Making Backup of Arcade HD (using dd)

Kyle Mallory

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I'm trying to make a backup/image of my SFRush HD. I'm a linux user, so I'm using dd. However, I can't seem to get the command to finish without giving a read/write error, and an image that is about 124MB (vs the 1.3GB) of the drive. I've tried on multiple machines, and I get the same message each time. The drive appears to function properly in the game, and passes all disk tests, it just won't work with dd.

I was able to make an image for my Golden Tee Live without any problem.

Has anyone else tried this? I'm curious what others experiences were... should this be a simple process regardless of the game, or are some games more fickle than others?

--Kyle
 
The drive probably *is* having problems, but they occur in places rarely/never used by the game. Remember, the game data doesn't take up the entire drive. Are disk read errors showing up in dmesg?

You can also try a tool like ddrescue, which will allow you to take multiple passes at the drive - both starting from the beginning and starting from the end and reading backwards, and piece together a more complete image, working around damaged sections.

Also, try dd-ing the file you've created back out to a blank drive, it might work - it's very likely the game data is all on a small filesystem near the front of the disk. Golden Tee, for instance, has three or four partitions, and doesn't use anywhere near the whole drive.

-Ian
 
Also, try dd-ing the file you've created back out to a blank drive, it might work - it's very likely the game data is all on a small filesystem near the front of the disk. Golden Tee, for instance, has three or four partitions, and doesn't use anywhere near the whole drive.

Yeah. Try this. I used to copy HDs using my industrial HD copier (still have it just don't use it much). If they get far enough along before they error they can usually still work and the game won't know the difference.
 
The drive probably *is* having problems, but they occur in places rarely/never used by the game. Remember, the game data doesn't take up the entire drive. Are disk read errors showing up in dmesg?

You can also try a tool like ddrescue, which will allow you to take multiple passes at the drive - both starting from the beginning and starting from the end and reading backwards, and piece together a more complete image, working around damaged sections.

Also, try dd-ing the file you've created back out to a blank drive, it might work - it's very likely the game data is all on a small filesystem near the front of the disk. Golden Tee, for instance, has three or four partitions, and doesn't use anywhere near the whole drive.

-Ian

Seconding ddrescue. I don't use plain dd anymore unless I'm doing something weird/exotic that ddrescue can't do. When I need to take an image I skip straight to ddrescue.
 
What HD copier do you have?

Yeah. Try this. I used to copy HDs using my industrial HD copier (still have it just don't use it much). If they get far enough along before they error they can usually still work and the game won't know the difference.

I have a hard drive duplicator made by CSC. It is in a small black case and is a piece of crap. Don't buy one of these things for sure. Which one do you have? Is it any good, would you recommend it?
Thanks
Russ
 
Thanks for all the responses! I did manage to get dd to work with the noerror option, but I'm suspect of the copy. I was not aware of ddrescue, and will definitely give that a try!

Assuming that I decided to just source the drive from the CHD file, is it possible to do this from Linux? I haven't been able to find any chd tools for linux...
 
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