What is the best CD burner for making backups of CD based games and such, including reading them? ide is fine.. What can I research to find out more about this subject? are there any mods you can do to optical drives to read hidden data like security(if thats a thing on CD's) Also what is the best software to use, to get close as possible to 1:1 images This is all for personal use and education I just checked and my drive supports: DAO/SAO, RAW, SAO, RAW SAO, RAW SAO + SUB, RAW DAO(96), TAO, DVD DAO
If the game is a data track only you can use any program. Games that contain audio tracks are where it gets more complicated. Exact Audio Copy should be used to extract that. You might also check out redump.org for more information about disc game dumping. Some systems might have specific things to watch out for. As far as burning games you just need a good burner with media that is good quality and compatible with your burner.
i will use software Easy CD, Gear burn , or hardware cd copy drive Burner : Yamaha CRW-F1 media: TDK Audio CD-R
This is a complex issue with no easy answer. Do research on cd freaks (now called myce) Need to pair up drive with media code for burning. Reading is more straight forward and will be able to find good readers by reading the reviews and performance scans.
Does it make any sense to buy an old CD burner if you like to burn 1x/2x/4x ? I have tried to make backups of my 3do games for example, however my FZ-1 seems very picky and does not accept any copy - no matter what brand i use. The slowest my 2 burners can burn is 14x. One is an external DVD burner and one an old 52x IDE PATA that is connected by USB converter. I am not sure investing in some old 2x burner would do the trick here, or it's just the 3do that is never going to accept burned games.
To be honest, the best CD-Burner for you would probably be a very good one that's not too expensive to acquire right now. As long as the CD itself isn't your backup media — I mean as long as your data is properly backed up — any good CD burner will allow you to burn it up and use it for a few years. I'd suggest to look out for deals on known good models rather than trying to get the holy grail, that's only available for 20min/year on eBay for 500$.
What brands of media and exact types have you tried? You also might try a different drive to burn the discs. You don't need an older one, and burning slower isn't necessarily going to help. You also might get better results if you clean the lens in the 3DO.
As far as mod you can do to read hidden data. I've used a swap trick to read data passed the lead-out on GD-Rom/CD-Rom. The idea is to put a disc with the TOC you want and swap it for the disc to analyse once it's been read by the CD unit. I did so by dismantling the drive, but you can swap it using the force eject mechanism on some drives. It allows to access the game data on a Dreamcast disc, or find hidden data after the lead-out on some discs. As an example, I've found a single file named "bleem" containing only "bleem\n\r" or similar on bleemcast GT2 hidden far passed the end of the disc.
Yeah I used to do that back in the day with 360 games.. Got the compilation disc to boot on a retail blade dash
