is it possible to take my originals and back them up just using the computer?

copying to the hd, then ftping to the comp and then making an iso and then burning to a dvd is really some bs

especially since my xbox is about a hundred feet from my router. its really not an option.

please help me make a back up of an original with just using the computer, tools i can find online, and my dvd burner.

sorry m8
u r out of luck
any pc drive wont recognise the format of the orignal disc
only way to back up original is to ftp across 2 ur pc

I can understand his frustration, as it is a DVD and the info. on it is just data, therefore, there should be some way of "cloning" the data over to a DVD R disc. But then again, I don't know the specifications of the Xbox DVD and perhaps it is the reason that you can't copy directly from the original over to a blank DVD. Also, I am only talking about the game itself, not the copy protection, if the copy protection is a physical thing like the PSX, then you still won't get a bootable copy, but at least you have a copy that can be used with a mod chip.

BTW, I thought I saw a working emulator for the Xbox, if the emulator works with a PC's DVD drive, then it should be possible to write a proggy (not that I can do something like that, I am no programmer) that could copy the game to a blank DVD R.

Just a thought.

You may have gotten all the info you needed from the previous posters and also I might be a little late out right now...

Anyway, I have some info that I thought you and maybe someone else would be interested in.
The problem with xbox games is that they do not use the usual filesystem that a computer uses. It has a FS called XDFS (xbox something filesystem) and a standard pc can't read that.
Also most DVD-burners/readers can't read the original DVD-discs due to something special (dont remember what it was though). As an example of this I can take the Samsung drive that is very wanted on xbox (as it is the best and can read CD-R, DVD-/+R, DVD-/+RW and so on which most other readers cant do on the xbox). Well, you can buy a special Samsung drive, put in a special firmware on it and then it can read original xbox discs.
So with the usual firmware it cant read it.

And about the copyprotection used. There is not really a "protection". It is a bunch of files on the disc (dashupdate, and a few other .xbe files) that contains some code that will not be proper when copied. But this is easily fixed with various iso making tools for the xbox that will autopatch these files.
No physical thing on the discs. Simply a regular DVD with some stuff on it.

So the only way that I know of currently is to ftp from the xbox and then make an iso and then burn it.
Another easy way is to switch the hdd in the xbox to something in the 80gb and up so that you can (on the xbox of course) put the game on the hdd and then you won't need your discs anyway. You run them directly from the hdd.
You might already know this, but I am telling you in case you don't.

Hope that helps a bit atleast.
If there are any questions you can PM me and I will try to answer them.
Good Luck!