How to Burn a DVD or Blu-Ray Disk to an ISO File

This video and article will show you how easy it is to make a copy of a DVD or Blu-Ray Disk to an ISO file so you can play it with a media player such as VLC. Once you have the ISO file you can also use it to BURN or RIP other DVD's so you can have a backup copy. It is very simple and works really slick!

DD (abbreviation for "Data Definition") is a command line tool in most Linux and UNIX type operating systems including Mac OS and Apple computers. There is a Windows version or DD for Microsoft however I have not tested this version of dd.

dd is a command-line utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems, the primary purpose of which is to convert and copy files. dd Does a Block-for-Block Copy of the device such as a Hard Drive, USB Stick or CD-ROM, DVD or Blu-Ray Disk.

Note: The dd command is a very powerful tool. Be very careful in it's use, as you can easily wipe out your drives if it is not properly used. This is why dd is sometimes referred to or nicknamed "Disk Destroyer."

This blog article and video will describe how to use dd to create and ISO file from a DVD or Blu-Ray Disk.



1. Determine your CD / DVD Drive

If using Linux

# lsblk

your result should be something like this

sda      8:0    0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0 223.1G  0 part /
sdb      8:16   0 119.2G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0   500M  0 part 
├─sdb2   8:18   0 117.9G  0 part 
└─sdb3   8:19   0   849M  0 part 
sr0     11:0    1   7.3G  0 rom  /media/ron/DIEANOTHERDAY_D1_PS

As you can see my DVD Drive is listed as /sr0. and the size is 7.5GB in size

2. issue the dd command to create an ISO file.

# dd if=/dev/sr0 of=/home/ron/Downloads/James-Bond-Never-Say-Never-Disk1.iso bs=2048 status=progress

This chart show an ISO size of bs=2048 for creating ISO's from CD-ROM, DVD or Blu-Ray Disks.

dd-bs-size-chart-01-min.png

3. Test your ISO file

Test your ISO file by opening it up with a Video Player such as VLC which is one of the most popular Media Players this is open source and works on cross platforms.

4. Burn or RIP a backup DVD

You can BURN or RIP a backup DVD if you wish simply by putting the correct blank DVD media into your DVD Drive and reversing the dd command in the command below. Essentially you are creating a DVD from the ISO file you just created.

# dd if=/home/ron/Downloads/James-Bond-Never-Say-Never-Disk1.iso of=/dev/sr0 bs=2048 status=progress

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#burn #rip #dvd

Posted in Linux Desktop Tips, Tech How To on Nov 24, 2021