ripping some backup DC CD's into an image, the big mystery - IMPORTANT

Ok folks. Many people are obviously having trouble making copies of their already burned cd's since there are many posts on this topic. No one has given a good answer. No one. Answers like: oh stupid, use clone-cd or nero or disk-juggler to make an image just won't do.

Here's what i think. Certain backup cd's copy fine. You just dump to an image and burn. Others don't. It seems like on the ones that won't burn, the table of contents that the normal cd-rom reads just doesn't include the whole rom. perhaps when people originally create the ISO's when they rip it from the original cd, somehow the file doesn't write a good table contents. i'm not a programmer i don't know. but perhaps the dreamcast finds it's TOC somewhere else. So the cd-burners don't actually copy the whole cd-backup when you try to rip it because the original ISO used to burn the backup or the software used to originally burn the backup was screwed somehow and allow for a invalid non-inclusive TOC.

For example, on one of my backups (which plays beautifully on the dreamcast) the cd-burner will only find one session on the cd, a small audio track, and makes a 1-Mb image, not a 700-Mb image.

It's not my cd-burner, i've tried this on about 5 different computers, 5 different burners (scsi, eide, 4x, two 8x's, two 16x's), many different cd-rom's, and every type of software popularly used.

There must be a way to make an image of the cd from the first sector of the disk to the last, ignoring what the TOC says is on the disk. (DAO, RAW, and all the other formats just don't do it), so that you get an 700 Mb image everytime, no matter what the TOC says is there.

just think, how would you make a copy of a coaster, one where there is no TOC but all the info is there? that seems to me the solution?

anyone have any useful thoughts? (note the word "useful", don't waste time posting mocking replies, you have to have something better to do? or do you?)

+-K