New to this!!!

[redhotjoe]

I wonder if anyone could explain how to use Daemon tools. I have been advised to use alcohol 120% to make back ups but also recomended to use Daemon too. How do the two work togther?? Sorry to be so green but I'm very new to this

Thanks

[noib]

Daemon Tools is a CD emulator. It acts as a driver (i think) and makes believe to Windows that there is a new CD/DVD drive.
Instead of putting real CDs in your real CD drive, you put CD Images in your virtual CD drive.
Those images (like .iso, .ccd, .mds) are made by other softwares, such as Alcohol 120%

The process is simple : Put real CD in real drive -> run Alcohol and make an image of this CD -> eject the real CD -> put the CD image in DTools virtual drive -> run the game.
And thanks to DTools team and their awesome job, you then can run games without being buzzed by physical CD management !

Hope it's clearer now

[redhotjoe]

Still cannot get it to work

Thanks for the over view. I am starting to get a little more familar.
I tried to back up two games, FIFA 2003 and Harry Potter. They are both EA game, and when making an image they both show Yellow triangles with exclamation marks in. This shows in the Alachol copying window after the first 3 seconds and continous to scrol throughout the copying process. It reads 'Read Data eamination Error' continously. This is a very slow process and takes around 10 mins for about 2%. I stopped the process because it obviously is not reading correctly. Have you or anyone any suggestions. Incidently I have successfully made back-ups with other of my games, but I don't think they had any protection!!

Thanks

[Copytrooper]

It is reading correctly, the read errors are part of the protection used (SafeDisc2). If you've a bad reader, which does not support fast error skip, try to reduce the read speed to e.g. 4x or 8x, so the drive won't spin up'n'down on each read error. Just keep it going, should be complete in around 15-20 min.

[redhotjoe]

tO cOPY TROOPER

WHEN YOU SAY A BAD READER, I TAKE IT YOU MEAN THE ACTUAL CD DRIVE READER/WRITER? THIS COULD BE THE CASE, IF IT WAS I WOULD BE VERY PLEASE AS I SEEM TO BE DOING EVERYTHING A PER ALL THE ARTICLES I HAVE READ, AND I HAVE ALSO ESTABLISHED WITH CLONE THE TYPE OF PROTECTION EACH DISC CONTAINS. I ALSO TICKED THE OPTION 'SKIP READING ERORS', IN ALCOHOL 120%, BUT IF THE READER HAS TO BE COMPATIABLE WITH THIS OPTION TOO THIS COULD BE WERE I AM GOING WRONG! WHAT DO YOU THINK?
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP

[Copytrooper]

Fix your caps lock :!:
The errors will always be reported, so there's nothing wrong with your drive - as I mentioned: just keep it going! The read errors will end around sector 10000.

[redhotjoe]

'No Disk Inserted'

Copytrooper, I Tried again had success making an image of FIFA 2003, HarryPotter and Hitman. I can load and play the first two, but HitmanI can only load successfully. As when I try to play the game it asks for the 'Disk to be inserted'. Is there a way to play it?? Also I have a another question about the Daemon lay out. I am using the Virtual drive, which is 'E' and have several physical drives too. What do I use them for?? I have F,G,H,I. These are all virtual too as my system only has a CDROM, which is D drive.

Thanks

[noib]

Go in "game database" section to look the protection type for your game, and adjust Alcohol120 parametrers to creaye the image.

[redhotjoe]

I have done that and it recorded ok. I managed to load it from the recorded image ok too, but it must have a 'look for the disc' file which is contained on the disc. I have heard of this before and you need to add a file to fool it into thinking it has a disc in the drive
Any suggestions would be appreciated