why is it so hard to emulate a disc drive

[Seyss]

if you emulate all basic functions (read/write sectors, etc), mount a 1:1 image, and hide the emulator from other programs, how the protections can detect the drive is being emulated?

[Setian^Stalker]

Because its not the CD/DVD image itself. Its the program inside the games loader that verifiys the disc is authentic. It can do whatever checks it well wants including checking if DT is installed

[Seyss]

lol u didnt say anything useful..

i hide DT with a program, enable all options on DT, use a perfect 1:1 image and still wont work

a cd/dvd is just an array of bits in order..

[Underheaven]

...

a cd/dvd is just an array of bits in order

This doesn't even describe the tip of the iceberg.

[brucebeh]

because you can't really hide your virtual drive truly, the best thing you can do is use SD4HIDE to delete all your cd-roms from the registry before you play a game, that should work, because most games look into the registry for emulation software.

Unless you are already using sd4hide, mind sharing what game you are trying to run?

[Seyss]

x3 reunion

tried sd4hide already

[Nikos]

if you emulate all basic functions (read/write sectors, etc), mount a 1:1 image, and hide the emulator from other programs, how the protections can detect the drive is being emulated?

With DTools 4, they can't. They just blacklist *every* SCSI drive, no matter if virtual or real. So, when you mount, say, a StarForce protected game's image in DTools 4, the game will tell you to insert the disc into another drive. The protection didn't discover that you're using a virtual drive; it has no idea. It just sees it as a real SCSI drive, but since you also have IDE drives in your system, it refuses to run from all SCSI drives.

[Methadon]

x3 reunion

tried sd4hide already

X3 Reunion has Starforce protection not SafeDisc.
You have will have to unplug your optical IDE drives.