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[–] 46 points 3 months ago (12 children)

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)

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    Do you need special firmwares to run a dd command on Linux?

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

    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

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    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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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    You do need magic firmware for BluRays.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Untrue. You can rip standard Blu-ray movies using MakeMKV with factory firmware. You do need special firmware to rip UHD Blu-rays unless you have a certain drive with older unpatched firmware. Also, Blu-ray data discs work as you would hope.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Must be a new thing. My 20-year-old BR drive has never complained.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Most newer drives won't give you the kind of direct access you need for an accurate copy. Some disc areas necessary for dealing with copy protection are inaccessible except by specially blessed playback software.

    Some older drives ignore this restriction but newer ones, especially all 4K-capable drives, don't.

    There's an alternative firmware called LibreDrive that enables a low-level access mode where an application has direct control over the laser assembly. That plus ripping software aware of this mode (MakeMKV) will get the data off the disc. Add known decryption keys and you can get at the raw video files.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    When I was in the market for one a few years ago, an internal drive and a USB enclosure was a safer bet for making backups than a USB drive. It's usually not too hard to find out the recommended drives for the backup software.

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