Ok, Full time newbie questions

Newbie Forum
#1

ok, i am a newbie at cd-rw drives. first of all, wat is a virtual drive? clonecd and alcohol 120% both created virtual drives and i disabled them. do the virtual drives do anything? ok, i posted this next question on another thread but i want to include it in my newbie thread. i plugged in my cd-rw drive in and let winxp automatically install it. so, do i need to install a firmware for it? wat exactly does a firmware do? which firmware should i install for my norcent 48x12x48x? i read another thread that i shouldn’t install the one on the norcent website. please be patient with me. =)

Thanks~

#2

a virtual drive simulates an extra cd-rom/dvd-rom so you can try back-ups (of your cd’s or dvd’s) without really burning them on a cd/dvd. it helps you to see if your back-ups work good.

firmware is like windows but then for your burner. it is a kind of small operations system for your burner. you only should upgrade your firmware if you have problems. or are a freak like us. but for the moment DO NOT PLAY WITH yOUR FIRMWARE…as you are new to it. if you do it wrong…you drive can be damaged or un usable

#3

so i can use the virtual drive to burn a game to see if it will successfully burn right?

#4

Originally posted by aznjosh
so i can use the virtual drive to burn a game to see if it will successfully burn right?

as the name already says : VIRTUAL.

Normally you have physical drives. Your floppy drive is A , your harddrive is C and your CDROM is D (this is just an example).

Now it is also possible to make an IMAGE of a cd. This procedure contains of reading all the contents on the CD and put it in one big IMAGE. (Sorta like Winzip does with a lot of files , but cd images are usually not compressed.).

It is of utmost importance that the program which tries to make that image actually reads everything on the cdrom , including the copy protections the cd has. This is getting more and more difficult for cd-programs , but CloneCD and Alcohol 120% for instance , can read a lot of them.

Now you can write that IMAGE back on to a blank cd-recordable and try working with your backup instead of your original. Sometimes however , not all copy protection is copied along (hence the name copy protection of course).

For this matter you can check your image by using it as it were a cdrom. Here is where the Virtual CD-Drive kicks in.

Of course it’s no physical cd-rom, but it lets the computer (and hopefully all the installed programs) think that it IS a physical cdrom. And we can “load” the virtual cdrom with your IMAGE. (This is called mounting).

Now you have a virtual drive which contains of the image of your original cd. From here you can try if the program works correctly without sacrificing a cd-recordable for it.

Side note on that image. There are 2 kinds of images : ISO images and NON-ISO images. ISO is a standard and can be written by almost any cd-writing program (Nero for instance). Non-ISO images however contain more information about the contents of a cd-rom and can have more information about the copy protections built in. Examples of Non-Iso images are : CloneCd Images , Alcohol 120% Images , WinOnCD .CUE and .BIN files , etc. etc.

There’s also an advantage here for using Virtual Cd Drives. You can have frequently used cd’s stored as images on your harddisk and use them whenever you want without scratching the original cd. With CloneCD’s virtual cd-rom driver you can make up to 8 virtual-cdroms. Suddenly your computer has 8 extra cd-roms :slight_smile:

#5

@aznjosh

a virtual drive means you can test the image file…this doesn’t say you can burn it succesfully. Some virtual drives can simulate protections which your drive, perhaps, can’t burn.

#6

another question: i have the norcent rw481 48x12x48x. i read on another forum tat this burner is a benq. wat problems does my norcent/benq have compared to a lite on? i have burned some games and audio files and they dont seem to have a problem. also, if i want to burn copy protected game, all i need to find is a software that will bypass the protection or will my burner not burn it at all?

#7

you could try clone-cd/blindwrite…depending on the capabilites of your drive you can make back-ups of certain protections

or use software the emulates the protections (like alcohol) so you can use the disk even when your burner can not burn them very good

it would be good to visit the following threads in this forum;
http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=59
http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=3
http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=18

perhaps you can learn from it

#8

k, got all tat. i’m still kinda confused about different burning software. wat is the difference between clonecd and alcohol 120%? arent they both 1:1 copying programs? how come clonecd can’t write some kinds of copy protections? doesn’t it take all the info from the original cd and then copy it to a blank cd-r? please explain this to me.

#9

Originally posted by aznjosh
k, got all tat. i’m still kinda confused about different burning software. wat is the difference between clonecd and alcohol 120%? arent they both 1:1 copying programs? how come clonecd can’t write some kinds of copy protections? doesn’t it take all the info from the original cd and then copy it to a blank cd-r? please explain this to me.

there are numerous technologies companies use to protect their data from being copied , yet make lots of legitemate copies themselves. Some can be backupped for pseronal reasons , but some can’t at the moment.

Currently there are a lot of issues with the new Securom copy protections and some programs tend to handle them better than others.