xbox and some burnt games. although it isnt chipped or modded lol.. I had these games for years, after buying them from a friend when his xbox died. Just kept them in a box, as knew they would be handy some day. I havent even played an old xbox before to be honest.. I dont have a clue about them.

Can some kind soul please tell me the quickest way to soft mod this. After looking on youtube and doing some quick googling I see there are a few ways to do the softmods, but most things I read are very old, so I need a more modern take on the ways this can be soft modded. Am looking something that maybe doesnt require buying anything like action replay.... did I hear there is a way this can be done that requires swapping the hard drive out and into a pc with both systems running?.. is this possible?

Also important question, how do I swap out the hard drive for a bigger one.. actually the hard drive in it is making a jingling sound, so I am afraid it may fail soon. Will this make the xbox useless? I heard the hard drive has boot files on it... can someone explain more to me about this, and how I can replace for a new drive, and what sizes etc.

Also one other thing I noticed. Why is the games smaller on the xbox. For example you can burn 3 or 4 games to one single layer DVD. I never seen that shit on PS2. When I look at the burn surface of single games I notice that almost all the games are pretty small, like 2 gigs or something, whereas my PS2 burnt disk have a much bigger burn area. I looked up GTA: San Andreas on the torrents and it is only 2 or 3 gigs, but on PS2 it is bigger it seems... why is this?

Also can this console do 720p, the component cables on ebay are 50 quid.. but only 10 quid on amazon. Anyone tell me whats the difference and should I buy the amazon one?.. is component worth it, or maybe just RGB wire instead?

Cheers for any feedback