Copy a CD or DVD with dd

Apr 18, 2008  By Mitch Frazier

If you need to copy a CD to your hard drive: 

  prompt@shell$  dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/cdcopy.iso

For a DVD: 

  prompt@shell$  dd if=/dev/dvd of=/path/to/dvdcopy.iso

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i can copy my home-made DVDs

hanse's picture
Submitted by hanse (not verified) on Sat, 11/06/2010 - 21:30.

i can copy my home-made DVDs with the commands but i cant copy DVD movies ,any suggestions?

Does it work?

hansekarl's picture
Submitted by hansekarl (not verified) on Fri, 10/01/2010 - 21:41.

i have to say this command does not work on my Ubuntu machine, it seems like my DVD is protected, i just wonder.

A good article related to the issue

anjanaya's picture
Submitted by anjanaya on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 00:07.

I thought it was a nice one to read

  • http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/coasterless.htm

    • I think the title should

    Anonymous's picture
    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 16:50.

    I think the title should read how to copy a data CD/DVD. (No applicable to music CDs)

    ddrescue? and why not music CDs

    pbhj's picture
    Submitted by pbhj (not verified) on Sat, 04/19/2008 - 07:36.

    I'd have thought that you'd be better using something like ddrescue that verifies the data it copies (not sure if cdparanoia can do this to copy to hdd too).

    Also, why not for music discs? You can pipe them through your music player then can't you?

    Audio cd image, but how

    RudyD's picture
    Submitted by RudyD (not verified) on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 10:23.

    I would be interested in a nice try on that. Just dumped some audio cd -s with plain dd as a nerd. B-)
    Just could not load to any software to tell that is an audio cd.
    Is there a way to write a proper disc from that image? (just the plain device data dump saved to a file, like dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/backup/file.iso)
    Would be quite important in this case, because the original disc got lost and it would be nice to recover it from an image like this.
    TIA.

    only copies the first 512MB of the DVD

    MiguelKJ's picture
    Submitted by MiguelKJ (not verified) on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 04:38.

    I am using FC6 but
    dd if=/dev/dvd of=/path/to/dvdcopy.iso
    only copies the first 512MB of the DVD.

    Is there a way to copy the whole disk ?

    Check system log

    Mitch Frazier's picture
    Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 21:13.

    That should copy the whole disk. I'd check your system log to see if you're getting some kind of error.

    Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

    try bs=1024 in option

    Anonymous's picture
    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 15:14.

    try bs=1024 in option