Xbox Game Disc Maker (XGDM)

Usage Notes

This tool is meant to be used if you have extracted a xbox 360 iso in the past, without preserving the redump sectors and alter the XGD structure. It will NOT restore deleted game files.

Features

• Rebuild/Extract Xbox 360 games following XGD format (no XDK needed)
• On rebuilding, generates the SS, DMI, PFI and .DVD natively and embeds them into the ISO
  • Note that if you dumped the game disc you can already extract the files, without the rebuilding process.
• Reuses a locally stored SS when one is available (e.g. extracted from a redump disc) instead of the built-in template.
• Detects and extracts Games on Demand (GOD) and XBLA (arcade) packages and rebuilds them as ISOs
• Detects and rebuilds original Xbox (XGD1) games (default.xbe) into the XGD1 full-disc layout for the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility (XeFu)

Requirements

Dependency	Required	Used for
Windows 10 or 11, x64	yes	running the program
Free disk space	yes	about 7.6 GB per XGD2 ISO and 8.7 GB per XGD3 ISO

Building ISOs

1. Select your Games folder, it will scan for XISOs, raw default.xex files and GOD/XBLA packages.
2. Output folder (optional): where the ISOs are written. Leave it empty to write each ISO next to its game folder.
3. Tick the games you want and click Build checked.

Games are built one at a time. Cancel stops the current game (its partial ISO is deleted) and skips the rest. A summary is shown at the end, and the full log is in the window and in each game's report file.

Options

Option	Default	Effect
Overwrite existing ISOs	off	Replace an existing ISO. When off, games whose ISO already exists are skipped.
Cleanup	off	Permanently delete the game folder after the build (see Safety). Asks for confirmation before the batch starts.

Supported formats

Format	Description
.xex	Xbox 360 executable; rebuilt ad XGD2/XGD3 full-disc image
.xbe	Original Xbox executable; rebuilt as an XGD1 full-disc image for XeFu
.iso	Can be extracted to obtain game files and rebuild the XGD structure
XBLA	Xbox Live Arcade game folders, which can be extracted and rebuilt as XGD iso
GOD	Game On Demand format, same as XBLA behavior

Output files

File	Content
<game>.iso	the disc image
<game>.iso.ss	the extracted/generated security sector
<game>.dvd	layer break file for burning (1913760 for XGD2, 2133520 for XGD3)
<game>.dmi	Disc Manufacturing Information file, made from template
<game>.pfi	Physical Format Information file
<game>.builder-report.txt	log of the build and of the native verification

Status messages

Status	Meaning
OG XBOX OK	.ISO rebuilt
XISO OK	SS - DMI - PFI - .DVD restored
ERROR – could not read the Media ID	the default.xex has no readable media id
ERROR - verification after rebuild FAILED	the image header or default.xex could not be confirmed; see the log
Skipped: ISO already exists	tick Overwrite existing ISOs to rebuild it
…, source deleted / source kept	result of the source folder cleanup

Documentation

Disc type

A game is XGD3 when default.xex has a Disc Profile ID (optional header 0x00004304), otherwise XGD2.

Security sector (SS), DMI and PFI

The SS is a 2048-byte sector placed in front of the game partition. It holds the disc geometry, an encrypted challenge/response table (CCRT), a per-disc replay table, a response table and the 16-byte media id at offset 0x460. The DMI (2048 bytes) holds the media id at offset 0x20; the PFI (2048 bytes) is the physical format information and is constant per disc type. These offsets are facts of the XGD format.

When a game is built, XGDM reads the media id from default.xex (certificate offset + 0x140) and resolves the SS/DMI/PFI to embed, in this order:

1. Local SS — a matching SS_<mediaid>.bin (plus DMI_/PFI_) in %APPDATA%\XGDMaker\StealthFiles, e.g. one extracted from a redump of the same disc.
2. Built-in template — an XGD2/XGD3 template is cloned and its media id (SS 0x460, DMI 0x20) is patched to the game's media id.

The challenge/response data is independent of the media id, so a template SS still authenticates on RGH/JTAG consoles and in the Xenon emulator; the SS/DMI signatures are not checked there. The image is a full retail layout (SS/DMI/PFI in front of the game partition, video partition left empty).

The isos have not been tested on a stock system or a modded DVD firmware without mentioned modifications.

Image layout

	XGD2	XGD3
Game partition offset (with SS)	0xFD90000	0x2080000
SS / DMI / PFI	partition − 0x800 / − 0x1000 / − 0x1800	partition − 0x8800 / − 0x9000 / − 0x9800
Game partition size	7,307,001,856 bytes	8,662,351,872 bytes

The XDVDFS file system follows the retail layout:

• the volume descriptor is at sector 32;
• directory tables come first, then file data, each starting on a 2048-byte sector;
• directory tables are balanced binary search trees ordered by case-insensitive name;
• files have attribute 0x80;
• on XGD2, sectors 48–4143 are left empty (on a real disc they hold authentication hashes).

GOD and XBLA

Games on Demand (GOD) and Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) packages are not raw XDVDFS disc images: they use the Xbox "LIVE" container format (STFS/SVOD). XGDM detects them during the Games folder scan and, when built, extracts the game files first and then rebuilds them as a normal XGD ISO (disc type detection, SS/DMI/PFI generation and embedding).

• GOD (SVOD layout): an LIVE header file plus a <media id>.data folder of Data0000..DataXXXX fragments. The fragments hold the XDVDFS image with hash tables interleaved between the data blocks; XGDM reads start_data_block from the header and maps each logical block to its physical fragment/offset using the SVOD block/hash layout.
• XBLA (STFS layout): a single LIVE container with a directory block tree and hash chaining; XGDM walks the directory tree and follows each file's block hash chain to reconstruct its content.

The extracted files are then treated like any extracted game folder and rebuilt into a full retail-layout ISO.

Original Xbox (XGD1)

Original Xbox games use the same XDVDFS filesystem but a default.xbe executable instead of default.xex. In the scan, a folder containing default.xbe is shown as Xbox Executable (XBE); an ISO rebuilt for XeFu is shown as XGD1.

When built, XGDM produces the XGD1 full-disc layout:

• game partition at 0x18300000 (after a ~387 MB video partition, left empty);
• generated SS (security sector) at 0x182FF800.

The SS is built in the OG Xbox "complete format" (2048 bytes): PFI, 23 RC4-encrypted challenge entries, SHA-1 hashes and the security sector ranges. The challenge/response values and RSA signatures are not checked on RGH/JTAG consoles, so they are left with template/zero values. XGD1 ISOs produced by extract-xiso are also recognised (default.xbe in the root directory) and can be extracted normally.

• Note that for better compatibility you'll need the Hacked XeFu Pack with XeFu Spoofer

Safety

• Game folders are never modified.
• Existing ISOs are never replaced unless Overwrite existing ISOs is ticked.
• A partially written ISO is deleted when a build fails or is cancelled.
• Source folder cleanup: before deleting a game folder, the program reads the new ISO back and compares it with the folder: same folders, same files, same sizes, identical bytes, nothing extra on either side. The folder is deleted (permanently, not to the Recycle Bin) only if everything matches and the build succeeded. Otherwise it is kept and the reason is logged.
• Extraction rejects unsafe file names and entries that point outside the image.

Limitations

• Names and sizes: file names must be plain ASCII (up to 255 characters), files can be at most 4 GB, and two names in one folder cannot differ only by case.
• Not identical to the original disc: file placement differs from Microsoft's tools, so the image is not byte-identical to a retail disc.
• Generated SS: when no local SS is available, the built-in template's challenge/response table is used and only the media id is patched. This works on RGH/JTAG consoles and Xenon, but the SS/DMI signatures are not valid (they are not checked there). The XGD3 drive angles come from the template, not from a physical measurement.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Xenon: "disc unreadable"	check that <game>.iso.ss is next to the ISO and that the status shows an embedded SS
Xenon: "Error opening DVD key file"	create dvdkey.txt with your console's DVD key

Building from source

Requirements: Visual Studio 2022 17.8 or later with the .NET desktop development workload, or the .NET 8 SDK.

Release build (single self-contained XGD Maker.exe, no .NET installation needed on the user's PC):

dotnet publish XGDMaker -p:PublishProfile=SingleFile-win-x64

The exe is written to XGDMaker\bin\publish\. In Visual Studio: right-click the project → Publish → profile SingleFile-win-x64. Distribute only that exe, not the contents of bin\Release.

Credits

• XDVDFS

• EXTRACT-XISO

• ABGX360 (reference for the SS/DMI/PFI format)

• Xenia (reference for the STFS/SVOD GOD and XBLA container format)

• xboxdevwiki (reference for the OG Xbox SS/DMI/PFI format)

• XISOSharp (reference for the OG Xbox disc offsets)

Disclaimer

No copyrighted material is involved in the source code, Microsoft and its Xbox trademarks are not affiliated with the project. XGDM does not contain Microsoft code, XDK tools, keys or game data. This software is intended to be used for backups of games you own.

License

MIT