WARNING, EXTREME BEGINNER
i'm very new to the cd burning world, i've copied, music files, easily. but now i want to move on and burn computer games, which are a friends, (so i want to burn a burnt game), i tried simply copying the files but when i run the newly burnt game it says it has files from different areas (media player, image files etc), when i manually click on auto-run it says to enter the correct CD-ROM.
All help would be greatly appreciated, and i'm an inexperienced beginner so please word in a way that i will underestand.
As for music files (that can never be copied but need to be extracted/ripped) often game CDs cannot simply be copied.
The reason is simple: when you copy files, even if they are standard PC files (this is even more true for exotic PSX/PS2 files that cannot even be seen by a PC without proper applications) you tamper with the file system stucture.
Some changes can be seen and fixed (the disc label, for instance). Some can be more subtile (the Logical Block Address - or LBA - that means the physical sector - in which the boot file is stored). Some could be impossible to detect even with sophisticated disc analyzers like WinISO or ISOBUSTER (the subchannels for audio tracks and the subchannel for data tracks, often used for copy protections).
For this reason, you often need to Extract a *full disc* RAW-Image (a digital byte-by-byte copy of the disc layout: the famous ISO, or CUE/BIN, or NRG, or CCD/SUB/IMG file - this depends upon the application you use). To do that you need a proper application. Often the same application is used to 'burn images' (that is to create a new CD-ROM from the digital image)
A very good one is Alcohol120%. But you should start studying a little. To peek inside .BIN/ISO Images, ISOBUSTER is very good. This forum's README1ST is very good for burning. For theory about CD layout, data type, subchannel data etc you could read Isobuster's help file.
And the best method is... experience! Try creating some disc image for varoius CD type (PC, PSX, Audio) and try re-burning them (use CD-RW for avoiding wasting discs). Then use ISOBUSTER to test if the Disc image to your HD is identical to the original copy, and if the burned image on the CD-RW is identical to the first twos (you can then RUN the CD-RW or use a PSX emulator to test PSX copies).
Then when you are stuck on some specific issue, come back here...
Good beginners guides (they will teach you how do create backups but they will not teach you the theory about what you're doing) can also be found on the net: try searching 'make CD backups' 'make PSX backups' 'backup protected CDs' and so on...
