Hello. I have recently been trying to create back-up copies of my games but have yet to be succesful. I'll be abel to burn the game, then to test it out I would install it and everything would go well but when I go to test it by playing it it says the wrong cd is in the drive. Somebody mentioned that I had to use a direct burn instead of a data burn. I don't know the difference between the two and don't know which one I used or how to use either of them for that matter. Any help would be greatly aprreciated.
Just for a bite of theory, 'data burning' is like copying the folders on the HD and then back from the HD to a new CD. It is a very approximate way of copying; you can extract from your CD only 2048 bytes/sector (a 74 min CD is made of 333,000 sectors, each one is 2352 bytes big). Also, a copy, e.g. of a bootable disc will not be bootable.
Direct burn (or making and subsequently burning images) means that you try to make a perfect 1-1 copy of the original CD, trying to extract everyting that is recorded on the CD. This is also called 'RAW data extraction'.
Look here
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/cd-rom/cdrom_spec.htm to see which kind of stuff you want to copy in order to make a perfect 1-1 backup.
This way you copy more stuff, 2352 bytes/sector. Also, all digital data of the copy will occupy the same position (logical block address) of the original CD.
Also, very good rippers (Alcohol120 and CloneCD, for example) can also exctract and copy some other obscure stuff called 'Subchannel data for Data/Audio tracks' where, in some disks, the copy protection info is hidden into. If you extract also the subchannels you then extract another 96 bytes (this makes 2448 bytes/sectors, the most complete extraction).
CloneCD, for instance, puts the extracted CD data in three files:
image-name.CCD (layout info, small text file);
image-name.IMG (the *true* image, equivalent to CDRWin's .BIN file, that is a big file made of the 2352 bytes/sectors data above mentioned);
image-name.SUB (subchannel data).
In order to burn a perfect copy you need a burner that is capable to write on the blank CD all the stuff you exctracted. This is not easy; the burner must be capable of burning discs (in ascendng order of completeness): DAO, DAO RAW, DAO RAW 16, DAO RAW 96.
