Author Topic: CD archive and copying (Read 25,129 times)

Fred Nerd · « **on:** June 28, 2009, 11:36 AM »

Hi, just seeing if anyone could point me in the right direction for software

I have a large cd collection, and want to archive to HD in a way which
a: is a perfect archive, i.e. not just lossless tracks, I want exact album. If it has an enhanced part then that will still be there, and all tracks in order, exact gap in between as original etc.
b: the original album can be burnt to cd with as little or no data loss of any sort.

I don't care if I can't play them on the HD, but I was hopeing I could use a virtual drive for it.

I'm currently using an old version of CloneCD (back when licences were permanent) However I dislike 2 things about it:
a: the cost, not so much for myself, but I can't give a copy of the program to a friend or two so we could have a communal archive HD
b: too many settings, if its set right, it does a great job, but isn't guaranteed identical. And should it be set in Raw-Dao, Sao or whatever it has. I take a pot guess.

So what I want is sort of a music cd imaging program complete with virtual drive. But as far as I know, music cds don't turn into ISOs.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Shades · « **Reply #1 on:** June 28, 2009, 06:41 PM »

Did you try to use a music CD together with a piece of freeware called: IsoBuster?
The latest build I have (2.4) is currently processing a music CD and it seems to create an ISO. (I selected the RAW method, but I could have chosen the method Data or Mixed as well). I will get back to you if I can play the content of the created ISO with a player like WInAmp, VLC etc.

This software is actually intended for retrieving data from broken CD's/DVD's and it is free to use for CD's and DVD's if they do not contain the UDF storage format (which is most of the CD's/DVD's anyway).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #2 on:** June 28, 2009, 07:21 PM »

How about ImgBurn - you can 'read' discs to ISO/CUE format and burn them again from the CUE file. Use MagicDisc to mount and play the CDs (from the CUE file) on your PC.

All free tools.

f0dder · « **Reply #3 on:** June 28, 2009, 10:44 PM »

Since you're doing this for archiving purposes, imho you'll be best off using a decent audio ripping tool like EAC, to ensure you get perfect rips. If you encode to FLAC format (which is lossless), then you can preserve gaps and everything, and even when ripping to individual files, combined with a .cue sheet you can burn perfect copies.

The only minus is that it doesn't rip multipart/data portions, but that's not too big a loss for me - that data can be copied directly over, so the most important is getting the audio right.

4wd · « **Reply #4 on:** June 28, 2009, 11:23 PM »

Quote from: Shades on June 28, 2009, 06:41 PM

I will get back to you if I can play the content of the created ISO with a player like WInAmp, VLC etc.

VLC will play directly from an ISO without having to mount it - at least it does for DVDs.

40hz · « **Reply #5 on:** June 28, 2009, 11:49 PM »

I'm 100% with f0dder on his recommendation for using EAC to rip using the FLAC codec.

I have my entire music collection archived this way. Whatever bells & whistles EAC lacks is more than made up for by the superb (no exaggeration BTW) rips it generates. I have never heard anything better than the EAC+FLAC combination. I've tried over a dozen excellent audio rippers before I selected EAC.

So if sound quality is your main concern, definitely use EAC. It's worth whatever else you'll have to do to get the rest of the items in your "wish list"accomplished.

Luck!

Fred Nerd · « **Reply #6 on:** June 29, 2009, 10:54 AM »

Thanks for your help,
Imgburn seems to do what I want, but I will have to verify it when I get time. I.e. Make an archive, copy it onto disc, re-archive it and make sure they are identical to the bit. And a bit more.

I still don't like all these settings. If it can be done identical, why do you need to change it? In my opinion cd copy software should have 1 button for read, 1 for write, and combine the two with a third for copy. No settings shold be needed....

As for ripping. NO, I want everything to be the identical, exact same. I don't have a collection of tracks, I have a collection of albums, some have hidden subtrack information, some have cd text some are enhanced, I want to preserve it all or its not worth trying.
FLAC is meant to be lossless, so it shouldn't matter which program rips it, since it does, I wouldn't touch it for a permanent archive.

I might have to write my own someday.

Thanks everyone, when I test Imgburn, I'll let you know the results.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #7 on:** June 29, 2009, 12:13 PM »

Sorry what settings did you have to change in ImgBurn?

I just chose Mode > Read, set an ISO file name, insert the disc to copy and clicked the start button.

To write it again just chose Mode > Write, select the Cue file, insert a disc and click on the start button.

To play it back just mount the CUE file in MagicDisc and double click start your player.

f0dder · « **Reply #8 on:** June 29, 2009, 02:31 PM »

Quote

As for ripping. NO, I want everything to be the identical, exact same.

You either get identical audio, or you get a cd-image where audio might or might not be identical, bu the rest of the structure is. This is one of the unfortunate consequences of the audio cd standard: it doesn't have the same repositioning and checksum information that data CDs have, and thus you need audio ripping routines that are more complex than simply making data CD images.

Quote

FLAC is meant to be lossless, so it shouldn't matter which program rips it, since it does, I wouldn't touch it for a permanent archive.

FLAC is lossless, the problem is the process of getting the audio from the CD. Using a proper audio ripping tool guarantees that this is done correctly - EAC is good, and also supports AccurateRip.

Hidden sub-track information and cd-text can be stored just fine in .cue sheets accompanying the FLAC files (or single-file-for-a-whole-album, but that really isn't necessary with FLAC), leaving you only to manually copy cd-data, if you want it. If you care about the audio, this really is the best archival form you can get.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #9 on:** June 29, 2009, 03:28 PM »

Just tried copying a CD using ImgBurn and then ripped both the original disc and the copy using RAW format in ISO Buster.

The two resulting image files have different hash counts.

Having said that the ImgBurn CD plays fine and I can't detect any audible difference between it and the original.

Innuendo · « **Reply #10 on:** June 29, 2009, 04:43 PM »

Music CDs can be compiled into ISOs. However, ISOs (or any CD image for that matter) just do not have the capabilities to reproduce bit-perfect copies of audio. I'm sure someone could devise such a thing if they wanted to, but...nobody wants to and I'll tell you why. An ISO of a music CD is going to be roughly twice the size of a lossless FLAC compilation of the same tracks.

CD-Audio tracks are basically for all intents and purposes WAV files without a file header & the WAV file format offers no provision for file compression at all. An 85-90 MB WAV file will be around 20-40 MB encoded as a FLAC file. Start encoding a CD collection of a couple hundred discs and you can see what kind of space savings you'll get going with a non-ISO solution.

Using Exact Audio Copy like f0dder suggested to encode your CD tracks to FLACs will generate a CUE file for each CD. A CUE file is basically a playlist file that not only keeps track of song order, but also gaps between tracks. Use a media player that has CUE support & you won't be able to tell the difference between the FLACs playing and playing the physical CD. There'll be no difference in audio quality or timing.

The added bonus to this method versus the ISO method is all your songs will be distinct files. You'll be free to compile playlists and compilation CDs with no ISO constraints.

mwb1100 · « **Reply #11 on:** June 29, 2009, 07:27 PM »

Quote from: Innuendo on June 29, 2009, 04:43 PM

Music CDs can be compiled into ISOs.

My understanding was that Audio tracks are not supported in .iso files. This is one reason why CD burning software often have proprietary formats (like .nrg) to image discs which contain more than data (or more than a single session of data).

Then again, I'm no expert, so I may be entirely wrong about this.

Edvard · « **Reply #12 on:** June 29, 2009, 09:14 PM »

In my experience, Audio CD's will compile to .bin or .img files, but not .iso because that's not what iso was meant for.

Since I'm on Linux, I found this page quite useful.
From the information I gather, compiling to a .cue/.bin pair will save all tracks, including hidden tracks and data.

Innuendo · « **Reply #13 on:** June 30, 2009, 02:24 AM »

No, you are right. In my zeal to simplify my answer I over-simplified. ISOs are not for audio CDs. BIN, NRG, and MDS files are, but....none of these, including a .cue/.bin pair will not provide bit-perfect results as the levels of error correction required to reproduce an exact copy. Jitter and other variables cause variations to be introduced when the CD image file is produced that cause the results Carol got in her earlier post.

If you can settle for "close enough" then BIN/CUE will serve you well, but the OP stated he wanted bit-perfect exact duplicates of the original discs.

Fred Nerd · « **Reply #14 on:** June 30, 2009, 01:10 PM »

A lot of interesting information

@Carol, I didn't actually change anything on Imgburn, I just looked at the settings and thought "how would I know if the default settings are what I want, there are too many options which I don't know"
Thanks for doing my testing for me.

So it looks like I want the impossible, as usual.

As much as FLAC would do the job as good as would ever want be required, it still isn't what I really wanted.

I wanted my cds to become totally redundant except for the writing on the top. I could put all my cds on a Terabyte external HD (thinking same size file as a CD) and if a fire ever got them, I still have the original on HD.

But if it is only 99.9% the same, then there is still reason to keep the original. It means that it would eventually get accumulated error of a significant size. Of course no-one would ever copy on and off that often, but the possibility is there.

So I'm just waaaay too fussy.

I still like the idea Imgburn: something preserved in that format would burn off to as good as I can get with CloneCD (I think) so that may have to do me...

Thanks

f0dder · « **Reply #15 on:** June 30, 2009, 03:28 PM »

Fred, using EAC with FLAC+CUE output, you will get 1:1 copies of your audio CDs as long as they don't contain data - gaps and cd-text should be copied just fine. There's cd-writing routines in EAC as well to help you get proper burns.

I find it weird that you're willing to sacrifice general audio quality in order to satisfy a few special cases

Edvard · « **Reply #16 on:** June 30, 2009, 03:51 PM »

If it's the imperfection of the transfer process we're worrried about, then I'd say it's an impossibility.

However, let us not give up.
There's a little command-line app from Unix/Linux land called 'dd' that does nothing but rip bits from one place to another, one after another.
Here's where to get a version for Windows: http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
and here's a MacOS page about how to go about it: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031225124417353

What this does is force a bit-for-bit transfer into the .iso file which takes time and an awful lot of space, but apparently works.

I don't have an audio cd to test, but I did download it to feed it a few things and see what happens.
First, unzip it to somewhere in your path so it's easily gotten from a command window.
Then, insert the cd you want to copy.

Code

dd --list

to get a list of drives. Look for a line like

Code

\\.\Volume{bunchofrandomcharacters}\
  link to \\?\Device\CdRom0
  CD-ROM
  Mounted on \\.\d:

Make a note of the drive letter the where the CD is inserted and match it to the line where it says "link to \\?\Device\CdRomx" (substitute 'x' with the device number it reports. Usually 0 or 1). This is your block device, which is what we want.
Now start the transfer with a blocksize of 2048:

Code

dd if=\\?\Device\CdRomx of=c:\temp\disk.iso bs=2048

Let me know how it goes...

f0dder · « **Reply #17 on:** June 30, 2009, 04:12 PM »

Edvard: dd is a bad choice, since it simply reads from the beginning of the "stream" to the end (and it doesn't read bits, btw, it reads blocks - you can't address anything smaller than sector size). It does a dumb copy, which is no good for audio data.

Really, you need a program written with audio ripping in mind, and something that supports AccurateRip so you have confidence your rips are good.

Edvard · « **Reply #18 on:** June 30, 2009, 05:04 PM »

f0dder: Gotcha on the bits/blocks, you are correct.
As far as ripping goes, I actually agree with you.
Personally I would at the very least go with the .cue/.bin pair and I'd definitely do a .flac rip if all I wanted was the audio.

But something like what dd does is exactly (as I read it...) what Fred wanted.
If you hashed the disc vs. the .iso and they matched, I'd call it good, no?

Or is their more to the story that you're about to enlighten me about?

4wd · « **Reply #19 on:** July 01, 2009, 02:03 AM »

Just a suggestion: DAEMON Tools Lite (Free for non-commercial use.)

It can image an audio disc and also mount it, as well as other formats.

If you want to check the veracity of it's images then write the image back to a CD on another drive by a different manufacturer and hash/checksum the results using the original reading drive.

It's probably the closest you'll get to what you want without ripping each song using EAC.

It also gives you the option to compress, (compress as in archive not as in lossy), the images to save space.

f0dder · « **Reply #20 on:** July 01, 2009, 07:24 AM »

Edvard: fred wants something that just can't be done for cd media - perfect copies. For *data* there's synchronization information burnt into the physical media, but the data doesn't exist for audio. It's really messy stuff. REALLY messy stuff, so many people violating both audio and data cd standards. For dog-standard audio CDs, cdparanoia on linux will get you what you're after... but for the pesky copy-protected-CDs's, who knows what you get :/

4wd · « **Reply #21 on:** July 01, 2009, 07:35 AM »

Quote from: f0dder on July 01, 2009, 07:24 AM

... but for the pesky copy-protected-CDs's, who knows what you get :/

A standard specification audio CD that will perform in every player ?

Innuendo · « **Reply #22 on:** July 01, 2009, 02:37 PM »

Quote from: 4wd

Just a suggestion: DAEMON Tools Lite (Free for non-commercial use.)

It can image an audio disc and also mount it, as well as other formats.

Daemon Tools Lite can mount images, but it can not create them.

Innuendo · « **Reply #23 on:** July 01, 2009, 02:39 PM »

Quote from: f0dder

... but for the pesky copy-protected-CDs's, who knows what you get :/

Three cheers for Slysoft's AnyDVD that can remove that DRM poo.

Edvard · « **Reply #24 on:** July 01, 2009, 03:42 PM »

f0dder: :facepalm: Ack! I didn't think about copy-protected CD's. It would be marginally humorous if it produced a copy-protected .iso

P.S. I meant to try the dd trick myself at home, but forgot. I'll do it tonight and report back.

OFFTOPIC: I love this old slashdot comment on the Post-it/Sharpie method of defeating copy protection:

Quote

So, if I create something that resembles a CD, but really just uses the CD format to carry a harmful digital payload to damage your system, I'm just an artist protecting my rights.

but...

If I create something that resembles an email message, but really just uses the email message format to carry a harmful digital payload to damage your system, I'm just an evil hacker who's likely to be spending time in prison.

Yup. Makes sense to me.