Jagamus Prime asked:


My girlfriend is a highly trained demolition machine. Not sure how, but she is. When she gets near my electronics, they act possessed. My computer changes its boot order whenever it sees her, even though she’s probably never even heard the word BIOS before and certainly didn’t edit it. My refrigerator breaks the second she sets foot in my dorm room. The latest casualty was my xbox, which had faithfully served me without shredding any discs for years (since summer 2006, bar two RRoD incidents). This time, it took my brand new copy of WET and cut a nice big ring into it.

I understand exactly what causes this problem. USually a tipping over xbox causes the disc to bump into the lens of the DVD drive, cutting a circle into the bottom of the disc. I am not looking for tech support for this problem, because even if I do solve this problem, she’ll find a new way to destroy my things.

What I’d like to do instead, is populated my new HDD with some backups of games I’d rather not have die on me. At present, my xbox is unmodified. I will probably be unable to play these backups. These backups will not be shared with anyone, and will be promptly deleted should I sell the game or anything. Basically, what I’m saying is this is the legal definition of backups. I want to create backups because I am afraid that my original will get destroyed, inevitably. I’ll burn the bridge of playing them once it becomes necessary, hopefully this preparation for disaster will make that a null fear… But the just in case factor is what backups are all about.

In any case, I don’t have any special hardware, and if possible would like to avoid buying any. I have my xbox and a computer which is capable of burning DVD DLs. What kind of software can I use to make a backup of my Xbox 360 games, assuming I have the physical disc? What is the cheapest hardware (it seems to need a special DVD drive?) capable of making backups? Can these backups be played on an unmodified Xbox 360? Can they be played over Xbox Live?

Thanks