Actually, you'd damn well BETTER back up all of your game master CDs that you can, so if anything happens you still have one. Then hide the original with the box and stuff somewhere and play the copy! Or just use a noCD and treat the on-HD game as the backup, basically.
The only bought games I don't later bother with cracks for are ones that need net play... For instance, even though I bought it, I play a cracked version of Doom3 since I don't care about online for it (yet anyway) and I HATE CD CHECKS.
