Best way of ripping games?

Energize · 24 Jul 2008 at 21:09

I want to copy all my games to a hard drive so that I can install them much faster when I reformat or upgrade the os etc and as a backup. Is the best way just to save the games as an uncompressed ISO and then mount them when I want to install them? Or is there any specialised software for this, where I can pre-enter cd keys and join multiple cd's together?

Indy500 · 24 Jul 2008 at 21:15

Generally games these days have built-in protection to prevent you ripping them to iso with a regular app like Nero. I'd say save as iso, if you need to shrink them use winrar.

Greenlizard0 · 24 Jul 2008 at 21:23

You might be able to create virtual cd's using software from Google. (It's perfectly legal) but I can't for the life of me remember what particular one I used to try and use. I couldn't get it to work that well either but others have.

fester · 25 Jul 2008 at 00:40

Alcohol 120% does a very good job .

fester · 25 Jul 2008 at 00:42

Alcohol 120% does a very good job .

http://www.alcohol-soft.com/

Just make sure u buy this award wining copy write infringing program as downloading it from a popular torrent site would be lilt's see ........ahhh infringing on copy write .

Energize · 25 Jul 2008 at 01:43

I must admit their website doesn't give a good image of the company, false advertising and trying to sneak in a whopping 19% vat on top of the already expensive lifetime licence!

It seems that alcohol 52% will do all the copying and emulation feature at the lower price of £20. Imgburn can burn images for free anyway.

bledd · 25 Jul 2008 at 08:30

clonecd is what i use mate

then virtual clonedrive (same company) for mounting them

Metalface Mark · 25 Jul 2008 at 09:53

Imgburn (www.imgburn.com) does the same as clone cd, and is completely free, it has the option to image disks, might be worth a try.

bledd · 25 Jul 2008 at 09:56

i use imgburn a lot, but it can't copy as many discs as clonecd tbh

Phil2008 · 26 Jul 2008 at 00:02

My way is pretty good,, install windows and your games on seprate drives, then when everything is installed, use "true image"" or simlar to backup your windows drive. Then when you need to reinstall windows, just restore your image of the windows drive.... job done.

Also if you have a big enough backup drive you could backup your entire games folder, then if the games drive dies, youve got a backup of the games folder, and wont have to install window and games from scratch.