Making playable backup discs of my old FFVII Discs

[in3rt!a]

I own the game - 2 copies actually - of the eidos platinum collection of FFVII.
The game is very old and the discs are showing their age. I was able to pull together 4 good discs out of the 8 that I have, that look like they should play. I successfully installed the game and started playing it with Disc 2, so those are good, but I don't know about 3 and 4 yet.

All I want to do is copy the entire contents of the play discs (2, 3, 4 - I already did 1 [the install disc]) so I have extras.
I tried copying them with windows - and it did, but when I put them in, when I execute ff7.exe, it doesn't recognize the discs as playable. I did, however, successfully copy the install disc and that works fine.

So all I have right now is backups of the actual data on the discs, but I can't play off them.
Is there anyway to make playable copies? Legally, since I do own the game twice?

Thanks

[Tsetra]

Most burning programs allow you so copy CDs or even create ISOs from them. I personally took my discs, made ISOs of all of them, then burned them onto a single DVD along with daemon tools to mount them with. In fact I do that with all of my multi-CD games. With the price of the game skyrocketing, you definitely want to make sure your originals stay in top condition. I'm actually considering copying my DVD and keeping that copy unused just to be redundant about it.
But anyways, if you want CDs, just do a regular CD copy. Look up CloneCD on Google and use that, as it's least likely to eject a useless coffee coaster out of your drive.

Just don't change the question around and ask for ISOs. That's a shortcut to hell around here.

[in3rt!a]

alright well thanks a lot for the help!

i'll probably go with the backup DVD route, sounds like a good plan.

//edit

except for I'm a nub and can't figure out how to create ISO's from CD's in NERO 8, so I'm just using Nero to make the copies, and that worked.
any help/suggestions on the ISO part?

[Tsetra]

I personally use DiscJuggler, but apparently a lot of people have trouble with it. So my advice there is try it but prepare for the possibility of disappointment. Nero 8 can do it, but I think it'll only create backups in .nrg format, which a lot of mounting utilities don't support. It's been a long time since I've used anything else, really. MagicISO might work, and if I remember correctly, CloneCD will do it as well, but only in it's .ccd format which some mounting utilities don't support.

[in3rt!a]

I personally use DiscJuggler, but apparently a lot of people have trouble with it. So my advice there is try it but prepare for the possibility of disappointment. Nero 8 can do it, but I think it'll only create backups in .nrg format, which a lot of mounting utilities don't support. It's been a long time since I've used anything else, really. MagicISO might work, and if I remember correctly, CloneCD will do it as well, but only in it's .ccd format which some mounting utilities don't support.

yeah i've been playin with nero and can't seem to get beyond that .nrg format... google isn't being very helpful either.
but i did successfully get my copies done so i have working backups, and thats good enough for now.

thanks for all the help.

[obesebear]

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f48/create-iso-image-nero-133010/   Check the post by Stevejum, it worked perfectly for me.

[in3rt!a]

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f48/create-iso-image-nero-133010/   Check the post by Stevejum, it worked perfectly for me.

yeah i got it workin actually....

kind of.

i did extract the contents of the disc into an .iso format onto my hard drive, and tried mounting it with magicdisc, but it wouldn't run. when i exec'd ff7.exe, it just said insert disc.

so i just put in the backup copy i made and it worked so it's all gravy i guess.

[obesebear]

Daemon tools is another disc mounting utility that may be worth checking out.  To do what you're trying you would probably have to create a no CD crack somehow.

[Tsetra]

Not necessary.
in3rt!a, did you install the game from your actual CD drive? If so your registry is looking for the information at that location, so when you mount your ISO, your FF7.exe doesn't even look at your virtual drive. You'll need to manually change that in the registry for it to look at G: drive, for example, as opposed to E: or whatever your CD/DVD drive is. If you're unfamiliar with regedit, I can walk you through the process. It's not as technical as it sounds.
It's a shame pirating is such a problem (I mean with it running rampant, not that the board has a problem with it) because I try to use No-CD patches with all of my games so I don't even have to mess around with the CDs.

[in3rt!a]

ahh no, that regedit stuff makes sense, i didn't think of that - because i did indeed install it from the cd drive with the original cds.
I do know how to do it, thanks.
I'll go see if it works.


//edit
yup works perfectly!
thanks for the help guys