BLIND WRITE or cloneCD???

[Rob423]

ok, i finally got my lite-on 52x...

but it comes with nero (nothing wrong with that)
but i have heard that making copies of games isnt the program for that..
i need to make a "BACK-UP" of HALF-LIFE how can i do this
please help?

Is THG Slightly Slacking??

 

[lagger]

ok go to www.cdfreaks.com <A HREF="http://www.cdfreaks.com" target="_new">link</A> and do a search in the forums for clonyxxl and get it.. it will tell you exactly which copy protect the disk has for safedisk 2.8 and less clonecd will work I have found blindwrite to work on some disks clonecd won't copy I suggest at the same site you go to the burning software forum and then the subforums for blindwrite, get blindwrite 4.25 from the post with older versions there it is less buggy and more reliable than the newest version then go to the Alcohol subforum and get the latest version of this software many people are saying it is better than the others out there (at the moment these things change nearly daily

<b><font color=blue>Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most </b></font color=blue>

 

[Rob423]

do you have AIM, YAHOO, MSN any of these? if you do can you personal message me your name, so we can talk alot faster then waiting for this site to refresh every time, i need a few pointers on somethingS!


Is THG Slightly Slacking??

 

[Rob423]

yo, for some reason my Windows Installer won't work.. i can't install ALCOHOL

wtf?

Is THG Slightly Slacking??

 

[lagger]

reinstall msi or update it although I doubt that will help it might ... I sent you my aol id btw..

<b><font color=blue>Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most </b></font color=blue>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

For pesky copy protected CD's i use cloneCD. Havnt had any troubles with it yet with my Liteon 52x drive.

But there are other programs you can try too.
Alcohol 120%
blind write


<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[Rob423]

yeah basically i just been using blind write 4.2.5 and CloneCD..

my AOL instant messanger is Goodfela857

and msn is goodfella857@hotmail.com and yahoo is goodfella423

if you wanna chat on aol.. just send me a private msg so i can take off my privacy settings..


Is THG Slightly Slacking??

 

[tua]

Just use CloneCD, it's good for anything!

 

[lagger]

Just use CloneCD, it's good for anything!

sadly this is no longer true it can not handle secure rom very new and alcohol 120% does sd 2.8 and up much better .. hopefully Olli, the author of clone cd will be addressing this soon

<b><font color=blue>Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most </b></font color=blue>

 

[phsstpok]

Half-Life isn't even copy protected, at least mine isn't. You can use Nero to back it up.

Start up Nero. Cancel the New Compilation. Click on File and select CD_Copy. If you want to preserve the image click the image tab and remember to rename the image file. If you have two optical drives and the reader is fast you can select on-the-fly copying under the copy options. Press the Copy button. That's it.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

My liteon 16x dvd is fast enough to do on the fly's to my 52x liteon burner.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[phsstpok]

My liteon 16x dvd is fast enough to do on the fly's to my 52x liteon burner.

Really? at 52X? Isn't that a 48X reader?


<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Though it's 48x, it can reach 50x with a 650 MB CD. With a 700 MB CD, it may reach 52x. Look at CDRlabs benchmak of LiteOn LTD-163D DVD-ROM review.

<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=26708#26708" target="_new"> Go to my CPU Vendor Poll </A>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Correct and Correct. I thought it wouldnt work either but it does... and its due to the Hard Disk Buffer (not to be confused with the onboard 2mb drive cache).

Ive got the HDD buffer in nero set to something large, 80MB i think, so at the start of the copying process its only the dvd reading for a little while, then when the buffer is full, the burner starts up.
So as the two drives progress through the medium, both increase in speed as you would expect, but you have to remember that the dvd drive is allways 80mb infront, and thus is considerably faster than the burner at all times.
By the time the burner has exceeded 48x and can catch up its too late as the dvd has usually stopped reading cauz its reached the end of the media.

Ive done around a dozen "on-the-flys" and ive only once seen the buffer dip below 97%, and that was with a badly scratched CD.

So it works, and works well. around 3:15 IIRC for a drive to drive copy. (taking into account the extra time needed to copy to the HDD buffer)

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[phsstpok]

That's great. What would happen if you really shorten the buffer to near zero? Have you ever tried it? Does the copy fail or do you just get slower speeds?

I don't do much copying of disks myself. I backup games but I need to make a disk image first to test before I make a backup. I don't need to do on-the-fly copying.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Dunno. Maybe ill try tonight and find out.
My guess is taht the buffer would run out at it would give me the good old orange light... or as the drive seems to be quite smart, it might throttle its burn speeds back to 40x or something. We will see.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[phsstpok]

I'm curious how many buffer underrun hits you take. Liteon is good at this and you shouldn't get a coaster but I'm just wondering how many hits.

Before the days of buffer underrun technology the rule of thumb was the reader had to be twice as fast as the writer to guarantee successful on-the-fly copies.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

OKAY. This is strange.
I made the drive buffer to be the absolute minimum (1Mb), the second (more important) buffer is also 1Mb. and tried on the fly

So far, ah heck all is happening.
No activity on the dvd, just the burner sitting there at full speed with the light showing orange. Been doing that for the past 3 minutes.
Obviously a buffer of decent size is needed :lol:

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Ahhh. Now this is more productive.

I just tried another with a small 16Mb main and drive buffer.
It started off ok, but as the burner picked up speed the dvd begin to lagg...
@ 40% burn the buffer was at 50%
@ 70% burn the buffer was at 28%
@ 90% burn the buffer was at 10%

And fortunately just as the buffer ran out the finished burning, so it got very close to an underrun but not quite

So basically anything over 16Mb is sufficient for a 700mb cd burn... The difference between 48x and 52x is very small.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[lagger]

just curious here I know how \ where to adjust the ultra buffer in Nero how \ where are you adjusting the other one ??

tia

<b><font color=blue>Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most </b></font color=blue>

 

[phsstpok]

That's cool. Now you know that you don't have to commit 60 MB to a buffer for on-the-fly copying. Maybe go a little higher than 16MB for a comfort factor, though.

You know I've never tested the buffer underrun capabilities of my Cyberdrive. I don't think I've ever seen the buffer go below 95%. I wonder if ExacLink even works. Now, where's that old 4X reader...

About the 1MB buffer and the continuously running reader, you probably don't want to go below the size of 1 HD cluster for a buffer. Gets very inefficent for. Don't ask me the cluster size. I have FAT32 and still can't remember the formula. No clue what NTFS uses.

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

I was changing both the main drive buffer and the 'ultra buffer' to be the same.
1 16 or 80 mb.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

I just set the buffer size to max... works fine for me LOL.

And regarding the 1Mb buffer, im using NTFS with 4k clusters.


<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

in File -> options
The main HDD cache is the tab "Cache"
and the memory cache is labelled "ultrabuffer"

When i usually run nero i set the HDD buffer to be 750Mb and the ultrabuffer to be 80Mb (the largest it can go).

I could do less but theres no reason why i should.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[phsstpok]

Forget what I said. Obviously I had a mental lapse. LOL!!! Clusters are 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB etc (at least with FAT32). For some reason I was thinking megabytes. Cluster size has little influence when buffers are in megabytes. Duh!

<b>99% is great, unless you are talking about system stability</b>