Another How To

[Thorny]

I have several games that have to have the game CD in the drive in order to play. I've always found this a hassle but dealt with it til now. I purchased Prey this week, and my Dvd/cd drive is starting to go out. Rather than buy a new drive just to play my games, is there any way to create an image on my HDD and use it? I have Nero and tried using ImageDrive, with no luck. I have heard of this being done, how can I do it?

 

[pontifex]

if i'm not mistaken, you need software to mount the image.

 

[corkyg]

Can't you just copy the CD to a folder on your HDD and then designate it as the CD in the game? I do that with a couple of programs that require a data CD in the drive - just because it is faster.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

look up Daemons Tools. Drive image and Ghost are NOT the right applications to use.

 

[OBCT]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Can't you just copy the CD to a folder on your HDD and then designate it as the CD in the game? I do that with a couple of programs that require a data CD in the drive - just because it is faster.

The problem lies in how manufacturers create their CDs. They manipulate how CD reading occurs to prevent illegal copying of their software.

Sectors on a CD are numbered in increasing order (e.g., 123, 124, 125, 126). When reading from a CD, it tracks either forward or backward to the sector based on which sector it is currently scanning (e.g., from 123 to 125, it passes through 124, but from 126, it doesn't). Many manufacturers take advantage of this and add a bad sector intentionally, then scan from ahead of the bad sector (e.g., 123, 124, 124, 125, 126. They would scan from 126 or so). The CD would pick up the data in the bad sector, and then you know that it's a valid CD. Burned CDs usually don't pick up on the bad sectors, so they don't work with the game.

 

[corkyg]

OK, OBCT - I guess that happens mostly in gameware - which I never use. But I do have several programs with data CDs, and they give one the option of a complete, full installation where they copy and install the data on one's hard drive.

DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2006 and TopopUSA 6 are good examples of programs that do that.

 

[Thorny]

Well, I've tried all sorts of programs designed for this and figured out that they change the security on the disk/program with every new game so that emulators won't work. All the emulators and emulator disguisers work with games 3-6mo old, but nothing this new. It will still be nice for some of my older games, but I had to uninstall the emulator to run Prey, whether I was using it or not.