a little while ago my father took my 360 and smashed it by throwing it on the wall onces and the floor about 3 times. this action resulted in the whole case with the exception of the botoom side plate which is connected to the center with screws came off included both top and bottom vent plates, hard drive, faceplate, on of the side plates that is not connected with screws, and also the eject button. luckily there was no damage to the hard drive and some damage was done to the other parts listed above, so i was able to put the whole thing back together to find out that it still worked. the only problem was that the disk drive or also known as the optical drive would not even read any cds. i would open it, put in a cd, then it would say that nothing was in there and simply say open tray. i am assuming that the optical drive was destroyed or at least mis aligned and that is what i need to fix. there are some bits of the faceplate which are missing like the little black mirror that detects wireless controllers and the side pannels have multiple cracks aswell which dont really make a differance on the 360s performance since it still works because i have tried it. i was also lucky to remember that my friend has a spare 360 because he bought a new one when it got red ring of death. so i am going to take his 360 and switch parts with it. i was obviously going to be able to take the vent plates, side pannels, and faceplate without any problem. but my only concern is the optical drive. the one i am going to take parts from is the first 20gb 360 that came out and mine is a 60gb 360 that i got 1-2 years ago when they first came out. i also understand that i must change my optical drive with an exact copy of it. so my question is is there a differance in our optical drives since we have differend "models" of 360s, and also since that 360 suffers from rrod, does the rrod affect the optical drive or does it affect something else. i have made a deal with my father, so hell let me play when summer comes so i have alot of time to fix it. i reallllllly appreciate the help. thank you for your answers
actually i bought it

Your dad is nuts. He needs to go to anger management. That said, yes you can create a sort of Frankenstein XBOX 360 the RRD is not a big deal at all you should check if your friend's XBOX still has a warranty (call microsoft 1800-4MY-XBOX) or check online (www.xbox.com). Maybe just maybe your friend's XBOX is still in warranty and you may be able to get it fixed by Microsoft. Then just switch HDD and you are set to go. If not then go ahead and make the FrankenBOX.

thats nuts for him to buy it for u and then smash it tell him to not buy u anything if he thinks ur gonna act stupid man...

RROD is overheating of the CPU. So, his drive should be ok. The drive are likely different, but probably are interchangable. The guys at xbox-scene.com will have the best support for you.