Hi guys. I thought I would take a brief moment to share something with you, which is of great interest to me and which concerns SafeDisk V2.xxx CD’s, CloneCD, and Liteon burners. Read below and you just might be amazed!

Anyway, has anyone given much thought to the burning process and the options available to you once you have successfully read a SD2 CD? Usually I always leave the Write Mode at ‘RAW DAO’ because as you and I know, this is the best writing mode there is… or is it? You see, my recent experiment has revealed something very interesting and if it hasn’t been discussed before, I’m sure many will want to discuss it now, particularly if you burned a SD2 CD and discovered it works on one machine and not another.

My experiment went something like this:

1) Placed the original SD2 (SafeDisk V 2.xxx) CD into CD ROM
2) Loaded CloneCD
3) Selected Fast Error Skip, Read Retries: 3, Error Correction: None
4) Selected Write Imagfile
5) Selected Write Mode Raw SAO (take special note, RAW SAO).

Now what do you think happened? Well, the game worked and I reckon it worked even better than in RAW DAO mode and I can prove it. One of my drives is a Pioneer DVD-115 which is extremely sensitive to backed-up SD2’s and on many occasions I have had to use the Liteon LTR 32123S instead, if I wanted to play the game (very annoying when you forget). Anyway, burning SD2 CD’s in RAW SAO mode not only fixed this little annoying problem once and for all but interestingly it also did something else. I noticed that the Read Errors normally found by ClonyXL had now disappeared. No Read Errors could be found at all!!! The game on the other hand works just like the original but the read errors are no longer.

So how could this be and why is it when I use CloneCD again to read this ‘error free’ CD and use it to make a second copy that it too works no different to the first!!! And as a bonus, the slow read usually encountered during the bad sector reads have mysteriously vanished. Something that took an hour or two to read now takes me less than 2 minutes to do (40X Speed Liteon). And the game works brilliantly even on my hypersensitive Pioneer DVD drive! What the…? What’s going on? Any suggestions? Please feel free. Can’t wait to read your comments!

P.S. I hope I am not raising a topic that has been raised many times before.

Isn't this an accident? Have you tryed it on more SD 2.51 CD-R's?

I think RAW-DAO is still better...cause I never had any problems with it...even with SD 2.51

Greetzzz,

Sauron

It would be nice to know the game you backed up, it might also be that you're mistaken about the protection type
Personally i've never tried to back up any protected game i own with raw sao, never thought it would work
But then again it might be possible since lite-on supports EFM correction

No, no, no guys! You're either misunderstanding what I am saying or maybe I have not illustrated my point properly.

The game I am talking about is WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, and the reading of the CD is not done in RAW SAO but in RAW DAO, however, the writing is done in RAW SAO. It is not possible to backup SD2 games using RAW SAO.

I am surprised very few find this significant but maybe you're right, I may need to test this theory on some of my other games. I'll keep you posted...

Here is a little more on this from the Blindwrite FAQ
Cheers

Ok, fine, don't believe me - but it's true I tell you. If anyone out there owns a Liteon LTR 32123S burner, have access to CloneCD, and an SD2 protected game, try this yourself.

1) Read the CD as you would for a SD2 game (Read in Raw DAO, Selected Fast Error Skip, Read Retries: 3, Error Correction: None,
2) Grab a blank re-writable CD (just in case) and burn it using the RAW SAO setting in CloneCD at max speed.

Once you have done this, run the game and see if it works. If it does, try reading the CD with CloneCD and create a second image as you did in step 1 above. If it does not work, do not continue any further - abort.

How long did it take you to read the re-writable CD the second time around? Two minutes or 2 hours?

Now, erase the re-writable CD (which contains the first image) and burn the second image using RAW SAO mode at full speed. Does the game work? Amazed? I was!

Could someone please verify this experiment, PLEASE.

I have now managed to do this successfully twice with just two attempts (100% success). Tried it on The Sims Vacation and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (both confirmed as SD2 protected by ClonyXL).

wow i think you're on to something here!

A good article here from May 2001

Hmmm... I don't understand why "SAO-RAW" would create more "Contrast" on the disc than "DAO-RAW".
I find that hard to believe.

I believe you.

Cheers

Hmm... i think that people at Blindwrite actually agree with you Starrman, but then again if Olli doesn't understand it ...
I am kind of so i will try it my self and see what happens

For those who find it hard to believe (Olli) and for those who may be a little sceptical, I can only say one thing: TRY IT FOR YOURSELF! Use a re-writable CD and you have nothing to lose other than a moment or two of your time. In fact if a perfectly good CD image is sitting in your hard disk, use that instead (provided it's SD2 protected) and save even more time!

Now, I'm not sure if it would work on other drives, but have a go and see what happens. One thing is for sure, the frustrating issue of a CD working on one PC and not another is perhaps a thing of the past just with one extra click of the mouse (RAW-SAO instead of RAW-DAO).

I'll surely try this. If it really works better in SAO-RAW (which I still can't believe), I'll have to put a "preferred Write Mode" option into the write profile...

I'm gonna try it right now with Red Alert 2.

Tell ya how it goes...

Well, I wrote in RAW-SAO and this happened:

Here

But it burned fine. It wont play though, says insert correct CD. Made cd in RAW-DAO and works fine.

> Hmmm... I don't understand why "SAO-RAW" would create
> more "Contrast" on the disc than "DAO-RAW". I find that hard
> to believe.

Blindread guys give more explanations later in their manual :

> The DAO mode produces CD's with less readability than the
> SAO mode. For short, the data sent to the laser head is more
> accurately timed, and the power calibration of the laser head
> is more accurate with a SAO writing mode. That makes CD's
> easier to read, and sharper.

No idea where they took that from, but this is definitely not
standard for all drives, and I don't see any valid reason to
change especially the laser power depending on the recording
mode. And even if you could get 'sharper' and 'contrasted' discs
in SAO, how is that supposed to help with weak sectors ? Very
strange...

So far this method of burning in RAW SAO mode only works for SD2 CD's. Just tested it on a Securom New protected CD and it turned out to be a failure (lucky I was using a rewritable).

Wiz486, Olli, how are those tests going huh? All I want is someone to verify the same thing I've done and I'm outa here!

I am using a 4804te, and it only supports RAW-DAO...
no RAW-SAO, not supported

If the drive has reading SD2, wouldn't having a 'sharper' image help it to read the info, kind of 'counter-acting' the large DSV?

Just guessing here, though

Securom and Securom *new* are based on subchannels. Since you can't write subchannel data in SAO, you cant do Securom.

Yes SirDavidGuy, how silly of me. I realised this after I had done it.

But why won't anyone try this experiment. Come on guy's. What are you waiting for. In fact, if you do not have a SD2 game use any game that did not require subchannel data & audio to be read. In my opinion, you should end up with a better burn and accepted in more, if not all, CD ROM's. If your burner does not support RAW SAO just do it in SAO or similar. The result should still be the same.

I simply do not want this topic to end in this way (negatively) as I have a genuine case which could benefit many people.

I have three PC's on my home LAN with a total of 1 cdrw , 3 cdroms and three dvd-roms. Of these 7 drives the oldest oem dvd drive is very picky about playing copied game cds. It will play the originals in every case but will not play the copies especially newer games such as Serious Sam 2,Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Jedi Knight 2. All these games will play with copied cds on the other 6 drives with no problems. I tried SS2 and Jedi2 as you suggested writing in SAO-RAW but they would not load as is the case in most of the copied games on my older dvd. In my case this made no difference at all.

starrman, I've tried it. The liteon 32x wont even write in RAW-SAO as you can see in my picture. When I made the copy and scanned it with CD-MAtE's cd-rom manager, It reported 2 sessions. 1 had all the data and 2 was blank. Maybe the program scans to see how many sessions there are. It was Red Alert 2. I used the EXACT same image but wrote with RAW-DOA and the CD was fine.

This theory was a no go.

I tried it on MW4:Black Knight - no go. Kept telling me to insert original cd (occurred with both cdrom drive and burner), using CCD4b30 and 32123s.

Ok guys, I’ve coped all the bruising I can take. I will drop the matter, for now. However, I discovered that writing in RAW SAO mode is really just SAO. CloneCD allows me to select RAW SAO but the next time I do a copy I discover it shows just SAO and not RAW SAO as I had previously selected. My Liteon must be telling lies to CloneCD.

Anyway, it works for me and I'll stick to it, however, I also discovered that while my experiment will work fine for all SD2 protected games, it does not work on plain SD protected games. Hmmm, what the...?