Are these actual issues or is this something I can just ignore?

[Chem]

I'm burning some PS1 Isos to CD-R and every time I do that, I have this show up whenever I verify the burn. Is this an issue? I run the cd in my PS1 and they seem to boot up fine but I'm unable to actually play anything since I don't have a controller at the moment. These games all have a "demo" mode (where it plays a bit of the game by itself) and it runs that fine as well. It does also note at the end of verifying that the export successfully completed as well as the operation.
 

Game One

W 15:57:55 Miscompare at LBA: 161558, Offset: 2076
W 15:57:55 Device: 0x00
W 15:57:55 Image File: 0x26
W 15:57:55 Total Errors in Sector: 24
W 15:57:55 Note: The drive probably corrected the L-EC Area because it's wrong in the image file.

Game Two

W 13:33:10 Miscompare at LBA: 3430, Offset: 2342, File: \COMMON\BSS\ROOM109.BSS
W 13:33:10 Device: 0xB6
W 13:33:10 Image File: 0x56
W 13:33:10 Total Errors in Sector: 1
W 13:33:10 Note: The drive probably corrected the L-EC Area because it's wrong in the image file.
I 13:33:10 Verifying Sectors...
W 13:35:08 Miscompare at LBA: 285409, Offset: 2076
W 13:35:08 Device: 0x00
W 13:35:08 Image File: 0x42
W 13:35:08 Total Errors in Sector: 24
W 13:35:08 Note: The drive probably corrected the L-EC Area because it's wrong in the image file.

Game Three

W 11:00:01 Miscompare at LBA: 3618, Offset: 2254, File: \CD_DATA\ETC\FILEGU.PIX
W 11:00:01 Device: 0x1D
W 11:00:01 Image File: 0x99
W 11:00:01 Total Errors in Sector: 14
W 11:00:01 Note: The drive probably corrected the L-EC Area because it's wrong in the image file.

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Chem

[Ken852]

The "W" indicates that those are all warnings rather than errors, so I don't think that's an issue unless it says "E" instead of "W". The only issue I think is that ImgBurn is talking too much! You can clear all of those by clicking on the View menu and then "Log" to hide it from view. So yes, I think you can safely ignore these.

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Ken852

[LIGHTNING UK!]

They could be important if the game checks for bits that are intentionally wrong.

If your drive corrects them, it’s actually made them ‘wrong’ - and then the game may not play correctly.

It could also just mean your image isn’t great in the first place.

[Ken852]

Is this type of problem caused by having ISO files rather than BIN/CUE for example? Would this not have happened if he had BIN/CUE files? I recall our earlier discussions about 2048 byte vs. 2352 byte sector sizes.

Is it not possible to disable these smart features of the drive within ImgBurn? How else are you to let the drive know you don't want it to "correct" things?

Edited April 4, 2021 by Ken852

[Chem]

1 hour ago, Ken852 said:

Is this type of problem caused by having ISO files rather than BIN/CUE for example? Would this not have happened if he had BIN/CUE files? I recall our earlier discussions about 2048 byte vs. 2352 byte sector sizes.

Is it not possible to disable these smart features of the drive within ImgBurn? How else are you to let the drive know you don't want it to "correct" things?

I actually am burning using Cue and Bin files. But everything seems to run fine now that I can actually try the games out. I think I read somewhere that if you don't want anything to be corrected that you need to use a Cloning program.

 

[LIGHTNING UK!]

That info is beyond the 2048 bytes of user data in a CD sector and therefore not included in an ISO.

As for making the drive burn as-is (errors and all), that's where RAW mode burning would come in - which ImgBurn doesn't support.

[Ken852]

28 minutes ago, Chem said:

I actually am burning using Cue and Bin files. But everything seems to run fine now that I can actually try the games out. I think I read somewhere that if you don't want anything to be corrected that you need to use a Cloning program.

A cloning program? You mean copying from one disc to another on the fly, without imaging to hard drive first?

You wrote "I'm burning some PS1 Isos to CD-R" so I assumed you meant proper ISO files. Thank you for clarifying!

33 minutes ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:

That info is beyond the 2048 bytes of user data in a CD sector and therefore not included in an ISO.

And if I understand correctly, we can see that by the offset number 2076 and 2254. Those are relative offsets for the problem sectors.

However, as it turned out, he has in fact BIN/CUE files and not ISO files. So if he has imaged the games to BIN/CUE then he would have the raw 2352 byte CD sectors, right?

48 minutes ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:

As for making the drive burn as-is (errors and all), that's where RAW mode burning would come in - which ImgBurn doesn't support.

OK, so as far as I understand this @Chem the problem arises from writing what is essentially a raw CD image of the game (2352 byte sectors) in a write mode that expects something else (2048 byte sectors presumably). The raw image contains 304 bytes more per sector than the optical drive is anticipating so to speak. This is mainly error correction data that was copied over from the original disc when it was imaged or created. If I understand correctly, given the write modes that ImgBurn supports (SAO, TAO and Incremental), the drive must write its own error correction when you write or burn a new disc. So when the drive receives such data (2048 byte + 304 byte), it eats the flesh of the apple (2048 byte) so to speak and throws away the core (304 byte) because it makes up its own as it goes, for each sector.

Then, when you do the verification at the end of the writing process, it compares each of the 2352 byte sectors on disc to each of the 2352 byte sectors in the image file. The first 2048 byte of each sector on disc and in the image file will match assuming the write operation went well, but as for the remaining 304 bytes, it's a lottery! The numbers on the disc will disagree with the numbers in the image file, in the offset range above 2048.

You can see evidence of this by reading the log and the part where it says "Offset: 2342" for example. Each of these reported mismatches are to be between 2048 and 2352. If they are at 2048 or below, then you may have a proper problem.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. I'm no expert at this, but that's the lesson I'm taking away from all of this.

Quote

The drive probably corrected the L-EC Area because it's wrong in the image file.

Also, I think this message may be misleading. The mismatch happens not because L-EC is wrong in the image file, most likely not. But because the drive has written its own L-EC, because it could not write it to disc, given the available write modes.

So there are 2 solutions to this.

Solution 1: Ignore these mismatches if they are above offset 2048.

Solution 2: Instead of using ImgBurn, use a program that can write CD discs in RAW write mode. I think it's also called RAW DAO mode. DAO is short for Disc At Once.

Unfortunately, ImgBurn does not support RAW write mode:

https://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/topic/14285-burning-in-raw-mode/

It supports SAO (Session At Once), TAO (Track At Once) and "Incremental" (never heard of this one before).

Using a program that supports RAW write will allow you to write your game images "as-is", that is, without having the drive write its own 304 byte segments, but replicate whatever is in the source image file. It will essentially make an exact copy of the original disc. It looks like you should be able to use CloneCD for this. But it does require you to have a CD burner that supports RAW write mode.