Cooperative mode: Comparative storage metadata verification applied to the Xbox 360

We apply file system differencing to study the external storage of the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console. The console's storage serves as an exemplar analysis subject; the described strategy is general to storage system analysis. The custom volume management and new-though-familiar file system are features typical to an embedded system analysis. Two open-source utilities developed solely for analyzing this game console, and a third developed for general file system forensics, are extended to compare storage system metadata perspectives. We present a new file system and revisions to the DFXML language, library, and differencing process, which were necessary to enable a principled, automatic evaluation of storage analysis tools.