I have no clue where to post this, but I guess if it is wrong It will get moved (Thanks in advance) I am trinkg to make a backup of Darkstar One, but I am haveing no luck getting past Tages. I have read the artical and tried the tools but I cannot get anything that will A) make a dvd inmage in the form of a .img file to use to tool and B) I cannot find a copy of CloneDVD that will make a game image and not a DVD video image. Any ideas?

AFAIK, it isn't possible to make a working back-up copy of a Tages protected DVD. The tages tools package is for cds only.

Bloody Hell. Ok Thanks For The Info

Fraid your wrong on that one bud. I have a working backup of darkstar one now V 1.1.1368 or whatever the last update to it was.

It appears from looking over the Tages protection data that it writes multiple copies of numbered sectors to a cd / dvd and then you put say half the game in the initial numbered sectors which if installed works like a demo or just doesnt work, then in the mirrored sectors you put the real game data and stuff and a key. A file which gives the physical sector address but - 2 or 3 is in the game, so the filter moves the head to that sector then tells it to disregard the sector number and physically move the head via a number count from that mark, making the head go into the mirrored sector.

Backups cannot be done by normal copiers as they are sequential ie sector 1,2,3,.. etc, to copy the original you need to have a copier that physically moves over the disk face and isnt sector driven. Or at least thats what Im interpriting it as.

Vaguely this reminds me of a protection system I first saw on a Commodore 64 disk, decades back that used a raw read rather than a sector read, cant for the life of me remember the game but the method rings some bells.

Well, if you have, don't be shy. Tell us how you did it.