Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!ux4.cso.uiuc.edu!b-fuhs From: b-fuhs@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Brian Fuhs) Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom Subject: Re: CD-ROM copy protection Date: 12 Feb 1994 21:31:43 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 52 Message-ID: <2jjhrv$q75@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> References: <2jb5sj$npn@netnews.upenn.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ux4.cso.uiuc.edu timsuh@uclink.berkeley.edu (Tim Suh) writes: >> So yes, jeff ivler, some CD-ROMs are designed deliberatley to disallow >> running copies from magneto optical cartridges and such. >>> But if someone can get the file onto magneto optical, they can probably >>> just as easily debug the software and remove the copy protection >>> checking code. >Does anybody know of software that will do a direct sector by sector image >of a cd-rom (and store it on a hard drive)? It seems that you would be able >to preserve all the copy protection restrictions that way. There are programs that will perform this same operation for floppies (Dcopy2 for PCs, for example), but there is a problem with this. If you are doing a direct image of a disk, then you are ignoring things like EOFs and the like. This means that you have to start at sector 0, track 0, side 0, and copy every bit on the disk from there... Including the FAT (all of this for FAT-based file systems, of course... Dunno too much about how other file systems work). So, if you try to mirror a disk of one size onto a disk of a different size, you may end up trying to deal with FATs of different sizes, with some data bits from your source disk ending up as FAT bits on your target disk, or FAT bits from your source ending up as data on your target, at least as far as the computer is concerned. If you were to try to mirror a CD onto a HD of exactly the same size, you'd be fine. Otherwise, you would most likely end up with unusable data. It might be possible. Someone out there might be able to write a program that could successfully mirror just the data from one disk to a different disk, and take care of the FAT separately. *I* might be able to, given enough time and inclination. But it wouldn't be real easy, and probably wouldn't be worth it. We are, after all, talking about CDs... The majority of the software pirating that goes on out there is just people giving games to their friends. But, a game on a CD-ROM can (and usually does) take up several hundred meg of space... If one were to try to give something off of a CD to a friend, it would probably take up most of the target HD. The only reason someone would really want to copy a CD that I can see would be to sell copies of the game to other people... Something that is very illegal, can get you into a LOT of trouble, and just isn't something anyone would want to talk about on a worldwide network like the Internet. It just wouldn't be a good idea. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Brian Fuhs | This space intentionally not left | |I'm just a peon C/4C. The Air Force | blank because if it were, then | |won't tell ME what they think, much | these words wouldn't be here, now | |less let me tell you. | would they? | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------