Posted by Mabus on 6th November 2007

How To Create ISO Backups of Your PSP Games

So you’ve got a stack of you Original PSP Games and you don’t have place for UMDs in your pocket. What do you do? With the release of Dark Alex’s Custom firmwares, you don’t have to bring all your bulky UMDs wherever you and your PSP go. The power of having backups is in your hands. So how do we backup our UMDs? How do we convert them to PSP ISOs? How do we dump your UMD into an ISO image? How do we convert UMD into ISO?

That’s what I’m here to share with you guys. Read along and in a few minutes you’ll be backing up our UMDs in no sweat.

Requirements:

  1. A PSP with custom firmware 3.52 M33 (or higher) or 3.71 M33 (or higher)
  2. UMD – Universal Media Disc
  3. USB Cable

Instructions:

  1. Be sure you have the VSH menu enabled. To enable the VshMenu, shutdown your PSP and restart it while holding the R button. it will bring you to the recovery mode. Go to configuration -> Use VshMenu and enable it. Once enabled, you may exit the recovery mode.
  2. You will be taken to the XMB. For 3.71 M33 PSPs, press SELECT to bring up the VshMenu. For 3.52 M33 PSPs, press the HOME button to bring up the VshMenu.
  3. On the VshMenu, go to USB Device and toggle the values by using the left and right directional buttons until it the value is UMD Disc. Exit the VshMenu.
  4. Now connect your PSP to the computer using a USB Cable. On your XMB Go to Settings>USB Connection then the drive will pop up and you’ll see your ISO file from your UMD. Copy it onto your computer and rename the file to the title of the game. That’s it! Now you have backed up your PSP game from the UMD. You may now copy the ISO file to your memory stick and leave your UMDs at home. Easy as eating pie.

I hope you’ve learned something new. Well the next thing I’ll write about is how to compress your PSP Roms and ISOs.

25,902 views

    30 Responses

  1. KILLZONE says:

    maybe you can write something about emulators. thanks man you are a really big help

  2. danie_lim says:

    Cool..Thats a good guide

  3. boy says:

    i’m having problem with running snes rom and emulator.if you have a guide on this, it will be great!!

  4. Jologs says:

    i was able to follow the right procedure above but when i connected my psp to my laptop (macbook) it doesnt recognize the disc. Is there something i have to install in my macintosh or it just work with microsoft? Please help. Thanks a lot..

  5. Advancedude says:

    No there’s no help Jologs, you have mac… the worst system out there. If you really want to rip your game, get a windows like a normal person would :P

  6. Spiff says:

    Great!
    Why is it so hard for others trying to convey this? I have looked a Utube vids, other guides and this is the only post which explains something that (after you read it) is insanely easy!

  7. stylemo says:

    @Spiff: Yeah I’ve seen those videos at YouTube too. They were using old UMD dumpers that support the older custom firmwares.

    What I wrote here is the easiest way ever. So go ahead and spread the good news to all the PSP gamers out there by bookmarknig this post to delicious or digg.

  8. joy says:

    gr8 guide.thx stylemo.by the way can we play games via usb in 3.52 M33-4 like we could in 3.40 OE-A by enabling the plugins.i tried doing it but my psp gets stuck when i enable the plugins and try to connect it to pc.

  9. stylemo says:

    @joy: Sure joy. You could use IRShell or RemoteJoy. You can Google it for the meantime while I’m thinking of writing about it.

  10. joy says:

    thx for the quick reply.i’ll try IRshell and see whether it works or not.

  11. joy says:

    hey it worked.i can now play games thru usb using irshell.thx for the info.cheers!!!!

  12. lukey3 says:

    ive got 3.71 m33-3 and ive followed everything but when i go to run my iso its corrupt data because it does not show under game

  13. harv says:

    my psp is 3.52m33 and i went to config and it doesnt show the Vsh thingy what does it stand for anyways

  14. Trekster says:

    Thanx Dude, that was way to easy!

  15. HeavyGod says:

    Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :) ) new useful posts from you!
    Good luck and successes in blogging!

  16. Ray Lou says:

    would you mind telling me where to put homebrews on my 3.71 M33 psp because no matter where i put my N64 emulators on my psp. The Game can’t start.Thank you so much :D

  17. ILuvMyPSP says:

    Can you do a write up how to use IRShell to play ISO via USB from my computer? Is it possible to play them Wirelessly?

  18. stylemo says:

    @ILuvMyPSP: Yeah it’s possible using WiFi connection. I haven’t tried it yet but yeah sure I’m gonna write it up for you.

  19. jack says:

    Hi, I tried your steps but when I tried to connect the usb cable, I got this error message – “You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click ignore.”

    Does this method work with Mac OS?

    Thanks

  20. JackD says:

    At step 4, when I plugged in USB cable nothing happened. I went to USB connection under settings, and it found my memory stick like normal.

    I had to open VshMenu and chose “reset device” which then switched it to the UMD.

    Still had to do the USB connection thing to get windows to recognize the drive, but all was well after that.

    I am using 3.80 M33 CFW on a slim PSP.

    Just thought that info might be useful to someone.

  21. IAN says:

    thank you! thank you! thank you! exactly what i was looking for!! followed it to the letter and now im playing without my umds!

  22. carlito says:

    i have 3.80 m33-5 system software now, but the problem is its not charging while i’m in a web browser. how can i fix this?

  23. Mustard Jedi says:

    another way to do this without a PC is to use PSP Filer. There’s a UMD Ripper when you press [triangle]. Just 2 reminders…

    1) make sure you have enough room on your memstick for the new dump.
    2) in case of an incomplete dump, delete the incomplete dump before exiting PSP Filer.

    great blog!

  24. stylemo says:

    @Mustard Jedi: thanks for the tip. But I think my method is easier since you don’t have to free any space on the memory stick.

  25. sebbyMOFO says:

    AH THANKYOU!!!

    you have no idea how long i’ve been looking for something like this!

    big thank you.

  26. [TweaK] says:

    Very nicely explained!!
    Thanks :) This was very helpfull.

    Do you perhaps know if it is possible to connect my Sony 20GB MP3 to my PSP as ISO storage???

  27. Shadus says:

    Did you ever make the guide on compressing PSP Roms and ISOs? Your guides are spectacular compared to most and I’d love to see one on that topic.

  28. isaiah says:

    i have the psp slim on 5.02. version is there any way i can put 5.00m33 on it i downloaded it and pu it on my psp all i get is a picture of red arrows and a file courrupted message. help me out here

  29. Buma says:

    Hi, thanks for what u did, but they gave me a bunch of files, do i copy that or what?

  30. jon says:

    U R a rock star

Post your comments