Hi guys I am a newbie to this and have been scouring these forums for the past 6 hours. Fascinating stuff indeed. I had a few questions:
What percentage (estimation) of PS2 DVDs (DVD5) must be rebuilt in order to be successfully backed up and played Swap Magic 3.6 and a Flip Top? 90% of the time would a simple .ISO read/write (using DVDdecrypter) be sufficient?
No, most games do not need to be rebuilt if you have swap magic 3.3 or above... I've backed up over 100 games now and I think I've only rebuilt around 10-15 of them.
The easiest way to find out if they need a rebuild is to check with a search to see if anyone's done that game. My process is always this:-
1) check on AD to see if anyone's got any info on the game by searching.
2) If no info on game, then do a 1:1 copy with decrypter/nero.
3) If didn't work in 2, then rebuild and look for dummy files etc. burn.
At the most I waste 1 DVD-R every so often... but at 20p or so a time it's worth it to keep your original ps2 game in top condition and scratch free.
Kaydash, you have totally given the wrong information here....
Some games need to be rebuilt because they won't work with a 1:1 copy on swapmagic. DL games need a lot of work before they will work with swapmagic, such as removing bonus features,compressing video sequences etc..not rebuilt. If you just rebuilt a DL game it still wouldn't fit on a DVD-5, and a DVD-9 won't play on swap magic.
yo, it's not totally wrong. Plus i misread,didn't see the swapmagic thing! None DL games don't normally have to be rebuilt....don't think any actually have to. Most of the DL games that have been made already have working methods of rebuilding so that shouldn't be a problem either!
It doesn't matter whether you downloaded it or ripped an original. You only have to rebuild when the size is too large for swap magic to boot. My swap magic will still boot over the 4.38 GB size, so I don't know why people say it won't work unless you rebuild. I usually only do it if the game becomes real choppy during play.