Earlier today I needed to copy a non encrypted Digital Video Disc (DVD) to make a few backup copies. The disc contained a movie recorded on a video camera of someone that MPOW is collaborating with on a project. As always I used my laptop running the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
I first tried to use the Brasero Disc Burning application to make the copy. Unfortunately the application tried to make the copy as if it was a DVD containing files and data and not a DVD containing a movie. This meant that the copy was corrupt and would not play.
To make a copy of the disc I made a copy of it first as an ISO file by using this command:
cat /dev/dvdrw > ~/backup-copy.iso
Please note that the /dev/dvdrw path may be different on your system, for example it may be /dev/cdrom. The filename, after the >, is also arbitrary.
Once the copy using cat completed, which took some time, I was able to use the Brasero Disc Burning application to burn the ISO image just like any other image.
This technique resulted in a perfect copy and I can use the ISO image file as many times as I need to make as many copies as I need.
The “Water droplet on a DVD” photo was uploaded to Flickr by -j0n-.
