If you want a good program to make iso files from then there is Aaru, which is insanely great and very advanced.

https://github.com/aaru-dps/Aaru

Another program that is okay for archiving , then there is also img burn , that can make iso files too. But about multiple drives, I have sadly no clue. Shelby from tech Tangents and Tech Tangents II on youtube has made quite a few videos about Aaru on youtube on his Tech Tangents II channel.

Seconding aaru. You could probably write batch files for aaru to make numbered images from specific drives.

ISO's a terrible archiving format fwiw (no redbook tracks is the killer, but also no subchannels/protection data to have), at least consider bin/cue/ccd/sub.

leileilol wrote on 2023-02-12, 23:52:

ISO's a terrible archiving format fwiw (no redbook tracks is the killer, but also no subchannels/protection data to have), at least consider bin/cue/ccd/sub.

I get what you mean, but you need to consider what kind of data there is. Those CDs don't have any redbook tracks. In theory I could just copy the files and nothing would be lost.

Iso's are a bit easier to mount imho. Well nothing is set in stone yet.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will see what I can do with Aaru.

Betaarchive uses bin/cue.

ISO for those shareware CDs would most likely be fine though.
The fun part is scanning the CDs and accompanying stuff like inserts and covers. 300dpi is about minimum for good archiving and you don't want to compress the images either.

If you upload to archive.org, you will want to make sure to download all files after uploading to make sure they didn't corrupt on uploading.

I used to use Nero's NRG for making backups of multi-session CDs.
Sure, it's old, it's proprietary, it's weird.. But it does its job.
Also, it can be read by most free virtual CD drivers.
So its images can be converted to another format in the future, once there is something better than cue/bin.

cyclone3d wrote:

The fun part is scanning the CDs and accompanying stuff like inserts and covers. 300dpi is about minimum for good archiving and you don't want to compress the images either.

600 dpi, for scanning . From my personal experience.
300dpi looks okay at first glance, but details (text, outlines etc) are blurry or pixelated.

300 dpi is okay for downscaling, however. After you scanned and cleaned a 600 dpi image. 😀

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-20, 15:59:

600 dpi, for scanning . From my personal experience. 300dpi looks okay at first glance, but details (text, outlines etc) are blu […]
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cyclone3d wrote:

The fun part is scanning the CDs and accompanying stuff like inserts and covers. 300dpi is about minimum for good archiving and you don't want to compress the images either.

600 dpi, for scanning . From my personal experience.
300dpi looks okay at first glance, but details (text, outlines etc) are blurry or pixelated.

300 dpi is okay for downscaling, however. After you scanned and cleaned a 600 dpi image. 😀

The size of the uncompressed scans at 600dpi is super fun 😁

But yeah, 600 dpi is definitely better.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-20, 16:02:

The size of the uncompressed scans at 600dpi is super fun 😁

It's gigantic! 😃

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-20, 16:02:

But yeah, 600 dpi is definitely better.

Back in the 2000s, it was the maximum/native resolution of my flatbed scanners, so I used it for scanning.

I opted for this, because I wasn't sure how the optics etc. worked optimally.
In 600 dpi, the scanner bar did move back and forth for each line, I vaguely remember. I thought that's good for better accuracy.

I used BMP or Targa for the original scans.
After cleaning the scan, I did reduce the resolution as needed.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, maybe I should just have had cleaned the scanner's glass plate more often. 🤣

So the old CMOS sensor type scanners moved back and forth for the higher res scans. Not sure about the LED and whatever else is being used. I know the HP AIO laserjet I have doesn't move back and forth.

My old tabloid sized scanner I bought specifically because it uses a CMOS sensor. The depth of field is great on it and I can take high res scans of computer cards. Just have to use a blacked out box over the cards and also prop the cards up so they are sitting even.

It takes forever to do the higher res scans but boy do they turn out nice.

Jo22 wrote on 2023-02-20, 15:54:

Sure, it's old, it's proprietary, it's weird.. But it does its job.

Fair enough, but I *won't* sit down and rip it one CD after the other 😁

I think I got a solution. I can cobble together a little script to read from all drives at once and use Linux with "mkisofs". That should do the job just fine.

Now I just need to find a case with at least 10 free 5 1/4 bays.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-02-19, 17:56:

Betaarchive uses bin/cue. […]
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Betaarchive uses bin/cue.

ISO for those shareware CDs would most likely be fine though.
The fun part is scanning the CDs and accompanying stuff like inserts and covers. 300dpi is about minimum for good archiving and you don't want to compress the images either.

If you upload to archive.org, you will want to make sure to download all files after uploading to make sure they didn't corrupt on uploading.

Yah the shareware CDs are just a bunch of files usually, the cover CDs are 80% shovelware bunch of files too, but once in a while, special game demos or even whole games came along which would have CD audio or something, so they may need to be sorted.

aren't cds quite difficult to dump? reading the redump wiki suggests that only plextor drives have the features necessary to properly rip a disc, though i'm happy to be mistaken because i've been meaning to archive all my big box games and demo discs too

Virtua wrote on 2023-02-21, 18:15:

aren't cds quite difficult to dump? reading the redump wiki suggests that only plextor drives have the features necessary to properly rip a disc, though i'm happy to be mistaken because i've been meaning to archive all my big box games and demo discs too

If there is some type of protection built into the disc such as unreadable sectors.