My EASY iso shrinking guide

[goodeguy]

no thank you for reading it

[zander]

goodeguy I finally got to test your tutorial. I do think the info you have merged from various places into one place is good. I am by no means an expert at shrinking isos but I think I have some constructive criticism for you so you can make your steps a little more accurate.

I followed your steps prescisely for soul calibur 2 and it worked on v4 ps2. I paid close attention to the step that talks about making sure to put a certain file in LAST.

Then I followed your method again but made sure to rebuild the iso with the LBA sorted ascending and it worked too. The take home message is maybe it's better practice to rebuild the iso following the lba rather than simply ignoring it. Other people in the other main thread also mention this. Plus by following this rule the user has a concrete reason and idea of what order to put the files in and why.

So to enhance your tutorial I would say make the following changes.

Change:
7. Save the new filelist wherever you put your iso (Your filelist is more like a guide than anything else)

to just this:
7. Save the new filelist wherever you put your iso.

Then right after step 7.
7a.Open the filelist file in excel (or word by putting in a table) and sort it ascending on the LBA number. Copy the newly sorted info back to the filelist.txt. (The sorted filelist.txt is your guide on rebuilding the iso file structure in the proper order).

Also change this:
16. Now in My Computer go to the drive and put in everything but ones you replaced, and the last file on the filelist you made in isobuster.

To this:
16. Now in My Computer go to the drive and put in everything but ones you replaced strictly following the order in your sorted filelist.txt. You can drag and arrange the files in cdgenPS2 once the files are in the gui.

And then delete this step:
17. After everything is in there put in the last file


Also many people use winhiip to send the iso to the ps2 drive from the pc. However winhiip puts these shrunken games in as cd games. It has an option to manually change it to dvd. You need to find out for sure if this is irrelvant. The people in the other thread seem to suggest changing it to say dvd always in winhiip but it seemed irrelevant for the game I tested.

After this perhaps you can ask to get this stickied as it will help many. You'd have to be either insane or lazy not to want to shrink the games if possible.

The other thread is still good for latest shrinkable game info. No reason I think both shouldn't be stickied.

[djchu]

i follow these steps to make a soul calibur 2 shrink iso, but the game doesn't run in hdloader 0.6d. original iso runs fine. i've tried kof2k2, was the same. i only had success with false lba games, like sf 3rd strike and capcom fighting evo. do i need to modify elf to run with small dummies?

[zander]

i follow these steps to make a soul calibur 2 shrink iso, but the game doesn't run in hdloader 0.6d. original iso runs fine. i've tried kof2k2, was the same. i only had success with false lba games, like sf 3rd strike and capcom fighting evo. do i need to modify elf to run with small dummies?

When you patched to .6d did you make sure you used the original unpacked moanz version then apply the patch. Just don't dl somebody's version and think you get .6d, best to do it yourself via the command line and original file and don't use any gui tool for patching. For sc2 do not apply any pacthes or trainers as it don't need them. Lastly did you make sure to turn on the sc2 mode once in hdl?

Also if using winhiip sometimes there is partition problems. For example sometimes if keep installing and uninstalling games with the same slus. You get partition collision. Then when try to install the game that you know should work it fails to boot. This happen to me with timesplit 2. I solved by uninstalling and then installing a different game of similar size to that slot that ate up the slot that the bad game was in. This force winhiip to install my ts2 in a new slot on the drive.

If you are already a pro then sorry and my suggestions have been useless to you.

[ashmufc]

Why didn't you post this in this thread mate: http://www.psx-scene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27006

? Now do I lock this thread

[vincatzero]

doesn't cdgen automatically sort by desending lba anyway?

[tot31]

Just shrinked TT Superbikes PAL from 4Gb to 1Gb.

[vincatzero]

has anybody been able to shrink jak 1 or 3 by removing the language files? no matter method i try it doesn't boot after i'm done.
The full games work fine and Jak 2 works with the languages removed.

If you got it to work please let me know how you did it.

[DJZeroK]

ok, so i have tried to shrink Sonic Heros. i followed the guide and got everything to work great; however, when i write the iso it gives me an error on the last file. the ROFS.CVM file. it says taht it cant write it and the iso comes out to be 1.54gb, on the list the game should be a little over 2gigs so i konw it wont work. had anyone had this problem, and how could i fix it?

[notsloth]

There is something in regards to shrinking games that I'm a little confused about. I can understand the file order being important on the DVD, because of the difference in speed between the inner edge and the outer edge. Why does this matter on the HDD ? Surely if the game is using LBA addresses to directly access the files then keeping the order correct wont help ANYWAY (as the LBA will change), and if it isnt using sector addresses couldnt we just add the files to the ISO in any order we please ?