Hello, dear dumpers! I'm in the process of making my first legit setup to dump games and music CDs, and I'm experiencing some problems. I have a few questions about the process in general as well. I have read all the introductory guides, but haven't found answers and solutions to everything.
My setup is:
– Plextor PX-708A2 drive (default firmware v1.09, relatively new, warranty seal intact, only about 500 hours of work)
– NEC laptop running Windows 11 Pro 24H2
– MPF v3.3.3 and Redumper v2025.07.14 build_631
– the CD drive is connected to the laptop via an ATA-USB cable (AgeStar IUBCP) and external Molex power source (in my suspicion, this interface is the main problem)
So far, none of the dumps have produced a finished result – that is, actual dumped data (like a .cue/.dat pair) or metadata. At the same time, all the discs are read by Windows just fine, audio playback and filesystems are good.
The IBM PC game CDs I have tried mostly get stuck right after the "PROTECTION" line in the Redumper console log. They hang like this forever without any sounds from the drive. Upon terminating the console window, MPF says ".cue and .dat were missing from the output".
Audio CDs behave differently. They pass the "DUMP" phase with the SCSI error count seemingly equal to the amount of LBA blocks. Then, after hanging on "REFINE" for 3 hours, it says "correction statistics: SCSI: 0 samples". Does this mean that the entire disk was considered erroroneous, but all of the errors got ultimately fixed, or, conversely, that it fixed nothing? Does an SCSI error mean it can't read anything at all?
One audio CD stopped dumping at "SPLIT", logging "error: file is empty (Audio CD.subcode)", ultimately producing no .cue/.dat as well.
So with these symptoms provided, I have a few questions:
1. Does anyone have experience with an ATA-USB connection? If it does not let one produce dumps, should I set up a separate legacy PC with legitimate ATA (IDE) input instead?
2. If the drive might be the culprit, is there a recommended way to generate a health report and diagnose problems?
3. Redumper's console output is quite verbose, but not detailed enough to understand for the layman. Is there a guide that outlines what's happening in each stage of the dumping process and how to decipher the logs?
4. MPF hangs up and stops responding quite a lot after finishing dumping or checking for protection, requiring to end its process – is this normal?
5. I see it is recommended to update the drive's firmware – is the provided firmware in any way diiferent (patched) from the factory-provided, or can it be left as is if the version is the same?
I may provide some of the logs if needed.
I'm new to this, so any help, explanations and pings in the right direction are appreciated!