Sg3 on 6/12/2011 at 03:09
The other day, I asked my brother if I could borrow his copy of the venerable Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, as he has not played it in years and does not intend to again. After much searching on both of our parts, it became evident that the poor disk was permanently missing in action. I went to Amazon (the web site, not the jungle) to see how much an old copy of it costs today, expecting to see a bargain-bin sort of deal--you know, Diablo new-in-jewel-case for $0.99 (true story--a good deal, that). I was hoping I could snag it for five or ten dollars.
Well, I was a bit surprised to find out that a new copy costs up to $250 U.S. Fuck and bother it! The very cheapest I could find was about $60, which is more than the game cost when it came out nearly ten years ago, so I gave up on that.
Well, given that big stompy games are apparently a rare collector's item now, I decided to back up Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance and the Black Knight expansion. Mercenaries may be a casualty of disorganization, but I will ensure that Vengeance and Black Knight will not fall victim to that nor to wear and tear. Mindful of past troubles involving devious anti-copy methods on game disks, I looked on trusty (ha, ha) Wikipedia for a list of software capable of making exact disk copies. Well, to my surprise, there was this new-fangled thing called an ISO (and I'm sure that anyone still reading at this point is laughing at me) and that there were lots of programs that made them. Last time I made some disk backups (which has to have been nearly a decade ago), ISO wasn't a well-known phenomenon (at least, I never encountered it, in spite of my dabbling in programs such as CloneCD and Nero). Well, it looks like ISO is what I want.
Despite not altogether understanding such matters (or perhaps because of it), I prefer open-source software in addition to free-of-charge software--I like it when the program is libre in addition to being gratis. Anyway, at this point, I'm willing to settle with gratis. The wiki page claimed that Daemon Tools Lite was free to use with the caveat of no technical support unless one buys the Pro version, but this is misleading (no suprise, given the Wiktatorship's practices)--I wasted over an hour trying to troubleshoot a disk copy error before finally finding out on the Daemon Tools Pro forum (by chance, since it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation or FAQ) that one can only copy protected disks with the Pro version.
I'm not pissed that the freebie version won't do protected disks. Okay, I am, but that isn't the point: what I'm ticked off about is that they hide the fact that the freebie version won't do it, and that you have to pay for the upgrade to do it. I've spent bloody hours on this now, and I'm quite frustrated.
The thought occurred to me, "Why not go to the good netizens of TTLG? Surely they'll be happy to read a long-winded rant and give me a helpful pointer in the right direction."
TL;DR, and to get to the core point: I am looking for a program that is free-to-use, which creates exact copies of protected data disks. I'm not looking to do anything illegal--I'm just trying to create backup copies of some of my nigh-irreplaceable old game disks, as permitted by fair-use etc. and often the EULAs (those were the days ...). Can anyone recommend such a program?
Preferably, the software will be not only free, but also open-source and such. But as beggars can't be choosers, I just want a program that'll work for free. O.S. is Windows 7. Any help would be appreciated.
Vernon on 6/12/2011 at 03:19
dd + cygwin
Sg3 on 6/12/2011 at 03:29
Quote Posted by Vernon
dd + cygwin
That's a "deltree c" joke, right?
Vernon on 6/12/2011 at 06:54
Ripping protected CDs can be kinda involved. dd is the best disk cloning tool I know of. If you want a bit-for-bit disk replica, dd can do it. (
http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=isos+with+dd&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) here. Can be a pain in the backside though. More user-friendly alternatives for making images would be stuff like doiso, or infrarecorder (both open source afaik). Sometimes you can't remove the protection, so you have to hide it when you read from the disk as you load the game. This can be circumvented by stuff like NoCDs or Daemon Tools lite (which blindsides the copy protection as it mounts the image), etc., but none of that stuff is libre, obviously. I think your best bet is to look into Alcohol 120% or something like that (although it can't do some things, like decss). (
http://trial.alcohol-soft.com/en/downloadtrial.php) here's an unrestricted trial
Volitions Advocate on 6/12/2011 at 08:03
I'm not entirely sure about creating the image, but I've always used VirtualCone Drive to mount my .iso images.
For the record Cygwin is a Unix-like environment you can use natively under windows. It's like opening a terminal in in your favorite 'nix, except inside windows. (almost like the opposite of Wine, except.. not really). It is actually very useful for doing things they way they work in 'nix that you can't normally do in windows. And a lot of programs are designed specifically for cygwin. It's almost like it's own Linux distro. I haven't used it in awhile because I dual-boot with Kubuntu, but still, check it out, you never know.
As for virtual clone drive. I know there is some sort of paid for version, but I've never used it.
Al_B on 6/12/2011 at 08:10
This would probably be better in the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=81) technical forum.
The biggest stumbling block as far as protected CD / DVDs is concerned will be down to the actual protection they're employing. Some can be very low level and although there may be a case-by-case work-around it's not something that should really be discussed here. You might be OK without any special measures for those particular titles from what I can tell from a quick google search.
As far as free tools are concerned I've have good luck in the past with (
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm) MagicDisc for mounting ISO images in everything up to 64 bit Windows 7. (Not open source - they do an alternative image creation product that they sell although the freeware version also appears to be able to create an image). Also, seconding (
http://infrarecorder.org/) infrarecorder as a great open-source utility for creating images as well as no-nonsense burning of CDs / DVDs.
Vernon on 6/12/2011 at 09:14
Yeah, if Al is right about the lack of copy protection on the discs you are interested in, then you will only really need infrarecorder to make the images. Mounting should be done with (
http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/) WinCDEmu, imo. See previous post for anything that does have copy protection.
Al_B on 6/12/2011 at 12:50
WinCDEmu does look the better bet out of both options. I have it at the back of my mind that I'd tried it on my Windows 7 machine and ran into problems but I've tried it again with no issues.
The Alchemist on 6/12/2011 at 14:31
You seriously recommending dd to someone who only recently even HEARD of isos? Seriously, nigga? Vernon, the daedric god of frustration?
Sg3 on 6/12/2011 at 17:42
Heh-heh. Yeah, I suppose I'm an odd blend of computer-savvy and computer-illiterate. I grew up using DOS and I've done a bit of scripting with complex mission editors such as those of Operation Flashpoint/Armed Assault and Rise of Flight, but on the other hand I couldn't figure out how to use WINE or Linux in general.
As for Daemon Tools Lite, I already tried using that and it failed to read the image, consistently saying that there was a bad sector 812 or something. Obviously this was the copy protection. The options to bypass the Securom/Safedisk were grayed out. The Daemon manual said to try lowering the speed on something, but the tab in the options which was shown doesn't even exist in the Lite version, and that specific option wasn't anywhere in the options. It's only the pro version which can read Safedisk (I believe that's what Mechwarrior 4 uses) disks.
Thanks for the recommendations, everyone. I'll try out WinCDEmu, and Infrarecorder--they sound like what I'm looking for.
P.S. The "deltree c" comment was because when I Google-searched "dd cygwin," the first result was someone asking how to do a full format of his hard drive with a "dd" command in Unix or something similar.
