• Registered: 2026-02-01
  • Posts: 1

Hi all smile

I'm interested in helping out as I've got an assortment of optical games media in my collection, with a high percentage of that being PC video game related.

First question is that I need to get a suitable drive that works for the project, I have found the wiki page about supported drives and found that I could buy a Plextor 755A DVD/CD-RW drive, and then update the firmware to the one there. Is there anything else I need to know about this, I see that this drive uses an IDE interface - would using a USB to IDE converter work, or am I better using a PCI card with an IDE header on it / older motherboard which has an IDE interface present.

Second question, disc condition. I buy many of my optical media secondhand, often in large bundles/lots. This means not all discs are in "perfect" condition, if you're going by music grading standards some of them might be considered "Good"/"Good plus" where there is significant visible wear (scratches, scuffs) but the discs still can be read. Considering the need for specific hardware, are we also expected to provide dumps from "clean" media and would the software easily identify if there was a read error.

Thanks in advance big_smile

2 Reply by Lugamo (edited by Lugamo 2026-02-27 15:41:53)

  • From: Argentina
  • Registered: 2021-12-31
  • Posts: 240

For disc condition, you can use software like VSO Inspector or CDCheck. The former is the one most useful, but in some instances, it will flat-out fail with some discs for reasons beyond my knowlege, so CDCheck is an useful fallback.

Lugamo's Website

  • Registered: 2021-03-09
  • Posts: 274

You can also use dvdisaster, which graphically displays read errors (i.e., where on the disc the sectors with read errors are located). Redumper, on the other hand, reports C2 errors when reading problems occur and has a function for refining sectors with C2 errors.