LOLOL the post to which U just replied dates back aeons ago, when I was but a mere newbie in this forum
. It's
long since I've understood how this Gigarec thing works.
-> Besides, come to think of it, if the lengths of pits & lands can vary on a (pressed) CD-ROM, it seems logical that they can also vary on a (burnt) CD-R(W) - comes to the same thing, nicht war?...
Same goes 4 the twin-sectors technique (although the way it works PRECISELY is somewhat beyond my scope). Ironically, we owe this to Thompson, the makers of Tagès. Indeed, Tagès uses twinsectors (involving modified Q-subchannels, I think) and now the very same method is used to
defeat another scheme - devilishly clever : making a 'Tagès' disk to statically emulate a 'Securom' disk - and on the other hand no one has ever bothered to write a software that can
read Tagès since this protection was only used for one game title...
To this day I've never run into any CRC issue when using a twinsectors-backup. Although VSO recommends burning 2 disks (one with twinpeaks, for the protection check, and the other without twinpeaks to ensure data integrity), I always use one disk only. Despite the countless backups of Securom 4.8xx I've made, I've had no setbacks so far
Since readers/burners can READ density variations, perhaps what is needed to confer Gigarec-capabilites onto a burner is only an appropriate
firmware flash (cf.
IF IT CAN BE READ IT CAN BE BURNT). However, such firmware must surely take quite some time to develop - which would explain the Premium's staggering - and dissuasive! - price
.
Nevertheless, as the Premium is as of today the only burner featuring such firmware, this gives it a definite headstart over its competitors. Indeed, when making a twinsectors-backup of a 'securom' disk, it is imperative that the 'media descriptor' file (.BWA or .MDS'), be stored somewhere, as it will be needed should the need of making a "backup from the backup" later arise. On the other hand, making a copy of a Premium-made backup does not need this file, as the physical media info can be recovered from the backup as well. Interesting it would be to see how Gigarec will cope with future versions of Securom, once it has been enhanced by the Japs..
Two caveats about the Premium though (and which concern all other burners as a matter of fact):
- it is not a "3-sheep" burner (ie. not 100% correct EFM encoding) - cf. 'safedisk 2.9' issues encountered with this burner, when EFM enhancement is switched off. In fact, with the
possible exception of the LTR 52327S' new '7S' chipset, there is as of yet no such burner on the market.
One thing is sure though - should there ever be a burner that has Gigarec built into its firmware AND that also features a "3-sheep"-capable chipset, I'll be the first to rush to the retailer - regardless of the pricetag
- Gigarec seems powerless againt Starforce - and so does twinpeaks! In fact in seems Starforce can only be "dynamically" emulated (ie. with Alcohol 120). It is known that both Securom and Starforce use density variations - so
what is it that makes Starforce CDs so different from Securom CDs in that even the twinsectors method cannot defeat them?
If you or anyone could shed some light on this mystery it would be much appreciated..
Quote:
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[...] And the copies are really damn near the original and they are working in nearly every CD-ROM-Unit
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So I guess it's 0.99:1 backups, more like
What are the readers on which the backups failed? These units must be having damn good reading accuracy to be able to tell the difference between the originals and the copies...