Hello my question is about backing up my media, DVDs to be exact. I have little kids and would like to know if there is a way to make a copy of a disc I already have? Or do I need to go my current way, copy to hard drive and burn from there. My problem with that way is I am running out of hard drive space. Thanks up front for any help in this matter.
— Mark Stadtmiller
The problem is that the movie companies don't want you to be able to do this.
So they go after any software maker that makes an application that allows you to make copies of their DVDs.
You can find some software:DVDBackup, Drive-in. But they will usually only allow you to make copies on your drive, not produce new DVDs.
How are you burning new DVDs now? Standard copy and burn shouldn't work -- at least not to produce a DVD that will play in a DVD player.
Personally, I don't worry about it -- just protect the DVDs from damage as you would anything else fragile. Ripping and copying is a lot of work and it would be cheaper to replace one or three DVDs a year instead of backing them all up.
Thanks for the reply. I understand that this topic is highly debated, and I can understand part of the studios argument. But I am not coping and selling, I am just making a backup of a movie that I bought from them. The programs that I use are isquint or handbrake to rip the file and toast to burn the image to disc. I also put the file on itunes so my kids can watch the movie on my apple tv.
I'm not on the side of the movie companies, that's for sure. I'm just trying to explain why solutions are so rare for this problem.
My issue is with the effort -- I like the idea of ripping the movies so you can watch them on Apple TV, but it seems like a lot of effort (time and storage cost) when you could just pop in the DVD that you already have. But to each his own.