How to Make a Backup Copy of a Game CD

Create a backup of your game CDs and play your games long after the orignal disk is gone.

Creating backup copies of your game CDs will help you get the most of your investment, since you can continue to generate backup copies long after the original is too worn to play. With the help of a CD burning utility, you can burn a backup disc of your game, while a disk imaging utility can be used to create a virtual replica, or disk image, or your game CDs. With a disk image, you can run your game from your computer's hard drive or burn a hard copy at any time.

Things You'll Need

• Blank CD (Optional)

Instructions

1. Download and install a free copy of CDBurnerXP to burn backup copies of your games. Use the "Copy Disk" feature that let's you make a perfect clone of your game CDs and allows you to burn a copy of the clone to another disk or to your hard drive. However, this program only works with unprotected games.

2. Backup your game CD with Clone CD. Clone CD will create an image file of your game CDs, whether they are protected or not, and either store them on your hard drive or burn them to discs. You can also burn extra files to the backup disc, such as game-related software patches and updates.

3. Use Alcohol 120% to backup your game CDs. Like Clone CD, Alcohol 120% also allows you to create and burn backup images of your protected game disks. Alcohol 120% is compatible with almost all of the CD protection types you'll run into when backing up a game CD.

References

• CDBurnerXP: Copy Data Disc
• Engelmann: Game Copy
• Alcohol Software: Copying protected games