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Dumping Discs

This page helps you create a backup of your physical game disc.

General Information​

Although you can play games on PCSX2 directly from your disc, there are major advantages1 to dumping them and using those backup files instead. PlayStation 2 game discs are unencrypted DVDs and CDs2 which can be dumped quickly using a standard optical disc drive that supports DVD and CD media.3 The dumping process is straightforward for all skill levels and does not harm optical media.

Tip – Bad dumps
  • Game dumps that aren't identical copies of the original game are called "bad dumps".
  • These can cause issues such as freezing on loading screens.
  • If you have trouble with your game disc, consider selecting a lower drive speed.
  • Lower drive speeds take much more time but raise the likelihood of a "good dump" (exact copy).
  • Once PCSX2 is installed, you can easily verify that your game was successfully dumped.

Creating Disc Dumps​

Note – CD dumps
  • macOS and Linux users dumping CDs (blue discs) rather than DVDs (silver discs) will need to select guides marked [CD] or [DVD/CD].4
  • All Windows instructions apply to both DVDs and CDs.

Disc dumping on Windows can be done using graphical tools like Media Preservation Frontend (MPF) and ImgBurn.

Media Preservation Frontend (MPF) is a streamlined, free and open-source graphical tool aimed at preserving optical media.

Tip – Downloading MPF

Once you've placed the game into an optical drive and opened MPF:

  1. Click Scan for Discs.
    • This should automatically populate MPF with information about your disc.
    • If it fails to populate, you can enter the information manually instead:
      • Under "System/Media Type", select "Sony PlayStation 2".
      • Select whether your game disc is on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.
      • Under "Drive Letter", select the letter corresponding to your optical drive.
  2. (Optional) Under "Output Path", specify a destination folder and file name for the dump.
    • The default destination is a folder called ISO in the same folder as MPF.exe.
    • The default file name is the disc volume name with an extension.
  3. Click Start Dumping once the Status reads "ready to dump".
  4. A command line window will open and begin running the utility Redumper.
  5. Wait for the dumping process to complete.
  6. Click OK on the message stating: "It is now safe to eject the disc."
  7. Click Cancel on the "Disc Information" window.

Your game will be in the destination folder you specified, and you can safely remove the game disc from the optical drive.

Expand to see a step-by-step visual guide
The window shown when first opening MPF. There is a button labeled Scan for Discs under the Controls section of the UI (step 1). The user has already clicked this button, and all of the fields have been automatically filled out. Near the top-right of the window, there is a Browse button to the right of the Output Path field (step 2; optional). Directly to the left of the Scan for Discs button is a button labeled Start Dumping (step 3). Parameters for the disc dumping process are System / Media Type, Output Path, Drive Letter, Drive Speed, and Dumping Program. All of these fields are automatically translated into command line parameters. A status reads: DVD-ROM ready to dump. At the bottom of the window, there is a log output and buttons to clear and save the log output.

The Redumper command line will look something like this (steps 4 and 5):

arguments: disc --drive=E:\ --speed=16 --retries=20 --image-path=ISO\GRANTURISMO3 --image-name=GRANTURISMO3

drive path: E:\
drive: Slimtype - eNAU508 5 (revision level: 8L03, vendor specific: 2010/12/08 15:31)
drive configuration: GENERIC (read offset: +6, C2 shift: 0, pre-gap start: +0, read method: BE, sector order: DATA_C2_SUB)
drive read speed: 22160 KB

current profile: DVD-ROM
disc type: DVD

image path: ISO\GRANTURISMO3
image name: GRANTURISMO3

*** DUMP

disc structure:
  layer 0 { embossed }
    data { LBA: [196608 .. 1437695], length: 1241088, hLBA: [0x030000 .. 0x15EFFF] }
    book type: DVD-ROM
    part version: 1
    disc size: 120mm
    maximum rate: 10.08 mbps
    layers count: 1
    track path: parallel
    linear density: 0.267 um/bit
    track density: 0.74 um/track
    BCA: no

| [ 32%] sector:  399936/1241088, errors: { SCSI: 0 }
Above the MPF window is a message titled Eject, which reads: It is now safe to eject the disc. There is a button labeled OK at the bottom right of the message (step 6).
A window named Media Information has a cancel button at the bottom-center (step 7). It lists metadata about the disc dump: Title, Alternative Title, Foreign Title (Non-Latin), Alternative Foreign Title, Disc Number / Letter, Disc Title, Disc Title (non-Latin), Category, Region, Languages, Language Selection Via, Serial, Barcode, Version, Edition, and Edition (non-Latin).

Footnotes​

Footnotes​

  1. Advantages of dumping include no noise from the optical drive, no need for your computer to be connected to an optical drive while playing, no need to physically swap between discs or for them to be physically present, and the ability to curate a games library within PCSX2. ↩

  2. This is typically ISO 9660 with UDF 1.02 for DVDs and simply ISO 9660 for CDs. ↩

  3. If you do not own an optical disc drive, the easiest option is to purchase or borrow an external optical drive which connects via USB (typically 15–30 USD). Larger PlayStation 2 games use a dual-layer DVD-9 format, which most optical drives manufactured in the last 25 years support. ↩

  4. DVDs are burned to .iso files, but because .iso files only store one audio track and because CDs use a different size for data sectors, some CD-based games break if they are dumped in this format. Instead, CDs should be dumped to separate .bin and .cue/.toc files. A .bin file is the binary, while the .cue/.toc is a small plaintext file containing audio track metadata. PCSX2 does not currently support reading .cue/.toc files. ↩