Need help transferring DVDs to hdd

Mamof2

Hi folks I'm looking for a little advice. Is it possible to put the kids DVDs onto an external hdd? We'll be doing a bit of travelling and I just thought that it would be easier to carry a hdd than a lot of DVDs. I'm a complete novice so is it easy enough or am I going to need help? I was looking at a western digital passport 500g. Would this do the job? Any idea of the best place to buy? Went to the closest currys today but they were out of stock. I think they're €89.99 or thereabouts.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Torqay

You can indeed copy the DVDs to ISO images on a hard disk (provided they're not copy protected).

You can then mount the images as a virtual DVD drive (i.e. with WinCDEmu) or play them directly (i.e. with VLC).

Torqay

Speaking of VLC... you can also copy the VIDEO_TS folder from the DVD onto the hard disk. Now start VLC and drag the folder into the player and it will play the DVD.

_AVALANCHE_

Mamof2 wrote: »

Hi folks I'm looking for a little advice. Is it possible to put the kids DVDs onto an external hdd? We'll be doing a bit of travelling and I just thought that it would be easier to carry a hdd than a lot of DVDs. I'm a complete novice so is it easy enough or am I going to need help? I was looking at a western digital passport 500g. Would this do the job? Any idea of the best place to buy? Went to the closest currys today but they were out of stock. I think they're €89.99 or thereabouts.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Western Digital is a good brand. Compare prices to Amazons before you buy from a high street shop. Your average DVD is around 4-5GB in size.

Use MakeMKV to put your DVD on to your computer. It's very easy.


Or use DVDFAB and this tutorial with lots of pics.


VLC is a good player, when you install it you'll have a little icon on your Desktop, when you want to play something, go to where you have it saved and drag it to the VLC icon and away she goes, as Torqay said.


MPC is another good player.

Cork24

Download DVD shrink it copy's the whole DVD and get anyDvD which allows you to copy the red disk as well

Torqay

DVDFab does remove copy and region protection, not so sure about its legality here.

Unlike VLC, MPC (as much as I like it) doesn't handle certain DVD menus very well and often gets stuck in a loop. Of course, you can remove the menu (and other "nonsense") with DVDFab.

yoyo

I would be under the impression bypassing DVD copy protection for the sole purpose of personal use qualifies as fair use. So I won't mind such discussion, it is bypassing copy protection for the purpose of "sharing" or selling where issues would arise

Nick

manna452121

I am using DVD43, http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Rip-Other-Tools/DVD43.shtml which sorts out the protection issue and also Handbrake, http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php .I have transferred 51 dvds to a Lacie Hardrive over the last few weeks using both systems and no problems.

Pangea

500GB is the least you would want.

Converting to ISO is going to eat up your space fast though. You are talking about 4GB at least for each film. You could use a program like Magic Dvd Ripper to encode the DVD to a more manageable format like AVI and a typical film would be 1GB in size.

ImpossibleDuck

manna452121 wrote: »

I am using DVD43, http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Rip-Other-Tools/DVD43.shtml which sorts out the protection issue and also Handbrake, http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php .I have transferred 51 dvds to a Lacie Hardrive over the last few weeks using both systems and no problems.

Yeah +1 on Handbrake.

There's some problems with DVD43 on 64-bit OSs afaik.