I ripped them 10 years ago. But prefer cracks; less hassle.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Been moving the same DVD-RW drive to every new computer for like 20 years. I'll be able to read Mechwarrior 2 until I die.
Mechs down at nav gamma.
I picked up a lil usb dvd drive years ago
Don't use it much but it waits ready in the tech closet. Cost like $20.
A usb cd/dvd/bluray drive is like $20 on amazon, nothing stopping you.
You can even get ones with spicy firmware for extra flavour that lets you back up your physical media (where allowed by law, of course... Naturally)
Do you need special firmwares to run a dd command on Linux?
I'd imagine that could make a backup of the whole disk, but it can't decrypt it
I just flashed the firmware and used makemkv (when I was using windows...) I'm sure there's a better FOSS way but I haven't explored it since moving to linux
makemkv on linux for DVDs. abcde for CDs. dd of=game.iso for games.
I used to have pretty good luck with mplayer -dumpstream for DVDs, but its success rate started dropping a few years ago and I switched to makemkv.
No magic firmware required.
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Just a heads up-
Asus' USB DVD drives 'with USB-C' are not USB-C, they have a crappy MicroUSB to USB-C cable included in the box.
So if you wanted one with USB-C on the device- DO NOT BUY ASUS.
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Look up your old favourite games. A lot of them have communities that have kept them updated so their playable on modern hardware as long as you have a (totally legal) ISO or disc in your possession.
For example, Project Magma has been keeping Myth The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter going for 25+ years now.
I loved this game back when Bungie was a Mac-only developer and it holds up pretty well with a couple graphics mods in addition to the work Project Magma has done.
I currently have 4 old Thinkpad T420s (nice) set up just to run this game on Linux with some friends around the kitchen table.
LibreQuake is another one. I’m not as familiar with what they’ve been up to, as I never had a computer that could run Quake in its heyday, so it doesn’t hold the same nostalgia for me. That said, I appreciate their work anyway.
OpenRA keeps Command & Conquer and its various sequels and spin-offs alive, including Dune 2000. Combined Arms is especially fun; a version that includes all the armies from all the games.
They sell the drive as a USB item, buy one of those and enjoy.
I bought this back in in COVID times as I saw the writing on the wall for physical media, and I could sneak it past the ATO as a WFH deduction: https://www.pccasegear.com/products/48810/pioneer-bdrxs07tuhd-slot-load-4k-external-blu-ray-writer
Probably the best investment I could have made in terms of continuing to be able to use the media I’ve purchased.
I have a CD drive you can plug into your computer for CDs.
I have a disc drive in my computer. I've still torrented games that I have on my shelf because its easier.
You can get USB drives for a pittance.
Some of my old game CDs. I think I have a lot more in my storage locker.
Steam allowed me to use the old security code for my physical copy of Medieval 2: Total War to allow me to download a digital copy updated to work on Windows 10.
My first CD-ROM game: Lands of lore
We had to switch cds and 2x was painfully slow but having games this deep without having to install for hours with 200 💾 was revolutionary.
Just torrent it. It's actually pretty legal in that case
Is it though? The thing about torrenting afaik is, that you're not downloading only but also uploading. The latter is the illegal part, even if you own a legal copy.
It's been a while since I torrented, but IIRC you can throttle the uploading part.
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Anyway unless it's something from the 90s, the DRM is one or all of those:
- Hardcoded for windows XP and refuse to run on anything else
- Must connect to an activation server that was turned off two decades ago
- Requires the installation of a rootkit
I have an external cd drive that I plug in via USB for this purpose. Tech ain't limiting you.
ive still got cds with programs that just wont even install on 10
Sometimes you have better luck running old Windows stuff on Linux through WINE than on modern Windows. And sometimes you don't, it really depends.
If you have them installed, right click on the file and choose properties. There should be a compatibility tab that will let you choose an older version of windows to run it on. Also running as administrator can sometimes fix it too.
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Time to grab a USB powered dvd drive? I don't have a 5.25, but we've got a 3.5 and a zip disk what run off USB that hold our access to our old disk troves. I should probably move them all to a single thumb drive one of these days.
Blud, I have this problem. But with 3.5" floppy disks.
Currently rocking an internal blu ray drive and external floppy one (only because I couldn't find an internal one), I can't possibly imagine not having an optical drive on my computers. I still own a lot of disks including software and movies, I won't just throw everything away because the tech is now deemed obsolete (which is debatable on top of that, currently have a better quality on blu ray than on streaming platforms, plus no ads and works offline) If only it were easier to install multi-disk software through wine/proton though...
Yeah I'm increasingly convinced the "Nobody uses discs anymore" thing is a coordinated manipulation campaign by rent-seeking streaming media giants...
I wouldn't go that far, my external media drives really don't get used as much it used to, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people still using discs are now very uncommon anyway. Doesn't help that the blu-rays are still worse than piracy convenience wise due to the several layers of drm to bypass to be allowed to read a disc I own on hardware I own with software I also own...
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Or by Valve and their clones to drive sales on their DRM'd game platforms. Movies haven't really died out on physical, not as much or as early as PC games. Combine that with the tactics of idiots who also used Starforce and its clones and they've also left an impression outlasting the few games that were infected with the stuff. Now the new normal is to buy stuff infected with online account DRM as if that's somehow better.
Okay but also I heard bluray movies can be directly played only on Windows, for other OSes you have to rip the movie. Must be fun.
Honestly, invest in a Blu-ray writer and pick up some decent 25gb discs.
Not only can you play old games, but you can archive data in a relatively stable format at a much lower price point.
I had read at one point many years ago that CD-Rs degrade over time and are not good for long term backups. Is this wrong or are Blurays different?
So, CD-Rs in particular are very bad with regards to stability because the thing you are writing too is a layer of dye. Some are better than others, but basically all will have that dye brake down and fade over time. The type of plastic in the disk as well, a few Japanese disc producers were notorious for using plastic that had a tendency to absorb moisture form the air that would rapidly cause the disks to degrade.
There are other methods of writing though. CD-RWs for instance are much more stable as instead of burning away a bit of volatile dye layer, they are writing to a layer of metal alloy by melting it a little to change it’s crystal structure.
The same is true with recordable blue rays, with Low to High disks using the same sort of dye burning as CD-Rs, High to Low disks use a variety of different mechanisms to write, but some use a similar melty metal as CD-RWs.
That's the nice part about Linux, you rip the CD to an Iso file, and can directly Mount the ISO file as a drive.
I use Linux and think everyone else should, too... but Windows 11 also supports mounting iso files
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I have one that's mostly broken, which isn't a surprise as I took it from e-waste.
When I tried to burn a disc with it, it suddenly started accelerating out of control and I had to kill the power to it. It almost shattered the disc:
Clearly that wasn't burning it quite well.
But there's another interesting thing. It won't read CDs. Except, somehow, VLC manages to get something out of it. It's earrape, and the recording from VLC ends up corrupted, but FFMPEG can still process it as raw audio (and so can aplay).
Here's a sample:
https://files.catbox.moe/bkwt82.flac
Audio should embed on desktop:
You should get one of those jet turbine 72x drives. I bet that could finish the job and shatter the disc all the way.
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Well, there's a decent chance someone already uploaded it to archive.org
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