So, basically, you want to join the people at the ReDump Project - the goal of the project is exactly to dump again (hence ReDump) your old (vintage) retails discs in modern times and build database of vital details that allows everyone to verify his/her own dumps are correct - those details include Hash of the image, what protection is used, etc. Also, the ReDump database includes Barcode of the disc, which makes you determine, which one of several retail releases you own exactly and want to preserve.

Most important is that your image Hash matches the confirmed ReDump database Hash (CRC32/MD5/SHA1) - you can generate those hashes for the image using "HashCalc" application:

https://www.slavasoft.com/hashcalc/

which is the most convenient one to use - otherwise there are countless apps that can be used to generates those hashes.

To make it more clear for you, what I am talking about, you can see for example here:

http://redump.org/disc/26923/

how ReDump database entry for "Monkey Island: Special Edition Collection" with Barcode of "0 23272 01111 6" looks like. So, if you own that disc and make yourself dump of it, what you need to check and make sure is that your image has SHA1 hash of "1eb7f1b3e72c7997afbe09e79f011688fd64f0ee" as per the ReDump database.

So, basically, you have 2 options:

1) time consuming and no any guarantees - hunt down and download of the Internet images of the discs you have, that are made and shared by other people, generate their Hash with "HashCalc" application and if they match the ReDump database keep that image as it's not piracy since you own the exact same disc that has that same Barcode and delete all other images for which you don't own disc with their Barcode (or even they are bad dumps as they don't match ReDump database hashes). Even if you dump your disc as far as the Barcode is the same, you will get exactly the same image with the exact same Hash, i.e. the same data. So, if the hash matches ReDump database you can be completely sure the data on the disc you own are the exact same as the image. Using this approach you're entirely on your own as ReDump doesn't deal with images in any way, because they consider that piracy as the image itself is copyrighted data.

2) do the dump yourself - depending on the protection used that could be very expensive, if you don't already own the necessary compatible drive. For example, if you need to backup CD disc protected with recent version of SecuROM you are more or less limited to Plextor PX-W5224 drive and on Ebay UK currently most cheaper offers for such drive are between 200 and 300 pounds!

More on the technical side - nowadays people use DiscImageCreator, not any of the tools you listed. Currently, DiscImageCreator is not full replacement for Alcohol 120%, but Alcohol 120% is used only in the few cases where DiscImageCreator cannot be used. You haven't mentioned any details about the discs you want to dump and preserve for yourself - if their type is CD, DVD, for what Platform they are (PC or other system), etc, but you can use this:

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=DiscIm … e_Compatibility

as starting point for compatible drives. If you have any further questions you can ask me, but I can not guarantee I know the answer. Once again, ReDump community and their forum is where the gurus on those topics are hanging out. Maybe, people here are members there as well and there is some overlap...

For CD games Alcohol 120 is probably the best and you can get older 30day trial versions at oldversion dot com. The oldest version 1.4.7 .CHM help file says: Pentium Class PC with Windows 95(osr2)/98/ME/NT4(sp5)/2000/XP Operating System...They also have older versions of Daemon Tools

@Horun: Running Alcohol 120% is not the issue, the issue is that you must have compatible drive depending on the protection used on the disc - that's the most important thing. for example, if you read old review of DVD drive:

https://www.cdrinfo.com/d7/content/nec-nd-4571a?page=4

you can see they tested it with Alcohol 120% and Safedisc protected disc and the conclusion of the test is:

Unfortunately the Safedisc media was ripped extremely slow and the backup created was dysfunctional.

So, running Alcohol 120% is not a guarantee you can dump/preserve the disc! further more in that same review you can read:

the drive supports the DAO-RAW mode... with Alcohol 120% v1.9.2.3105
SafeDisc v4.6, SafeDisc v3.1x
The drive failed to create working backups of the above protected games.

So, DAO-RAW mentioned in the first post in not guarantee for anything either. So, really, running Alcohol 120% is the easiest part...

Before Alcohol120%, what was mostly used for that purpose was CloneCD...

Yeah back in mid 2000's had a few LiteOns and they copied nearly everything I owned w/o issue though never had Quake 4 or Fifa which is on the ND-4571A list as well as the SHW-16H5S which I still own.
Did use Clone CD for some but the tricky ones required Alcohol.

Horun wrote on 2021-09-05, 21:19:

Yeah back in mid 2000's had a few LiteOns and they copied nearly everything I owned w/o issue though never had Quake 4 or Fifa which is on the ND-4571A list

https://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Home … px?CategoryId=1

It's not about a particular game, but about the revision of the copy protection used with that game - that accounts to tens if not hundreds of games protected with the same revision of that commercial copy protection.
So, I browsed through the reviews of a lot of LiteOns and they cannot backup most of the protected games - no matter if CloneCD or the more advanced Alcohol 12o% is used. In fact that in general is the case with any drive - most drives can do only the very early revisions of the commercial copy protections. I do believe you just owned games with those very early revisions of the commercial copy protections.

Horun wrote on 2021-09-05, 21:19:

as well as the SHW-16H5S which I still own.

https://www.cdrinfo.com/d7/content/liteon-shw-16h5s?page=4

None of the above games worked when copied with the SHW-16H5S.

After all those guys at ReDump will not buy specific drives, maintain lists of those drives:

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=DiscIm … e_Compatibility

and pay so much money for such a drive, because for those same reasons the eBay prices of such a drive are so inflated. if they can achieve the same with an old LiteOn that sells like for 1 buck now, i am sure they will be more than happy to use them.

mattw wrote on 2021-09-05, 21:41:

After all those guys at ReDump will not buy specific drives, maintain lists of those drives: […]
Show full quote

None of the above games worked when copied with the SHW-16H5S.

After all those guys at ReDump will not buy specific drives, maintain lists of those drives:

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=DiscIm … e_Compatibility

and pay so much money for such a drive, because for those same reasons the eBay prices of such a drive are so inflated. if they can achieve the same with an old LiteOn that sells like for 1 buck now, i am sure they will be more than happy to use them.

Yeah shows the same two as the NEC. Please show me where you can get a SHW-16H5S for a $1 ? only two on ebay cheapest is $15+ the other $48+

Horun wrote on 2021-09-05, 21:50:

Yeah shows the same two as the NEC. Please show me where you can get a SHW-16H5S for a $1 ? only two on ebay cheapest is $15+ the other $48+

since there is no any difference between SHW-16H5S and any other LiteOns or NECs or LGs or Sonys and many many other drives in regards their ability to make images of protected games, you can actually get several for a buck 😀 check the cdinfo reviews of drives and ebay offers...I very recently bought lot of two LG DVD-RW (LG GSA-4163B to be more specific) for a buck and so each comes to 50 cents. of course, they are mostly useless for such a task as dumping protected discs:

https://www.cdrinfo.com/d7/content/lg-gsa-4163b?page=4

in fact they even fail on one of most often used Audio CDs copy-protection "cds200":

https://www.cdrinfo.com/d7/content/lg-gsa-4163b?page=6

that was used on almost all Audio discs (at least in europe) in the period of 2003-2004. More or less same performance (a little better in fact) for protected media as SHW-16H5S. In any way, as I said in my first reply to this post - I am not an expert on the topic....

[EDIT] after all @Vaudane can check the discs he/she owns in ReDump database, see what exactly is their protection and based on that make quite good prediction what drive can do the job. So, there is no point of so general discussion.

Well now you are changing things a bit, just admit it that when you quoted me and the SHW-16H5 and then included the part with it on Ebay for 1 buck you really never looked. If you are going to try and be accurate in this topic at least be accurate in what a specific drive goes for and not change to "since there is no any difference between SHW-16H5S and any other LiteOns or NECs or LGs or Sonys". Just because they may not perform ripping well does not make them all equal in current ebay prices 😁

This reminds me that I should go through my stash of drives and see which ones I should keep for imaging purposes.

Back when I used Alcohol 120%, I don't remember having issues with needing a specific drive to image anything.

I can't decide if these answers have cleared things up or muddied the water further 😆 but I appreciate the info. So basically, I need to get a drive that can actually do the ripping and spend all the pennies in doing so, or try to track down a rip someone else has done and hope it all matches up. I thought CDs would be simpler than floppies which require kryoflux or something similar but I guess not.

All the information here seems a little piecemeal too. There was a site mentioned here which apparently tested loads of drives but is now offline. And the CDRinfo seems to have details on which drives can image copy protected disks too. The site you mentioned mattw seems to only be for DiskImageCreator. Is there any other repositories of drives that can? I won't can't afford a drive that's best part of 3 figures.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-09-05, 23:24:

This reminds me that I should go through my stash of drives and see which ones I should keep for imaging purposes.

Back when I used Alcohol 120%, I don't remember having issues with needing a specific drive to image anything.

Yeah Me neither on having issues with drives. At the time seemed any that did DAO Raw and sub channel worked just fine. I used a lot of LiteOn because of that. Sure one can find a game or two out of hundreds that it will not copy proper but that was what usenet was for back then ;p

Vaudane wrote on 2021-09-06, 00:49:

All the information here seems a little piecemeal too. There was a site mentioned here which apparently tested loads of drives but is now offline. And the CDRinfo seems to have details on which drives can image copy protected disks too. The site you mentioned mattw seems to only be for DiskImageCreator. Is there any other repositories of drives that can? I won't can't afford a drive that's best part of 3 figures.

The big question is from what original release year are you trying to image the CD's. CDRinfo focused on just 5 main very hard to copy games. And like my old LiteOn it worked on 3 but not two "at the time"
The archive site from 2012 may be of value to you. https://web.archive.org/web/20120226103326/ht … cd-backup.shtml
There is no full list of drives found but any that can do DOA and Sub channel should work OK. For games that have issues in 2012 you may be thinking of this for CD readers:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120117081321/ht … cd-reader.shtml
Note that the Teac CD-532S is mentioned a lot for working on old games but is off the radar with mattw and redump wiki.
Both the current and archived sites seem to point to Alcohol as the best backup software followed by CloneCD.
Note: Vogons does not support warez or hacking software so am probably near violating some rules just by posting this....