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Testing old Game CDs

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First post, by Jorpho

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I was testing a couple of game CDs today before putting them up for sale. My usual procedure is to attempt to make an image with ISO Buster or ImgBurn, except I kept getting read errors on them. Westwood's Nox, for example.

It occurs to me that some of these discs might use some fancy copy protection scheme relying on the presence of unreadable sectors on the discs – but if that's the case, is there any quick way to verify these discs as Working? Obviously, the ideal way would be to play through the whole game with the game's media, but I sure don't have time for that. 😜

Reply 1 of 4, by SKARDAVNELNATE

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Nox uses SafeDisc 1. Clone CD or Alcohol 120% seem to be the preferred methods for backing up protected discs. So far I haven't seen a way to verify if a bad sector is intended to be bad or not.

Reply 2 of 4, by Stull

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I've wondered about this myself. CDCheck might be worth trying, though I don't know what it will do with intentional bad sectors. Maybe rip it and also run a tool like this on the disc?

Whenever I sell a game, I do a test install, and include a disclaimer in the auction -- "installed fine when tested, but sold as-is."

Reply 3 of 4, by Davros

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cloneyxl will tell you if a disc uses copy protection (and what type)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD- … /ClonyXXL.shtml

Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness

Reply 4 of 4, by Jorpho

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It says it can scan for bad sectors, too, but the option doesn't seem to do anything.

EDIT: i found a free command-line tool called DDump that seems to do the trick.

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