1 Topic by Robert Shapiro

  • Robert Shapiro
  • Guest

Hi,

I'm really enthused about the Redump project and am considering joining in the effort. I've recently come into possession of a trove of all kinds of old media, which appears to be mostly useless junk but may have some seriously valuable gems lurking. If there's anything good, I'll be sure to post back here with details and request a proper account. In the meantime, to help me prepare, I just need to get a few things cleared up:

(1) I'm extremely impressed by Redump's "preservation-grade" approach to capturing optical media, which seems to go far beyond the usual flawed and incomplete CD-dumping approach. I know that Redump is only for optical discs, but this has got me wondering what a similarly "perfect and complete" dumping standard would look like for other classes of media. From my research, it appears that Kryoflux would the analogous standard for floppies, is that correct? For hard disks, I have not been able to determine what the analogous standard would be, or if anything more thorough than the output of a basic "dd"-type utility would ever be possible or desirable; can anyone shed any light on that? I will be dumping any floppies and hard disks that I find worthwhile, and even though they presumably won't be eligible for submission to Redump, I'd still like to make sure I dump them to a similarly "preservation-grade" standard of perfection.

(2) I don't currently have a compatible Plextor drive for use with Disc Image Creator, so I'll be buying one on eBay. As there are dozens of drives on the compatibility list, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the variety of options and could use some help choosing a model. If it matters, I'll be using the drive with a laptop and will therefore need to go through a USB bridge if the drive I get isn't a USB model. Perhaps most importantly, it looks like I'm going to want to dump a number of burned CD-Rs that are beginning to get to the borderline of physical degradation due to age and storage conditions, so if any of the drives on the list are particularly good or bad choices for reading those, that would be very helpful to know. I'll be making sure that the eBay listing for the drive I purchase confirms it has been tested and verified to work; any other caveats for avoiding a lemon when buying on eBay would be welcome.

(3) I'll want to scan all the media I dump as well. I didn't think that would be too deep of an undertaking, but after perusing the preservation-grade scanning guide at https://www.preservegames.org/2018/07/t … video.html I can see I was clearly wrong! Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to justify buying a new scanner for this, so I'll have to make do with the only one I've got, which is an HP ENVY 5660 All-In-One. I've scanned plenty of things with it in the past and never noticed any obvious problems, so I'm hoping this should do in a pinch, but if there are likely to be any specific shortcomings or imperfections I should watch out for, that's something I'll want to know. The aforementioned scanning guide doesn't cover anything remotely like my HP All-In-One, so I guess I'll be forced to wing it to some degree on the instructions, and I'm not sure how much of an issue that's likely to be. I realize that guide isn't affiliated with the Redump project, but I'd still appreciate getting your take on this.

That should be enough to allow me to get started, thanks everyone!

Quote Post 1

  • Registered: 2006-12-24
  • Posts: 3,847

https://discord.gg/AHTfxQV - probably worth to try to ask these questions in VGPC Discord, especially the last one.

Quote Post 2

3 Reply by user7 (edited by user7 2020-01-02 18:06:24)

  • Registered: 2009-03-14
  • Posts: 2,621

Robert Shapiro wrote:

I don't think I'm going to be able to justify buying a new scanner for this, so I'll have to make do with the only one I've got, which is an HP ENVY 5660 All-In-One. I've scanned plenty of things with it in the past and never noticed any obvious problems

As co-author of that scanning guide, let me assure you that scanning is very much a diminishing returns kinda thing. I'm sure your scans are fine for by-and-far most general reference purposes. That said, redump does not deal with scans - archive.org is a good place for them to live.

All my posts and submission data are released into Public Domain / CC0.

Quote Post 3

4 Reply by Robert Shapiro

  • Robert Shapiro
  • Guest

Thanks for the confirmation about the "diminishing returns" nature of scanning, which is what my experience has always been. I was also a bit surprised to see in the scanning guide that 600 DPI is apparently insufficient with 800 given as the bare minimum; this doesn't really jibe with conventional wisdom or my previous experiences, which have always suggested that there's little point going over 600 DPI in any remotely ordinary circumstance. As my established scanning workflow is based around doing everything at 600, I would really like to be able to keep working at that resolution, but will bump it up if anyone can offer sensible-sounding examples of why that's necessary.

And thanks for the VGPC Discord invite, I've gone ahead and joined. I'm happy to discuss my questions there if that's a more appropriate venue than this forum, of course. That said, if anyone has thoughts on my first two questions and would like to share those here in the thread, that would be most welcome.

Quote Post 4