Can I archive all my disks using your solution?

The technical solution we have developed is not designed to archive complete collections of disks, unless of course all the disks in that collection are original games. There are various reasons for this.

Firstly, since we really care about authenticity, a game should be proven authentic before it is preserved. The only way to do this, is for us to check them. Secondly, the dumps produced by the tool are much larger than a simple track-by-track image (like ADF), and the reason for that is that we sample each track 5 times. This is actually necessary to see some copy protection schemes, but it is also helpful to reduce the need for redumps on disks that have reading problems. The dumps are generally 3 Mb or larger and need to be sent to us so we can work out the format (if it is not already supported) and finally convert them to a form that is suitable for re-mastering and emulation. These final IPF (Interchangeable Preservation Format) images are much more like the size you would expect, but vary depending on what is on the disk.

Note, it may take some time between you sending us your dumps and us converting them to IPF images, as it depends on whether we know the format, how complicated it is, our spare time and obviously if the disk is actually good or not (”not” being far more common than you may think).

Once the disk images are verified suitable for archival, they will be sent to you. But as we only do original games, this process is certainly not suitable for doing your entire disk collection, if that collection consists of anything else like utils/demos etc. For non-commerical disks, you are better off using a standard imager tool.