Xbox:DVD2Xbox

Circumventing DRM mechanisms and/or creating backup copies of games and media for personal use is a right granted only in some countries. It is your sole responsibility to stay up to date with the law in your respective country. The information provided within this wiki is solely educational and its editors take no responsibility for the use or misuse of this information.

DVD2Xbox is an application which allows an Xbox to dump any DVD / CD to its own hard drive. It supports UDF / ISO9660 / CDDA discs, including Xbox games. It will also patch your game backups automatically, avoiding incompatibilities with the Xbox's FATX filesystem and removing checks that would otherwise prevent them from running via folders on your console's HDD.

Disc dumping is also possible via a PC, but only with very particular hardware. Refer to the Redump wiki for more information.

It's highly recommended to use DVD2Xbox over other game dumping software, as it applies patches needed to run some games correctly!

Dumping Games

1. Launch DVD2Xbox, and insert your game disc. Wait for it to recognize your game, then press A to select Copy DVD/CD to Harddisk.
2. Choose your Copy Mode by pressing Y:
   1. Normal directly copies files from your disc to your Xbox's file system.
   2. ISO Ripper creates split ISO files containing the disc's data. Total size taken is about equal to the actual disc's capacity.
3. Choose the directory you would like the game to be stored in (eg F:\Games\), and press A.
4. Press Start to begin the backup.

Patching Games

So long as Enable ACL processing is enabled under Settings => General, DVD2Xbox automatically patches games during the "Normal" backup process. While most games only require generic patches to run from a folder on Xbox hard disk drive (assuming they even require any patches at all), some require unique tweaks to be written specifically for them. The instructions DVD2Xbox uses to apply these are provided within text-based Action Control List (ACL) files, which are placed within the acl subfolder of your DVD2Xbox installation.

The correct name for each ACL can be determined by looking up a game's saves via XBMC's save manager. For instance, the Australian (PAL) version of "Rugby League" has a patch file available with the title of 48450001.acl, needed in order for the game to run from a folder or to launch on an NTSC Xbox. If that file isn't available, DVD2Xbox falls back to the generic patches found in default.acl: which aren't sufficient to correctly patch that particular game.

If a game fails to launch after dumping it via DVD2Xbox, check to see if you have a specific ACL file for it. If not, you may be able to locate a copy online that you can FTP over to your system before trying the dump again. If you already have such a file, you might instead try removing it.

ACLs may also be used to remove unnecessary files from games, such as publisher intro videos, trailers for other titles, or non-English language data: the more aggressive the rip, the more disk space is saved. DVD2Xbox even includes a collection of tiny "blank" media files within its dummyfiles directory, which can be used as "replacers" for games which fail to run after simple "deletions".

If you wish to allow or prevent ACLs from moving / removing files in this way, then under Settings => General, toggle Enable ACL RM/MV/EP accordingly. Note that enabling this feature does nothing unless you're actually using ACLs that're coded to rip out files!

A list of files that're considered safe for removal can be found here. Those who wish to try their hand at creating patch files for themselves can read up on the ACL format here.

ISO Dumping

When dumping games in "ISO Ripper" mode, DVD2Xbox creates one or more image files at the specified location. Contrary to what the name suggests, full disc content is saved, with no patching or removal of files: this usually requires ~6.6GB of storage per game. The FATX file system used by the Xbox only supports individual files of up to 4GB in size, so games are split across multiple ISOs as need be.

A default.xbe file is placed alongside the image files, allowing dashboards to detect and launch the dump. This is done by mounting the ISO(s) as a virtual D (DVD) drive, and then launching the default.xbe found within the image.

A benefit to dumping games in this manner is that they'll launch as they do from their original discs: for a rare few games that're coded to run from disc-only, suitable ACL patch files may be hard to find (if they even exist at all); ISO loading provides a "one size suits all" solution to the problem.

A downside to ISO dumping is that it makes it harder to apply patches you may want. For example, XBMC's Flicker Filter Patcher feature is commonly used to reduce visual blur in games: when launching an ISO-based dump, the dashboard will apply its patch to the ISO mounting XBE, as opposed to the actual game executable, which is hidden away within the image file(s). These can be repacked using a PC, however, which in most cases will additionally reduce the ISO file sizes dramatically. Notes on packing / unpacking xISOs should be written to another article and then linked from here.

ISO mounting additionally requires BIOS level support. Systems modded using Rocky5's Xbox Softmodding Tool have this out of the box: most modchipped / TSOP flashed consoles do not. More notes on ISO loading should be written to another article and then linked from here.

Troubleshooting

If you recently updated DVD2Xbox or messed with skins, DVD2Xbox may not launch correctly. You may be able to fix this by deleting the following folders using a file manager, and then rebooting: E:\TDATA\0facfac0 and E:\UDATA\0facfac0.