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bit-for-bit CD copy program?

Q

Quay Cur

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 7, 2006
6
0
I'm looking for a CD copying program that will make an exact duplicate of the original CD. I mainly want it so I can make a backup of a few of my original Playstation games (perfectly legal so long as you own the original and don't distribute the copies). They're getting a bit shoddy to say the least.

The program I keep running across is Astarte CD Copy, which was discontinued at version 2 or so and ran on OS 9. Is there anything else out there that will do this?
 
Disk Copy wouldn't work. Tried it with Legend of Mana and Metal Gear Solid. No luck.
 
carbon copy cloner (google it im lazy :rolleyes: ).

just disk utility to make an image the size of the dvd then mount it. Select the dvd as the source and your image as the destination. unmount and go to disk utility ans burn the image. Im 99% sure this will work... their might be some crazy copy protection , damn i hate copy protection.
 
No modchip, but I have a Slide Card and a set of Swap Magic 2.0 discs for my PS2. While I have never bothered to actually make a functioning backup they supposedly work just fine. Would those even work with a PS1 game, or will I have to get different Swap Magic discs?

Carbon Copy Cloner seems to do what I want, but it won't see the game CD. I don't know why I didn't try this before, but right now I'm copying the files from the CD to a blank .dmg file and will try to burn that to a CD with Disk Utility. That may be no better than my previous efforts of merely copying the files to a folder and the burning them to a CD in Finder. But alas, I have run out of blank CDs.

If I don't report back, assume I have failed.

EDIT: Finder won't copy "ZMOVIE.STR" from Metal Gear Solid, says some data can't be read/written and gives an error code -36. Guess that shoots down that idea. Maybe I'll fool around with CCC some more...
 
erikamsterdam said:
Big hassle, but will definitely work:
Boot camp + Window$ and then use CloneCD
Click to expand...

Dude. iMac G5. I got it in October, I think, and don't plan on getting another computer for as long as I can wait, which may not be long as I'm in the Graphic Design field. I want to hold out until OS X 10.6, or whatever is out then.

I may end up using CloneCD on my friend's PC.
 
Quay Cur said:
Dude. iMac G5. I got it in October, I think, and don't plan on getting another computer for as long as I can wait, which may not be long as I'm in the Graphic Design field. I want to hold out until OS X 10.6, or whatever is out then.

I may end up using CloneCD on my friend's PC.
Click to expand...
You might try Shrinkwrap using Classic.

It does a great job of duplicating floppies and CDs.

http://www.download.com/ShrinkWrap/3000-2254_4-913878.html
 
It's interesting; if the CD doesn't have any fancy format or copy protection, Disk Utility is very good about cloning--for example, it will make a perfect, bootable copy of an XP install CD, no questions asked. But whatever format or copy protection scheme Playstation discs use, the MacOS has trouble reading them.

I don't know if this is because the data is intentionally obscured, or if the MacOS just doesn't have a driver for their format.
 
friggin screw it. i'll just be careful with the cds. i almost always end up quitting when i try to do this stuff, it's just so overly involved and i don't have the motivation or time.
 
i think without the modchip only official sony disk will work. they have some data in a obscure place that only the playstation reads. the mod chip tells the playstation to forget about the verification process.
 
Rokem said:
i think without the modchip only official sony disk will work. they have some data in a obscure place that only the playstation reads. the mod chip tells the playstation to forget about the verification process.
Click to expand...
A brief study of the issue is that the PS discs have a section of "bad data" on them--the checksum for the section is wrong, and it's supposed to be. Generally speaking, any CD recorder will only burn correct checksums for obvious reasons, so you would need to do something VERY low level to intentionally write a bum checksum to the disc to get the Playstation to accept it as legit. I THINK even a direct bit-for-bit copy from the average burning software would fail in this situation, because a wrong checksum isn't allowed.

Heck, it's even possible that the drive itself writes the checksums, not the burning software--it's not my area, but I wouldn't be surprised. That being the case, you'd need a drive with modified firmware for this to work.

Otherwise you're going to need to modify the Playstation with a MOD chip or plug-in cartridge that overrides this check. Frankly not likely to be worth it, if you ask me.
 
Makosuke said:
... not likely to be worth it, if you ask me.
Click to expand...

exactly the conclusion i've come to. every option i have involves getting a program i don't have and having it possibly not work. i'm just not going to bother with it.
 
Quay Cur said:
EDIT: Finder won't copy "ZMOVIE.STR" from Metal Gear Solid, says some data can't be read/written and gives an error code -36. Guess that shoots down that idea. Maybe I'll fool around with CCC some more...
Click to expand...

You'll get the same error if you try to copy a Video CD. My understanding is that the STR "files" don't contain any data, they just point to the track on the CD containing the video (just like how a music CD contains multiple tracks). Since these tracks don't have a filesystem, Finder gets confused.
 
Nermal said:
You'll get the same error if you try to copy a Video CD. My understanding is that the STR "files" don't contain any data, they just point to the track on the CD containing the video (just like how a music CD contains multiple tracks). Since these tracks don't have a filesystem, Finder gets confused.
Click to expand...
Is that what's going on with STR files. OSX didn't support VCDs at all until at least 10.2 (or was it 10.3?)--it would show you the files on the disc, but didn't know how to read the format so was unable to copy even the .dat file that contains the video. That was fixed, and the OS now understands the filesystem at least enough to know how to read the video off of one.

If that's what's up with the .str files, obviously you COULD have computer that knew how to read that sort of "filesystem", it's just not worth it for Apple (or MS, for that matter) to write it, since there's no normal reason to need to read data off that kind of disc. There is software on Windows that knows how to read data out of those files (so you can rip the video cutscenes off a PS disc, which is the reason I was interested in it), and the old Playstation emulator VGS obviously knew how to do something with them, but so far nobody has written any modern Mac software that knows how to get at them. Too bad.
 
I used to use the Astarte CD copier but I haven't done anything with PSX games since I changed to OS X. I've heard people having success with toast by saving the disc as a .bin/.cue file and others with the multi-track CDROM XA format. I'd go with the latter.

Did you try the save disk image from device option in Disk Utility? It's in File>New>disk image from /dev/...

Maybe hdiutil would do a better job than Disk Utility.
 
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