So, I'm new to this but I'm having trouble finding helpful information on backing up without kreon flashed drive. I tried backing up Half Life 2 Orange with wxripper and a sony dvd drive that I took the top off of. I tried to follow the guide created by textbook. This setup seems to work ok but I get a read error while dumping the game to an ISO. He suggests changing the 3rd line of the layout in wxripper to dummy and this makes sense since it is in the 3rd section that i get a read error. When I try this and then load the ISO in DVDMulleter10.2 it says it is missing the video data so I assume this is from the section that I changed to dummy instead of copy?

I found the ss.bin file somewhere but when I tried to load it with my ISO in DVDMulleter it said they didn't match. I could really use some advice from someone that ripps without a kreon flashed drive as I do not plan on investing in one (it's not my 360, I'm helping a friend). Is there a standard place to get these ss.bin/stealth files or is that taboo to mention? I've found some other tutorials but no one that I've read seems to address what to do if you encounter "bad sectors", read errors, whatever you want to call them.

Thanks so much
- James

Hi, I just wanted to update this to help other people if they suck at this as much as I do. I got it to work thanks to the amazingness of the DVDMulleter.

First I tried using wxripper by inserting 'Gladiator' in my Samsung S203B and using the emergency eject hole, but every time I did this it said 'hotswap dvd is not big enough'. Then I modified my Sony DVD Writer to be able to easily take the top off while it is on. I used this hotstap method with gladiator and put in my half life 2 DVD. I then spun up the DVD and found the magic number just as described in textbook's tutorial.

I saved the layout of my DVD to a file and edited it with notepad in order to change the 'C' on the third line to a 'D'. I needed to do this because I got errors while copying that information in the third area of data. If I understand from other peoples posts -- if there is a read error in a section other than the 3rd or maybe 1st, then it is probably a scratch or actual problem with the disc.

I reloaded the layout file in wxripper and dumped to an .ISO

When I loaded the ISO in DVDmulleter10.2Beta it told me I was missing the video information and asked if I wanted to patch it. I said 'yes' but it asked me to browse for a video.iso file so I then selected 'no'.

It then asked me if I wanted to fix the PFI information and I said 'yes'. It did this automatically. I went to the 'CRC Checking ' tab in DVDMulleter and did autofix which downloaded a video.iso file and then proceeded to patch a bunch of files and add information to my ISO. It told me i passed the stealth check and then I ran the game data check which took a few minutes. I then reloaded my ISO in DVDMulleter and it said I had ixtreme compatibility. Woot!

No idea if the backup will work yet, but thanks to DVDMulleter for making such a well thought out and complete program.

just get a Kreon drive.

Oh . . . thanks . . .

Actually, now that I have this figured out it's really very easy to backup with the hotswap method. If I actually owned this 360 maybe I would consider buying a kreon drive... But I'm happy with this + DVDMulleter now that I understand what is going on. Works great! Backups play great. Good on the whole xbox community for their work on all this.