hi there, sorry a newbie. Just bought a dell pc, excellent spec and a 8X dvd+rw burner, i think it a nec 1100 or something. I've bought a few games also including FS2004. I would love make a backup of my games and have been reading alot! to do it. Got my clone cd and have made plenty of coasters.

I've read about these Lite-On dvdwriters, is my dvdwriter no good for backing up ???

Is there a complete newbie guide how to make a working backup of fs2004 & cmr3?? I knew abit about wma files & emulators now, and going to try alcohol 120%, I suppose my main concern now is my writer.

sorry its so long winded!!

Safedisk 2.90 is a hard nut to crack for many burners. When I understand right it has to do with the pregap search that safedisk does, which many copy softwares (and some hardware) cant write, and the new weak sectors.

Many have had luck with Diskjuggler, or a combination for Diskdump and Fireburner to make the copies. I dont have an NEC DVD burner, but for my liteon burner, diskdump w/Fireburner to burn works with all Safedisk 2.90 copies.

Here an extract from a thread in protection discussion forum:

Safedisc 2.8 - pre-gap check introduced into guard module - initially can only be copied reliably with discjuggler using very accurate reader and 2 sheep writer or by using fireburner with a 2 sheep writer to burn a discdump or clonecd image. Both alcohol and blindwrite updated soon afterwards to deal with this issue. Hide cdr media component of clonecd updated so as to emulate pre-gap if running.

Safedisc 2.9 - new weak sector patterns introduced. Many writers regarded as 2 sheep models are defeated (e.g. Lite-on cdrws below 40x and particularly the Ltr-24102B, once the king of safedisc dupers, can't write the new weak sector patterns). Also, as Jamos has indicated elsewhere, not all readers can play a back-up copy no matter how well made though most still can.

Maybe this will help some of you.