I am trying to backup my copy of sim city 4. I have tried every program on the market including: nero, alcohol, cd mate, cd clone to name a few. I have read all the posts on using these programs and still I fail.

I am running windows xp have plenty of processor, ram all that nonsense. Running a 10x sony cd writer.

Please somebody break down step by step completely idiot proof instructions on how to copy this program. If you think some other thread has covered this topic, perhaps it does, but I DON'T GET IT.

I have all the above mentioned programs available. If you think I need a different one, tell me. I'll get it

Sim City 4 => safedisc 2.8.

You don't need a different program. What you need is a different writer. Your old 10x Sony can't do it.

If you don't want to buy a new writer, then you can use clonecd with the protected pc game profile or the game cd profile (i.e. emulate weak sectors) to make a copy that will work so long as clonecd is on the system and hide cdr media is enabled.

If my cd burner is too old that, that would explain why I can't burn the cd, but shouldn't I be able to save the game on my hard drive and run it from there?

No particular reason why you can't make an image of the cd with say alcohol and run it from an alcohol or daemon tools virtual drive.

What I've been trying to do is put in a folder on my hard drive then run it like I would anything else. When it goes to installing the game, It brings up 100 error messages saying it can't copy the files.

How does the virtual drive work? I saw where it had created a virtual drive, but that's a new concept for me.

You can't do it the way you've been trying.

What you need to do is make an image of the cd and then mount that image on the virtual drive. When the image is mounted, it as as though an actual cd was inserted into a genuine physical cd/dvd rom drive.

From there you should be able to install and run the game.

assuming I can make an image from the cd, could I use the cue and bin files and make a cd from that? Or is my burner still too old for that?

What about iso files? I know I can do iso files because I copied a norton iso.

one more thought:
alcohol keeps telling me "disc read error" while trying to create the image. You said the protection type is safedisc 2.8. alcohol has the option of safedisc 2, but not specifically 2.8. Is 2.8 a newer protection type and my version of alcohol just doesn't recognize it?

It isn't really a question of your burner's age but rather whether it supports correct efm encoding of regular bit patterns. Yours doesn't.

It won't make any difference whether you use mds/mdf (alcohol's native format), bin/cue, iso or any other format. The ability to copy safedisc 2 protected cds and, in particular, those with v. 2.51 or above is almost entirely hardware dependant.

Alcohol can handle sd 2.8 just fine with a suitable writer. It's just that yours isn't.

As for read errors, that's normal for all safedisc protected cds irrespective of the version. It's part of the protection.

See
this thread for more info on copying the latest safedisc 2 protected cds.

I have the same problem.
I tried backing up Simcity 4 using Alcohol but no use.

I have a BUSlink CDRW 40X12X48. Read somewhere that this is an Aopen with one sheep rating.

I enablem bypass EFM in Alcohol and also trying to mount the image in the virtual drive, but failed to run the game from the backup cd.

Please advice.