All I want is to be able to play Dragon's Dogma again.

[ThisIsASword]

After combing through forum after forum, I have decided I to submit my own request. I have an Xbox 360 and a copy of the game that is the only reason I haven't gotten rid of the thing: Dragon's Dogma. I have probably wasted in excess of 200 hours of my ridiculous life playing this game and the prospect of having all of my progress fade into obscurity because of some formatting nonsense disgusts me to no end.

I had been using a USB flash drive as my permanent storage for my profile and games, which I realize is stupid, because I had no hard drive at the time. I eventually needed to use the flash drive for other purposes so I copied the 360 saves to my computer, reformatted the drive and used it for whatever purpose I deemed important enough to infuriate my future self. When I copied the files back to the flash drive and plugged it into the 360 I realized what I had done. The system could no longer detect the files because they were not in an xbox recognizable file structure situation or some such thing.

Now all I have is a folder saved on my computer called "Xbox360" full of files called "dataxxxx". I thought after reading some promising threads on digiex I would be able to restore my save files but 1 year later I am still indignantly losing my mind over this with no progress to show for it.

- I am aware that the xbox can only read from its particular formatting.
- I am aware of the fact that I most probably have to inject the files onto 360 formatted USB drive using some sort of file explorer. (this part is quite vexing)
- I believe that I'm aware of the need for the drive to be formatted to the same size as it was when it was when the files where stored on it.
I discovered that, while I can format the flash drive on the 360, I can no longer configure the exact size of the partition the way I used to be able to. I don't know if this is due to a system update or yet another sign that I've done something wrong.

This may seem like a repeat of previous threads (and I have read those threads) but, since none of those threads have resulted in any progress of any kind for my situation, I have started this one because I clearly need help and my mounting frustration is becoming more than I can handle.

Good God, please, somebody help me fix this.

 

[InsaneNutter]

I think you can extract your profile / individual saves from the backup you currently have on your computer, then re inject them in to the USB drive once you have configured it for use on the Xbox 360 again.

1. Download Party Buffalo Drive Explorer
2. File > Open > Custom Backup Directory and select where you have the folder called "Xbox360" backed up on your computer.
3. All been well Party Buffalo should be able to read the contents of your backup from the dataxxxx files.
4. You can then simply extract the profile / save games.
5. Once you have done that put the USB drive in the Xbox 360 and configure it for use with the Xbox 360 again.
6. Now connect the USB drive to the 360 and in Party Buffalo go to: File > Open > Device Selector
7. Choose the USB drive you have just configured.
8. You should now be able to re inject your profile / saves games you have just extracted from the backup on your computer.

You should certainly be able to extract the profile and individual games saves from the backup you have and re inject that in to a freshly configured USB drive.

 

[ThisIsASword]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I anticipate that these steps may lead to success, however, since nothing can be painless, this is what I've come up with:

Step 2 goes down like this. I click Custom Backup Directory, I select the folder "Xbox360", then I get this:
I'm not sure, but I don't believe this was supposed to be the desired effect as I'm not seeing individual game data and can do absolutely nothing with this window or the files it's displaying.

On the other hand if I do Custom Backup Directory and instead select the 360 formatted USB drive, I can navigate that successfully and I can even find a stand in save file I made.


Step 6 goes like this: I click Device Selector, the dialog box appears and says there are no devices to detect (I did plug in the USB). Clicking refresh produces no results.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Custom Backup Directory was the correct option, for Step 6 you need to have re configured the USB drive in the Xbox 360.

On the Xbox 360 go to System > Memory and re-configure the drive, it should then be able to be opened in Party Buffalo as normal.

 

[ThisIsASword]

Interestingly enough, it's not the drive I have trouble reading. It's the "Xbox360" folder containing the DataXXXX files that Party Buffalo doesn't seem to be able to do anything with. I can see those files anywhere. Party Buffalo is not succeeding in reading those files as a collection of folders and game/system data.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Try USB Xtaf and go to File > Open USB Manually and select the folder that the backed up "Xbox360" folder resides in on your computer and see if you have any luck with that.

If not you can upload the "Xbox360" folder you have backed up to the Digiex FTP if you like and ill see if I have any luck extracting your save games from the files you have backed up. (Don't worry only Digiex staff members can download from the FTP, not the public).

 

[ThisIsASword]

Looks like I'm going to try uploading the folder because I've tried Xtaf and Party Buffalo, Horizon and Modio, and they've all just thrown error after baffling error about not getting part of the path to the E drive and indexes out of range. It's to the point where I've spent so much time on this my eyes hurt, my head hurts, and I am starting to forget what the actual problem was in the first place. Maybe someone with a clear head would have better luck.

 

[InsaneNutter]

If you let me know when you have uploaded the files i'll download and try having a look for you.

 

[ThisIsASword]

I would have uploaded them by now but I'm having trouble with the upload either because of the size or a slow connection. It's around 16 gb so the connection has been timing out before it can all be uploaded. Also I was getting a 550 Error from about 8 of the individual DataXXXX files due, apparently, to lack of permissions which I can't explain. Might you have some idea how to deal with this as well?

 

[Rick]

Delete the xbox360 folder currently on the usb drive.
Copy the xbox360 folder to the root of the drive. That should show all files on the xbox 360.

 

[ThisIsASword]

After much delay I was finally able to try the above suggestion and had no success. There is a chance I misunderstood however. If I was supposed to delete the xbox360 folder and copy the folder to the drive root with a drive explorer like partybuffalo, then that's not what I did.

 

[ThisIsASword]

I managed to use USB Xtaf to open up the drive and the backup folder, I found a Dragon's Dogma save file at:
Data Partition/Content/E000006CD88FDB3D/43430814/00000001/DD_SAVEDATA_01

(For the sake of simplicity I'll refer to the old save I'm trying to restore as "A", and the new save created as a point of reference as "B".)

So I located the equivalent file A in the backup folder at that location and used it to replace file B which I created for a point of reference. I plugged the USB into the 360, loaded the game and found myself in save file B.

After that I assumed it must have been the wrong file so I looked further through the drive and found another save file at:
Data Partition/Content/E0000735AEA0ACCF/43430814/00000001/DD_SAVEDATA_01

I replaced it with its equivalent from the backup folder and again the game loaded up save B despite the fact that I had just replaced both save files on the drive with their backup version equivalent which were last modified months before the B versions were created.

There is another Dragon's Dogma file at:
Data Partition/Content/0000000000000000/43430814/00000002/CF6DEC0DC65B01DFF9F1597CE58C8A05626FE3D543
but I'm fairly certain that is the DLC downloaded from the disk as it is 1.41GB and this game's save files are all 568KB.

It seems like nothing I changed had any effect and the xbox keeps managing to load a save that I was fairly certain I had deleted and replaced with something completely different which I just can't figure out.