This guide will teach you how to copy the data from your physical game discs and make legal, digital disc image files for personal use on your computer. Be sure to make legal backups of your game discs, as they wear out over time and new ones are not being produced. If you did this in the past for use with emulators and are switching to Severed Chains, there is usually no need to re-do this process unless you hard-modded the game. Just move the pre-existing disc files to SC’s “/isos” subfolder.
What You Need
- A computer.
- An optical drive.
- These are no longer standard in PCs. Luckily you can get slim external ones that connect via USB for about $20 USD. Search for CD/DVD drives on a site like Newegg or Amazon, and go for high review score and/or a reputable brand.
- Software (such as IMGBurn) that can copy the disc data to your computer.
- An official, physical copy of the game “Legend of Dragoon” (4 discs).
- If you don’t have a copy of LoD and live in North America, you can buy a used copy on eBay or in some cases a retro game store in your local area.
Instructions
- Download a disc-ripping software if you haven’t already. Then, run it.
- Insert Legend of Dragoon (Disc 1) into an optical drive on your computer (CD-ROM drive, DVD drive, etc.).
- Follow the software’s instructions on how to rip a disc image.
- Security (optional but recommended): Compare your ripped disc image’s hash value to the official hashes on redump.org. You can check the hash of your file with this guide. On Redump, make sure you find and select the regional release pertaining to your copy of the game. If the hashes match, your disc image is perfect and shouldn’t throw any errors.
- Repeat for the next three game discs.