1 Topic by Silent Strider

  • Silent Strider
  • Guest

Greetings everyone,

after searching the net for how to make the most 1:1 copy of a CD possible, I found this site.

I might not have the biggest collection of old PC games (maybe 20), though I do have several PSX games and a few other CD based games (e.g. MegaCD) with the option to getting more games in the future.

So far I created an image with Blindwrite to have a copy of the discs, considering some of those discs are already like 20 years old or more. My drive is an ASUS BW-16D1HT with firmware 3.10. I 7zipped the ISOs and placed them onto my NAS.

Now I have found the MPF program, which creates an ISO as well as storing lots of other information.

So... if I use the MPF to create backups of my discs, so far I don't have seen an easy way to see, if a game already has been uploaded (e.g. MPF takes the discs name and checks online if there's a dump with that disc name).

If I decide to do so, would one just send dumps of games (except the game itself of course) no matter if they're already stored from someone else, just to confirm the checksums of others?

What happens, when there are read errors on a disc because it's too old or scratched? Would this still be useful for uploading?

What does "Checking file from archive" do? It kinda makes the creation of a dump quite long as it seems to extract all files from all kinds of archives of the disk. Is this for the copy protection scanning?

Speaking of Copy protection: Should one just always use the ProtectionID software and let it scan for files and for sectors of the disc?

Quote Post 1

2 Reply by Silent Strider

  • Silent Strider
  • Guest

Additional question: the Wiki lists PX-760SA as the latest Plextor model. What about e.g. PX-890SA or other models? Would they be also good?

My drive can't even display the data part of an Enhanced CD anymore with Windows 10, even less MDF can do anything with it.

Quote Post 2

  • Registered: 2019-04-12
  • Posts: 107

Take the following with a grain of salt since I'm more than a few beers deep (and if I'm mistaken please correct me other dumpers).

So... if I use the MPF to create backups of my discs, so far I don't have seen an easy way to see, if a game already has been uploaded (e.g. MPF takes the discs name and checks online if there's a dump with that disc name).

MPF uses hashes, not the disc name to compare against dumped discs in the db. If you have the option enabled to display the submission info form and some fields are filled in the disc has already been dumped.

If I decide to do so, would one just send dumps of games (except the game itself of course) no matter if they're already stored from someone else, just to confirm the checksums of others?

If the disc has already been dumped you would submit the proper info to the forum in the Verifications section and attach the logs. Verifications are important and welcomed because it ensures the dumps in the db are correct.

What happens, when there are read errors on a disc because it's too old or scratched? Would this still be useful for uploading?

No. Only good dumps are added.

What does "Checking file from archive" do? It kinda makes the creation of a dump quite long as it seems to extract all files from all kinds of archives of the disk. Is this for the copy protection scanning?

If I'm understanding you correctly it's scanning .cab files and the like. There's virtually no reason to do this that I'm aware of and there's an option to disable it.

Speaking of Copy protection: Should one just always use the ProtectionID software and let it scan for files and for sectors of the disc?

If you have the copy protection scan enabled in MPF it uses a modified version of Burnout. ProID is better to use in general. When I dump discs I do a sector scan in ProID then a file scan after installing (I mainly dump PC games). There are many times where the sector scan will not show any protection but the file scan will.

Additional question: the Wiki lists PX-760SA as the latest Plextor model. What about e.g. PX-890SA or other models? Would they be also good?

Only dumps made by the drive models listed on the wiki page will be accepted due to those drives being able to read data others don't. There are certain exceptions for discs that use physical ring protection and other specific cases but in general if the drive isn't listed on the wiki it's a no-go.

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4 Reply by Silent Strider

  • Silent Strider
  • Guest

Agent47 wrote:

MPF uses hashes, not the disc name to compare against dumped discs in the db. If you have the option enabled to display the submission info form and some fields are filled in the disc has already been dumped.

Ah, so if I have an account and put my login info into the Options -> Login Info, it automatically checks the DB upon ripping.
When having ripped discs before without login, I guess, it doesn't count anymore. Or could I just put in the same disc again if I haven't moved the ripped files so far?

Agent47 wrote:

If I'm understanding you correctly it's scanning .cab files and the like. There's virtually no reason to do this that I'm aware of and there's an option to disable it.

Hm the only option I can find about it is the Protection Scan. Looking at your next answer, I would say, I could disable it and just use Protection ID afterwards.

If using MPF on a CD, in the end I will have 3 image files of the whole disc, where 2 are bit-identical. For storing them on my NAS, should I safe all of them?


As I just bought a PX-W4012TA for CDs, and using the ASUS BW-16D1HT for DVDs, I would like to contribute, being a perfectionist I'd want to have most accurate rips of my discs.

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