PC Engine CD backups

[spenoza]

Voultar commented a bit on general use of CDRs on old consoles.

Even cheap stock will not readily "exhaust" the mechanical parts of a CD drive. Yes, cheaper media produces some extra wear from longer seek time due to rereads, but without data actually quantifying the additional read time it is difficult to anticipate what any effects might be. Remember that most CD games do a load and then play a bit before loading again, and reading of CD audio tracks is without error-correction, and therefore don't feature seeking except at track restart or track changes. So actual mechanical impact, even in cases where seeking is significantly more difficult, will ultimately be minimal. Further, if the disc is too hard to read it will simply fail and not be read. So a CD can only actually be so much more difficult to read and still be viable. So while the guy talking clearly understands CD technology and CD-R technology, he's basically making a very conservative wild guess about wear since there really isn't any data out there.

But even common sense suggests that if you care about older equipment you take good care of it, so make sure you buy good CD-Rs. You don't cheap out on your ancient CD console. Why would you cheap out on the media you feed it? But if you put a low quality disc in and it reads you'll probably be just fine.

[SignOfZeta]

I’ll say this because I guess it’s been a while.

I’ve never had any issues burning games. I can’t explain why since I don’t know. I don’t shop for burners or media based on price so that may have a small impact on things. A lot of people have some really cheap shit. Also, use quality images.

If CD-Rs destroy systems they sure take a looooooong time to do it. The logic behind the theory is shaky at best, IMO.

[Arkhan]

If CD-Rs destroy systems they sure take a looooooong time to do it. The logic behind the theory is shaky at best, IMO.

It depends how much you use them, and the current state of your stuff. 

You can detect impending laser doom sooner if you use garbage CD-Rs and find that it doesn't load or the audio is all skippy.

This applies to the PC-FX also.


but I mean, in the end it's about the same as playing really f*ckin scratched up discs in it.

The thing I avoid the most are those heavy/thick/dyed discs just because they're heavier and load like shit for some reason.

Reminds me of PS2s.   They'd eventually start making gross noises when reading PS1 discs, or older (or was it newer) PS2 discs .

[Gypsy]

PS2s are such shit. They will die being fed nothing but mint condition retail discs. Thankfully you can play games from an hdd so it's w/e.

I killed a Dreamcast due to heavy use. I played a lot of burns on it but I can't say if that was for sure a factor. I've played a lot of burns on my Saturn, Sega CD and Duo R and they are all fine. Haven't had the Duo R that long in comparison though.

[spenoza]

The Dreamcast had a noisy, cheap drive in it. But it was a modern drive, so CD-Rs should not have been any problem at all. The GD-ROM drive was just a cheap Yamaha CD drive with some minor customization, probably to the firmware and controller. AFAIK the laser and motors themselves are all identical to their CD-ROM equivalents.