Game Archieving - ISO/BIN/IMG , Raw or NOT????

[gowronnie]

Basically I have lots of old games that are just taking up [physical] space, so I want to make an image of them and compress several of them at a time and put on to CD.

I have CDrWin / DiscJuggler / ISOBuster / CloneCD

1) so what is the best format for use in the future?

2) Is getting the sub-channel info only important on
protected games?

3) Is is worth getting the sub-channel of audio tracks?

4) do I want to read all the data in RAW or not?
does it matter?

5) I am also going to MP3 the audio tracks, so is there a way to load a game into ePSXe it is DATA+MP3 files?

6) Are .BIN file RAW and .ISO files "Cooked" data?

loads of questions I know, but I don't want to start then have to go back and do some again if I choose the wrong way...

thanks

[Kane]

1) There isn't a specific one., but CloneCD supports subchannel data
2) Yes.
3) Only on protected games
4) I have no idea
5) Virtual CD can do that.
6) You what?

[Mad]

4) at least for me, i always use RAW reading and all my ISO´s worked correct
i even burned one once to see if i did correct and worked OK too in the "REAL" thing

[fivefeet8]

1) Doesn't really matter, but I find cdrwin bin+cue files are quite easy to burn back on cds.

4) Yes.

6) Depends on what burning program you use..

[liquid]

your answer to question 6
data extracted in 2356 data format are not "cooked"... cooked ISO's are in 2048 data format (this usually produces a smaller file of just the game data). If you'er into PCEngine SuperCDRom emulation or SegaCD then you would be familar with "cooked" formats (ie ISO+MP3). You should stay away from 2048 data extraction methods for PSX emulation, since they don't copy the cd entirely

[average_guy]

confused.

[S.SubZero]

Depending on the title, you may not save much. BIN's typically have some overhead space, and on a pretty packed disc (like a Final Fantasy or something) the end result can be an image over 700MB.

Your idea is not without merit tho. I actually am doing this with a DVD-RW drive. In this case, it's a godsend. Throwing several images on a disc is nice (~4.3GB each disc). I got Final Fantasy IX *and* Xenogears on a single disc. Being a DVD disc, the read time and seek time are very good, and it plays just like it was off the hard drive (and considerably faster than off the original CD)

The only problem is games with CD audio tracks. I have a couple of older games with them, and when ISO'd (meaning any form of archiving like BIN etc) the audio tracks are preserved but don't play. In my titles this is just music tracks that I could care less about anyways, but if there's one where the CD audio is like important, that could be a problem.

[JAZ]

I use Moobys cdr plugin to run my iso's as it lets u zip the iso as a .bz file which squishes the files quite a bit smaller (depending on the game) and run it from the resulting compressed image and u can decrompress the file as well if u need to.
Its an option u may wish to try..