How To: Create backups (ISO drive images) of a Disc

Disclaimer: You already know about software piracy so i won’t iterate the details. This post is not intended to condone it. It’s best that you just create backups of what you already own.
And by the way, this is more of a ‘Why’ than a ‘HowTo’ since the tutorial is too simple. Hehe

 

Drive images, specifically ISO files – is one of the reasons why my external storage devices are starting to stack up on my desk. These are the (virtual) software copies of a drive – usually a CD or DVD. Every important CD/DVD that i have, has a virtual copy. I started with the driver disks for my motherboard and video card. Then, with the installers for my major applications. They are backups I made because the physical disks are just so easily scratched and damaged over time.

 

Why You Need to Make Disc Images?

To avoid hair-pulling frustration over a slightly scratched DVD that just won’t continue loading because the damage was enough to cause a ‘redundant cyclic error’ or some other obscure problem – I simply create backups of every important disc I have: from driver discs, installers, games and sometimes even video discs. Their ISOs can easily be loaded as a virtual drive – appearing as if physical drives on a PC.

You always have the option of copying the contents of the whole disc (well, good luck with that especially when using Windows). However, it is so much easier to just ‘image’ the whole thing. Plus, you get the following benefits:

1. The contents of a disc is packed in a single file.
Being a single file, it reduces clutter. You can save it on an external drive for backup and even portability. Hopefully, the external drive would last a lot longer than the actual disc.

2. The image can be loaded (using widely available apps), appearing as if it was a physical drive.
The implications of this, is that it acts just a normal disc. You can browse and run through it as if you placed an actual disc in a disc-drive in your PC.

3. The image can be re-written to another physical disc if needed (just be careful not to violate any laws in software copying).
It’s a backup after all. If your original disc gets damaged and the warranty won’t be helping you out within the week, you can burn the image to a blank disc and use it instead.

Okay, enough of my justification. Here’s how you do it..

 

A. Things we need:

1. The original disc

2. A DVD reader/writer drive

3. Imaging tool: Ultra-ISO, Alcohol 120%, Nero burning ROM
For this HowTo, let’s use Alcohol 120% since it is feature-rich, and I’ve had the least trouble when trying to image an already scratched disc.

 

B. Here are the steps:

1. Download Alcohol 120% (you can purchase it or just use the trial for now).

2. Install Alcohol 120%, just following the prompts.
 

If it asks you to reboot, simply click OK and wait for it to continue (after the reboot).

At the end, you are left with the option to add a virtual drive. Personally, I use another tool for this. I suggest to turn it off and use another tool for virtual drives.

3. Start/Run Alcohol 120%, you’ll see the window like this:

 

If you’re using Windows Vista or Windows 7, “User Account Control” will ask if you want to run this program. Click Yes.

Here are some description regarding the window:

4. To start making our disc image, make sure that your original (physical) disc is in the CD/DVD drive.
If you have Auto-run enabled, it will run the application or play the movie/music from the CD. Close that before proceeding (close the application or Media Player if it comes up).

5. Go back to Alcohol 120%, and on the left pane click on “Image Making Wizard”.
You’ll see the Wizard’s window.

6. Change the settings based on the image below:

*Checking the “Skip reading errors” means the copying process would continue even if some parts of your disc cannot be read properly. This is mostly okay with movie or music discs since a couple of unreadable sectors would still allow you to watch the movie with little problems, but for anything else particularly for installers or driver disc – turn uncheck this. If this is unchecked, the copying process would stop for any error reading the drive and you’d end up with an unusable drive image. So, if you are desperate and needs to make a backup of a disc that is already damaged you can try checking this box. Make sure you test the resulting image, though. If the errors aren’t that much, it usually will work.

Note: I’ll be cheating a bit here. For this tutorial I’m already using a Virtual Disc drive (labeled D: ELBY CLONE DRIVE). This is to save some time and effort (since imaging a drive really takes a long time).

7. Proceed with the “Next” page and set to the following:

You will have a the option to create either an MDS or an ISO file. I use ISO since it is more common.

8. Click the “Start” button and wait for the process to finish.

Once finished (and without any errors) the Wizard window will close and the new image should appear in Alcohol 120% window. If you check out Windows Explorer it will also appear right there where you saved the file in Step 7.

You now have a backup (ISO image) of your original drive! You can proceed to torture that physical drive with some level of assurance that you’ll always have a backup copy.

If your original disc gets ruined beyond usability, you can use your ISO file and burn it to a blank disc. Alcohol 120% has an “Image Burning Wizard” which you can use for that.

Or, if like me – you can just use the ISO file directly by loading it as a virtual drive. Please see my next post, since this one is getting really long already.

 

Additional notes:

1. Alcohol 120% isn’t free but there are other tools that are. Also, if you buy a DVD drive it usually comes with a software that has the capability to make drive images. Even with these tools, I suggest you stick with the ISO file type.