I have been trying to back up a copy of Red Alert 2 for quite some time now and I still remain unsccess full, I have used clone CD w/ Clony XXL and Cd-mate... I am using a Ricoh cd-r/cd-rw rw7083A
on a windows 98 platform... if any one could give a push in the right directionit would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

Also when I try to make a copy of the disk, it will basically just sit in the drive and spin a little every 30 seconds or then stop. In CD-Mate it lists a bunch of damaged sectors and thenrefuses to burn after about 30% of the way throught the process. Tried it a bunch of times and ended up with an abundence of coasters

I tried to make a back up of RA2 with the same cdr drive a while ago. It was a bitch, but finally got around it with the help of betablocker.
RA2 has bad sectors on the first 10000 or so (mine had a few at the end too - probably scratches). Create an image with clone cd (SD2 settings - it will take sometime, don't let that stop you) and then use Betablocker for the first 10000 sectors. Then burn the image with ccd. It worked for me (and made me a very happy man!).

Use the search for more info on RA2 and betablocker if you want ..

Know somebody with a Toshiba DVD-ROM, like an SD-M1402? Your Ricoh, like my 7163A has a Samsung chip that can back this (RA2) up without AWS or beat blocker. If the image can be done in Hardware EC mode, it should turn out. Software Mode does not work, definately.

SafeDisc vs. SafeDisc 2: The Technique Explained

SafeDisc 2 was first encountered on the game ‘Red Alert 2’ by Electronic Arts which caused a little shock in the back-up world… There were a lot of people who had problems copying this game while some seemed to copy it without any problems whatsoever. What was the deal here?

SafeDisc has a few hundred errors in the first 10.000 sectors of the disc but so does SafeDisc 2. The difference (and problem) lies in the first, what appear to be ‘good,’ 500 sectors of the disc. The reading of the disc is not really a problem but when you want to write these sectors something goes wrong. We have to get a bit technical now but I’ll keep it simple so you can understand it:

The (estimated) first 500 sectors of a SafeDisc 2 protected game at first sight look like a collection of crappy data. It has a lot of zero’s but is also has special 10 sector groups containing a regular bit pattern. When you read this data with a CD-ROM it will pass through a so-called ‘sector scrambler’ which is present in all CD-ROMs and Writers. A regular pattern like this will ‘appear’: XYXYXYXYXYXY…

But, like I said, the problem occurs when you want to write these regular bit patterns because there are a lot of burners that don’t like to do this. A writer has to produce the same patterns and it uses a so-called ‘EFM Encoder’ for this. When a regular bit pattern goes through the EFM Encoder it is converted to a smaller value by converting bits to bytes (8 bit = 1 byte) in a pre-determined way. Now here’s the problem: SafeDisc 2 tries to overload the EFM Encoder of the writer, by using the 10 sector groups, so it will loose synch and write wrong (irregular) bit patterns.

In short this is what happens when you write a SafeDisc 2 protected game. When you want to play a SafeDisc 2 back-up the game will check if there are regular bit patterns on the disc and if not it will give an error and refuse to play. We will call these sectors with regular bit patterns ‘Weak Sectors’ from now on.

Which Writer?

Some writers are more effected by the problem of writing regular bit patterns than others. Some writers (e.g. the Philips and Acer writers) have no problem at all copying these patterns while some simply can’t do it (e.g. the Aopen and NEC writers). And then there are writers that will make a back-up that works in the recorder only like some Plextor models and Ricoh models. If you want to find out if your burner can handle SafeDisc 2 it’s best to check the CloneCD Hardware Requirements and see if it supports ‘Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns.’ This list doesn’t mention writers that will make a back-up that works in the recorder only so here’s another list that does… http://www.geocities.com/pcp-freak/4...SafeDisc2.html

There are a few non-EFM burners that will cut RA2 like my Ricoh MP7163A

could anyone here post, or email me a link where i could d/l a copy of betablocker?

I have uploaded the latest english version here

Have fun

Hey, that website's all Greek to me

Here's another link http://www.geocities.com/pcp-freak/4.../bblocker.html

Hehe

Well it is a direst link to the file - no need to read any greek to get it