General Disc Dumping

This dumping guide is for:

• Any CD format, including (but not limited to): most console games, Audio CD, and PC games (DiscImageCreator also supports dumping games with the following copy protection: SecuRom 3, CDS100, CDS200, Label Gate, XCP).
• DVD based formats including: PlayStation 2, PC games on DVD-Rom, and DVD-Video. Incompatible discs include DVD-Audio. DiscImageCreator also covers Xbox original, and Xbox 360.
• Blu-Ray / BD-Rom: PlayStation 3 (partial, no decryption key extraction).

For other systems and formats, please see the sidebar list.

Our recommended tool for dumping discs is Aaru. Aaru produces a deduped and compressed image which is built for preservation purposes, and can be converted to many other formats for different use cases.

However, if you are dumping a disc to submit to redump.org, they currently only support DiscImageCreator dumps.

We recommend using Media Preservation Frontend (MPF) as the frontend for both methods, as it comes prepackaged with both Aaru, DiscImageCreator, and DD.

1. MPF with Aaru
2. MPF with DiscImageCreator
3. Aaru - command line

• Download and install Media Preservation Frontend (MPF).
• Go to Tools→Options
• Set Aaru as your “Dumping Program”

• Press “Scan for disks” to refresh the UI with details about the disc you're about to dump
• You are now ready to dump with Aaru. Press “Start Dumping”

For dump information added to redump.org, it is currently necessary to use DiscImageCreator. Please see their dumping guides for more information about DiscImageCreator and how to submit information to the redump.org database.

Download and install/unzip Aaru for your supported system here: https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru/releases.

For now, use version 5.3 LTS. Do not use any 6.0 pre-releases!

Aaru has its own image format that's deduped and compressed, and can be converted into a myriad of other compatible formats. It stores almost every aspect of the disc, so we recommend using this tool for preservation purposes, and then you can convert your resulting image to another format for other uses.

To run Aaru using the command line, you simply put your disc in your compatible drive, and run the following command (with d: being your DVD drive and e: being an external drive you use for storing dumps):

aaru media dump d: e:\GAMENAME.aaruf

To verify your dump against other existing dumps, you can then look into the resulting GAMENAME.cicm.xml to find all information needed such as size, hashes, etc. Make sure you look at the right set of information - for multi-track hashes on redump.org, for instance, information is stored per “Tracks”, not the whole image.

So look into your GAMENAME.cicm.xml file and you will find something similar to this, which you can then verify against other existing hashes in databases such as redump.org:

    <Track>
      <Image format="BINARY">GAMENAME.aaruf</Image>
      <Size>3602317312</Size>
      <Sequence>
        <TrackNumber>1</TrackNumber>
        <Session>1</Session>
      </Sequence>
      <StartSector>0</StartSector>
      <EndSector>1758943</EndSector>
      <TrackType>mode1</TrackType>
      <BytesPerSector>2048</BytesPerSector>
      <Checksums>
        <Checksum type="adler32">29f96122</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="crc16">74be</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="crc32">0ae99f85</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="crc64">28cf6ffab5d0f917</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="md5">e4bc96afba979fb3741798c788e07d45</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="sha1">d149e948e2aa1c8aeecd49fa6b17f791f1942c8b</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="sha256">a132bc64f2a615c7e4a0eecff53eedb63dcd252c96bd3a6a83aa6896267fda48</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="sha384">a3ac2b309f4c745bff1469b973b0788e220ecb888571439f1728d4298990136006104ea472e1aa27d064d4285ca788ca</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="sha512">3abceb2d4ddbe7d82db2989cd5b71933fca86e282d5e96fd0468ff4d53d31b7319ee410c019c32494c5aeb33747958ace8bac1936855cc1a96933c0f02065705</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="spamsum">100663296:wWoks5UfQz0wAeuJeI3ilF15WsbOdx8mml37W6q:Mks5U4z0qm3ilF15Ucd7W6</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="fletcher16">8a6d</Checksum>
        <Checksum type="fletcher32">02884b22</Checksum>
      </Checksums>

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