I really want to underline Tyler's advice. CloneCD allows patch free CD-R booting of EA games and any other protected game.
the only requirement is that your CD-RW is DAO-RAW+96 compatible. This can be checked in the tables on
www.elby.com and if your burner is not so compatible, it is worth buying one that is if you are into CD games big time.
Likewise a Pioneer A04 for DVD-R burning is more or less a must with PrimoDVD software for 1:1 DVD copies of PS2 games. But please note that there are no DVD-R burners of which I know that are CD DAO-RAW+96 compatible.