Using Virtual Disk Drives and Disk Image Files

Rather than installing off of CDROMs or DVDROMs in their drive, some people prefer to use image files of their disks loaded onto virtual CDROM/DVDROM drive to install and run their games. There are many advantages to this: for one, using image files instead of your disks can prevent those expensive Japanese game disks from getting damaged, since they won't be constantly swapped in and out of your computer. For another, installation is much faster if you are using an image file, because the data is already on your hard drive, rather than being accessed off your CDROM drive (however, you will need the hard drive space to store your image files). If you want to keep your disks in good shape and you have the hard drive space to keep an archive of CD/DVD image files, then this is a very effective way of installing and uninstalling your Japanese games.

There are basically two major software programs that are used for creating image files: Alcohol 120% and CloneCD. Regular disk burning software, such as Nero, also has the ability to create disk image files, but these programs usually cannot create image files of games that have copy protection, so using Alcohol 120% or CloneCD is a better choice.

For creating virtual drives and mounting your image files, the two most popular software are Alcohol 120% and Daemon Tools.

Alcohol 120% is shareware, with a free trial version available on their site. It makes a good choice because it can both create image files, and create virtual disk drives for mounting and using the image files. CloneCD is also a shareware with a free trial version on their site, but it can only create and burn image files, it does not create virtual drives to mount the image files. Daemon Tools is a freeware, but it can only create virtual drives and mount the image files, it cannot create image files.

Since Alcohol 120% has the capabilities to both create image files and can make virtual disk drives to mount the images, I've given instructions below on how to use this software. The principals should be similar if you chose to use a different software.

Creating Image Files

1. Download and install Alcohol 120% (or your choice of image file creating software). If you are using Alcohol 120%, during the install it will ask you if you want to set up your virtual drive: you may do this now, or wait until after the install and set it up within the software (how to create your virtual drive after installation will be shown later in this guide).

2. Insert your Japanese game into your CDROM or DVDROM drive. Then, use a protection scanning device to check the game disk for any known protections. I'd recommend A-Ray Scanner or ProtectionID. Both are freeware. The reason scanning the disk for copy protections is because some image file creating software can't make working image files of certain kinds of protection. Alcohol 120% can create image files around many copy protections, such as SafeDisk, ProRing, and Starforce, but cannot make image files around some other protections, such as Settec AlphaROM.

In the following image, A-Ray Scanner was used, and it found no copy protection schemes used on the disk. If it finds a copy protection scheme, it will report which protection it found in the window.

3. Open up Alcohol 120%. In the upper left corner, you will see the option "Image Making Wizard". Click on this to start the wizard.

4. You will get a new window pop up. At the top, next to CD/DVD Device, is a drop-down list of all the CDROM/DVDROM drives (and virtual drives) on your system. Select the one which has your game disk. Alcohol should then recognize the CD in the drive, and give some information about it, such as the Volume Label, how many data tracks it has, the mode it is in, and the length of the disk, among other things. At the very bottom of this screen, you will see "Datatype" with a drop-down list of different types of CDROM copy protection formats. These are all formats built into Alcohol 120% to make working image files of copy protected CDs using these protections. If your scanner found a copy protection, and Alcohol supports it, then you will choose that protection scheme from the drop-down list. If there is no protection, you can just select "Normal CD". Then click the Next Button.

5. The next screen will ask you where you want to save your image file. Browse to a location on your hard drive where you would like the file to be created. Alcohol will even show you a pie graph of how full your selected drive is, so you can make sure to select one with plenty of space. At the bottom of the screen are two very important sections: the image name and image format. Alcohol, by default, will use the CD's volume label as the image name. It is probably a good idea to keep that as the image name, though if you wish to change it, you can by typing a new name in the box. In the image format box, it wants to know which type of image file you would like to make.

There are several different types of image files. Here is some basic information on several different image file types:

.iso - This is the "standard" CD image file format. This image file format makes a duplicate of all the files on the game disk, similar to if you simply copied them all off the disk onto your hard drive, but it also retains the CD volume name information and some other details of the disk. Pretty much all image file software, including regular burning software like Roxio or Nero, will be able to create and read the .iso format. The .iso format is also the smallest in size. However, there are some major drawbacks to the .iso format that you must take into consideration: it only works on single data-track disks, and it does not work around any copy protection schemes. If you have scanned your disk and found no protection schemes, and in the previous screen on Alcohol's wizard it recognizes only one data track, then the .iso format is your best choice.

.cue and .bin - This image file format is the format used for the program CDRWin. Now it is very common, and most image file software are able to read .cue/.bin files. Two files are created with this format, a .cue file which is very tiny and contains the track information for the disk, and the .bin file which contains the actual game data. Both files must have the same name to function correctly with each other (GAME_NAME.cue, GAME_NAME.bin). When using mounting software, you typically select the .cue file, and it loads the .bin file onto the virtual drive. This format is best for games that have no copy protection, but have multiple data tracks, and is the smallest size-wise compared to other image file formats that support multiple data tracks.

.ccd, .img, and .sub - This image file format is the format used for CloneCD. Alcohol 120%, and many other programs, can create image files in this format and mount this image file format. Three files are created, a .ccd file which is very tiny and holds data track information (like the .cue file in the .cue/.bin format), an .img file which contains the actual game data, and a .sub file that's usually around 20-30MB which holds disk subdata (it is NOT a subtitle file!). Again, like .cue/.bin, all three files must have the same name to work with each other (GAME_NAME.ccd, GAME_NAME.img, GAME_NAME.sub). This image file format is best for games where you have found a copy protection scheme. However, it is also the largest image file format, sometimes even one or two hundred megs bigger than the actual disk (however, when you go to burn these image files, even though it looks "bigger" than the size of an actual CDROM, Alcohol will be able to read all the data needed from the files and it will still burn at the correct size onto your CDROM).

.mds and .mdf - This is Alcohol 120%'s image file format. It works similar to .cue/.bin, in that it makes a very little .mds file that holds the CD track information, and a .mdf file that has the game data. Therefore, it works fine on games with multiple data tracks. However, they may not be as widely supported on other software, so it is recommended to use .cue/.bin. If you are making an image file of a DVDROM game, Alcohol will only give you the option to use .mds/.mdf. Several mounting programs can still read this format fine, including Daemon Tools.

Other CD Image File Formats - Some other image file formats you may see are .cdi (associated with CD Anywhere Virtual CD software), .nrg (associated with Nero), .daa (associated with Power ISO software), .udf (a very old image file format that is not used much today), and .dmg (used by Macintosh). Alcohol 120% cannot create images into these formats, but can still mount images in most of these formats (such as .cdi and .nrg) on its virtual drive fine.

Since the game used in this example, Fanatica, is only one data track and does not have any copy protection, I've selected to use the .iso format in the image format box.

6. Now that all the options are selected, hit the Start button. Alcohol 120% will start creating your image file.

7. When the image file is finished, it will return to the Alcohol 120% main screen, and you will see the name of the new image file in the top right pane. If you want to remove the image file from the list, right click and select "Remove Image from List" (just don't select "Delete Image File" which is below that option!). I personally like to remove the image files from Alcohol's list so a big list of them doesn't start building up.

At this point, you are now finished creating your image file. Now you can put away your game CD in a safe place, and just use your image file instead.

Mounting Image Files

After you have an image file, the next step is to load it into a virtual CDROM/DVDROM drive (this is called "mounting" the image file). The first thing you must do is create a virtual CDROM/DVDROM drive. Alcohol 120% gives you the option to set up a virtual drive during the install process, or you may set it up later. The below instructions are how to create your virtual drive after the installation of Alcohol 120%.

1. Open Alcohol 120%. On the main screen in the left column under "Options", select "Virtual Drive".

2. In the window that opens, it will have a drop-down menu at the top asking how many virtual drives you wish to create. One should be sufficient, but if you would like to make more, you may. There are a few options under that, such as having image files be reloaded to the virtual drive after reboot, or to mount using a double-click on the image file, which you may keep enabled or disable according to your preferences. Below you may change the vendor identification of your virtual drive, but I recommend against this, so you don't cause any compatibility issues with your other drives.

3. The drive letter of your virtual drive should be the next free drive letter you have available by default. If you would like to change the drive letter, then in the left pane, under "Virtual Drive", click "Drive Letter."

4. When you are finished, you can click OK to close the Virtual Drive options screen, and return to Alcohol's main screen. Your virtual drive should appear in the bottom right pane on the main screen (you may need to reboot first before these settings take effect).

5. Now your new drive should appear in My Computer. If it does not appear, try right-clicking on one of your other drives, and then it should pop up. Also make sure you aren't using any software that disables un-used drive letters on your system, or it may not appear (I had done this using TweakUI and spent hours trying to figure out why my virtual drive K: would not appear in My Computer).

6. Now we want to mount the image file onto the virtual drive. To do this, right-click on the virtual drive and in the drop-down menu, Select "Mount Image". When you hover over "Mount Image", a box will pop up that has "Open" on the top, and below is a list of recently used image files. To browse to a new image file, click on "Open".

7. The Windows explorer window will open, and you will need to browse to the location on your computer where you had the image file created. Then highlight it and click "Open".

8. Now your image file will be mounted onto your virtual machine. You can double-click on it and it will open up to the contents of the CD, where you can now run the setup for your game. If your game is multiple disks, then when the game asks you to insert the next disk, just right-click on your virtual drive, mount the next disk, and then click to continue your game install.

9. When you are done using the image file in your virtual drive, then right-click on the drive, and in the drop-down menu, select "Unmount Image File".

Burning Image Files

If you want to burn a back-up disk copy of your game, you may do this using Alcohol 120% and the image file. This is excellent for games with copy protection: Alcohol 120% can make a working image file of the protected game (such as a game with SafeDisk) and then you can burn a new copy of it to disk using that working image file. If you just tried burning a copy of the protected disk with burning software like Roxio or Nero, it would not be able to work around the protection, and create either an un-working backup or crash your burning software.

1. First, place your black disk into your CDROM/DVDROM drive that you use for burning. Then open Alcohol 120%. Open up Alcohol 120%. In the upper left corner, you will see the option "Image Burning Wizard". Click on this to start the wizard.

2. Under "Select an Image file you would like to record", hit the Browse button and browse to the location on your hard drive where the image file is located. Then highlight it and hit "Open". After it is opened, Alcohol will show information about in area below. Then hit the "Next" button.

You may get a pop-up window telling you that a DVD burner was detected on your computer, and it wants to know if you are burning your image file to a CDROM or a DVDROM. You will select "Yes" if it is a DVD image file, and "No" if it is a CDROM image file (so in this case, "No" is selected since this is an image file of a CDROM game, which will be burned onto a CDROM).

3. On the next screen, under "CD/DVD Recorder", you will select the drive that is your burner. You may also set the burning speed you wish Alcohol to use (sometimes using a lower burning speed than the maximum of your drive can prevent bad burns). At the very bottom of the screen, similar to when creating image files, you will see Datatype. Again, select the item from the drop-down list that is appropriate for your disk, depending on if it has copy protection (if it doesn't have protection, you can just select "Normal CD".)

4. After all your selections have been made and you are ready to burn the image file, click the Start button to begin the burn. You will be taken to a screen where you can see the progress of your burn.

4. When the burn is finished, you will get a status message letting you know if it was successful or not. Click "OK". Then it will go back to the previous burning screen, and you will click on "Finish" at the bottom. This will return you to the main Alcohol 120% window.


Boys' Love Games Headquarters Complete Idiot's Guide to Japanese Gaming © March 2009
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