I saw the first post some hours ago and the lost sight of it while I wrote this reply. Jackass kindly replied and I'll leave his post intact, of course (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie).

The old “what burner should I buy?” thread is here

There are four major and some less popular copy protections for CDs and one of them is now found on DVD (Tron is protected by SecuROM) and can’t yet be backed up. Possessing the right combination of hardware and software is the most fundamental step. Knowing the copy protection and its version is another fundamental step. You have to get used to version numbers, application names and hardware brands and model numbers. Before you buy a burner you need to ask yourself what you want to do with it. Since you’re reading this you may want to backupup copy protected CDs. You can skip the rest if you like and go buy an ASUS or LITEON or LG 52x burner and a LITEON DVD-ROM.. Download trial versions of software from here. The copy protections of interest are:

• LaserLock – now uncommon it seems, Desperados was the last I know of and is easily defeated.
• Ring PROTECH – common enough. Iron Storm is one example.
• Tagès – becoming more common and impossible to defeat with consumer hardware
• StarForce – like Tagès, it is becoming more common and is widely employed on Asian and Russian releases. It can be run from an image with emulation of sorts
• SafeDisc – very popular, now up to v-3. Incarnations are known as SafeDisc Lite, SafeDisc, SafeDisc 2 (SD2) and SafeDisc 3 (SD3). There are several noteworthy milestone versions

1. v-2.4+ with ATIP recognition
2. v-2.51.021 knocked over burners like Plextors and other almost correct EFM encoders of regular bit patterns
3. v-2.9x which CloneCD seems to have 'missed'
4. v-3 is noteworthy because of its verification at each or most game levels and the almost exacting requirements needed to defeat it. CloneCD is also not doing well at version three

Each version of SafeDisc raises the bar in terms of hardware and software combinations. If you don’t have a very good RAW reader then image making will take all day – the same goes for Ring PROTECH and LaserLock. An ASUS burner can do it in about 3 minutes compared to an ASUS CD-ROM which can't finish it. A LITEON burner will take about 10 minutes depending on the Firmware revision. Generally, burners and Toshiba DVD-ROMs excell at image making in terms of quality and speed. An indication of a good SD killer is a DiscJuggler read & write that works without emulation as your burner either works or it doesn’t – full stop – with DJ. Alcohol 120% is also an excellent companion software application for SD killer burners and almost correct EFM encoders of regular bit patterns (the “one-sheep” models). For absolute hassle-free SafeDisc burning, try Blindwrite which basically has a “GO” button.

• SecuROM is referred to around the forums as

1. SecuROM
2. SecuROM *new*
3. SecuROM 4.8x (actually starts at v- 4.77.00.0050)
4. SecuROM 5

Each version requires a different approach to defeat it. For v-4.8x you need a reliable reader (burner or other ‘ROM). The topology of the original disc must be extracted to create a working backup. Alcohol and Blindwrite will do this; with CloneCD you need to use twinpeak. A Plextor Premium is the ultimate writer when using Blindwrite v-5 (and known good v-4s). For early versions of SecuROM, you needed only a subchannel capable reader.

After reading this brief overview, you may choose a well known name brand like Yamaha, TDK, Pioneer or Panasonic but you will be placing yourself on the backfoot for copy protections. These popular brands are very good at data and audio burning in a pre mastering app like Nero, DiscJuggler, RecordNow and so on but the electronics engineers don’t have RAW reading in mind nor do they care whether they can defeat copy protection in terms of a working backup.

And the only thing a DVD burner is really good for is burning DVDs. Do your research before you buy a DVD burner to backup CDs – it may or may not work for copy protected CDs.

Guides are here
Game Copy Protections are listed here if not here
Software discussion is listed here
Copy protection discussion is here
To discover what some of the terms in this post mean please enter the term in a search here

Please feel free to post generally below