Mounting original game partitions and reading files of them

[l_oliveira]

1st, Hi again guys ... I've been busy with FFXI the past year and neglected the PS2 scene a lot ... Well ... I'm trying to do stuff this time ...
I want to access my HDD and copy music files from the new FFXI expansion so PSF2s of them can be made. ( I could just rip them out of the install discs but new musics were added to the game through online updates recently)

I've spent a few hours trying to mount my original HDD partitions with ExecFTPS 0.68 with no sucess. I can do anything related to memorycards. I can even take a look on the HDD root dir, which looks like this:
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HDD root(US HDD)
Feb 12 2004 __mbr
Feb 12 2004 __net
Feb 12 2004 __system
Feb 12 2004 __sysconf
Feb 12 2004 __common
Feb 12 2004 PP.SCUS-97269.1000.POLVIEWER
Feb 12 2004 PP.SCUS-97269.0002.TETRAMASTER
Nov 30 2004 HDLoader Settings
Dec 01 2004 __empty
Dec 01 2004 __empty
Feb 12 2004 PP.SCUS-97266.0001.FFXI
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I attempted to mount the FFXI partition as described on the ExecFTP info.txt and it failed. Here goes the logs of the mount attempt of the directory PP.SCUS-97266.0001.FFXI at /pfs/0/:
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ftp> quote
Command line to send SITE MNT /pfs/0/ hdd:PP.SCUS-97266.0001.FFXI
550 SITE MNT failed.
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FTP clients I attempted were WinXP built in FTP client (command prompt, good for troubleshotting as I couldn't see any error message while trying quote commands with Flash FXP) and Flash FXP ver2.x

Can someone with fresh mind highlight what I am doing wrong ?
Once again I say I can FTP to memorycards just fine.

Is it related to the way I am booting ExecFTP ? (I am using Mr. Brown MC exploit for boot)
Or is that just not supported yet ?


Thanks in advance

LSO

[b081]

If you happen to know C you could fetch hdl_dump's sources, hack them a little and use it to download the whole partition to the Windows box. Or, you could use hdl_dump to get partition's starting sector and then to use Hex editor supporting direct HDD access (don't remember which ones allows it).

[dlanor]

I attempted to mount the FFXI partition as described on the ExecFTP info.txt and it failed. Here goes the logs of the mount attempt of the directory PP.SCUS-97266.0001.FFXI at /pfs/0/:
-
ftp> quote
Command line to send SITE MNT /pfs/0/ hdd:PP.SCUS-97266.0001.FFXI
550 SITE MNT failed.
-
FTP clients I attempted were WinXP built in FTP client (command prompt, good for troubleshotting as I couldn't see any error message while trying quote commands with Flash FXP) and Flash FXP ver2.x

Can someone with fresh mind highlight what I am doing wrong ?
Once again I say I can FTP to memorycards just fine.

The problem is that the filesystem used by HDLoader for game partitions is not supported by ANY normal PS2Dev drivers. This means that there is currently NO homebrew software available that can access the content of such partitions. All they can do is to access the partition as a whole, and the ones that do this best are (obviously) the homebrew installers supporting HDL, such as: WinHiip, HDL_Dump, etc. Even so, all they can do at present is to transfer an entire game between CD/DVD/ISOfile and an HDL partition on the PS2 HDD. Using ExecFTPs with these partitions is not supported at all.

To get at the contents of a game disk already installed for HDL, you will have to extract the game partition to an ISO file on your PC, and then you can access that ISO as you would any other, using normal PC tools.

Note that the above applies only to GAME partitions of HDL, which means all the ones using names with the "PP." prefix.

Other partitions, using the "__" or "+" prefixes (or no prefix in some cases), should be compatible to most homebrew software, including ExecFTPs. It is with these non-game partitions that you can use the "SITE MNT" command successfully, and then transfer data through /pfs/0/.

Some important things to remember about ExecFTPs:

1: v0.68 is slow and buggy but a version patched for 48-bit LBA exists
2: v0.69 is fast and fluent, but NO version exists for 48-bit LBA
3: After FTP transfers from PC to PS2 HDD you must always use "SITE UMNT" command for those pfs links, to ensure that all file data is flushed from the caching buffers to the physical disk.

Best regards: dlanor

[l_oliveira]

Hm ... Your explanation is very good, but my problem is taking files out of the FFXI partition on a official SCE HDD. (there will be no problems with non 48-bit lba code)
I don't know the structure of the FFXI/Playonline partitions but I really like the idea of dumping everything then looking for the files ...

Well ... FFXI is a native HDD game so I thought it used the standard filesystem the HDD uses but it seems now like it can use a custom/proprietary filesystem inside the partition ...

Thanks for the information ...