An ISO file is a complete disc image of a CD or DVD bundled into a single file. You can mount an ISO file to make it available as a virtual CD or DVD, allowing you to convert physical discs to virtual ones.
ISO files are particularly useful if you want to use old game or software discs on a modern computer that doesn’t have a disc drive. Although, you should note that some DRM copy protection schemes won’t work with ISO files, unless you jump through additional hoops. ISO files are also great for things like providing a disc to a virtual machine program, or just saving a copy of a disc so that you can recreate it in the future if you need to.
Windows
RELATED:How to Use CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs on a Computer Without a Disc Drive
Windows doesn’t have a built-in way to create ISO files, although modern versions of Windows— Windows 8, 8.1, and 10—can all natively mount ISO files without any additional software.
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To actually create an ISO file from your own physical disc, you’ll need a third-party program. There are lots of tools that can do this, but you need to be careful because many of them are packed with junkware.
As always, we recommend Ninite as a safe place to grab tools of all sorts. On the ISO front, Ninite includes tools like InfraRecorder, ImgBurn, and CDBurnerXP. Just be sure to download them through Ninite. Some of these programs—like ImgBurn—do include junkware in their installers if you get them from elsewhere.
After you choose and install one of these tools, all you really have to do is insert a CD or DVD into your PC, click the option for reading a disc or creating an ISO, and then select a location to save the ISO file.
macOS
RELATED:How to Use Your Mac’s Disk Utility to Partition, Wipe, Repair, Restore, and Copy Drives
On a Mac, you can use Disk Utility to create images of discs. To open it, press Command+Space to open the Spotlight search box, type “Disk Utility”, and then press Enter.
Insert a disc, click the File menu, and point to New > Disc Image from [Device]. Select “DVD/CD master” as the format and leave encryption disabled. Disk Utility will create a .cdr file from the disc. On a Mac, this is practically as good as an ISO file. You can “mount” it from within the Disk Utility application by clicking File > Open Disk Image.
Assuming you just want to use the .cdr file on a Mac, you can leave it as a .cdr file. If you want to convert it to an ISO file to use on other operating systems, you can do so with a Terminal command. Open a Terminal window and run the following command:
Replace “/home/username/original.cdr” with the path to the CDR file and “/home/username/destination.iso” with a path for the ISO file you want to create.
In many cases, you may be able to rename the .cdr file to an .iso file and be done with it, but this method doesn’t always work. We recommend sticking with the terminal command.
Linux
On Linux, you can create an ISO file from the terminal or with any disc-burning utility your Linux distribution may include. For example, Ubuntu uses the Brasero disc-burning utility. Open the Brasero Disc Burner, click “Disc Copy,” and then you can copy an inserted disc to an “Image File.” Other Linux distributions and desktops may include similar tools. Look for a CD/DVD-related utility and it should have an option to copy a disc to an ISO disc image file.
Note: Brasero was removed from the default installation in Ubuntu 16.04, so you’ll need to install Brasero from the Ubuntu Software Center.
Creating an ISO file from the terminal is as simple as running the below command:
Replace “/dev/cdrom” with the path to your CD drive—for example, it may be “/dev/dvd” instead—and “/home/username/cd.iso” with the path to the ISO file you want to create.
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You can mount the resulting disc images with the “mount” command in a terminal or with graphical tools that basically just provide a prettier interface over the mount command.
Once you have your ISO files, you can copy them to a computer’s hard drive, store them on a USB drive, or make them available on the network. Any computer without a disc drive can read them and use them as a virtual disc.
Stand-alone CD rippers are useful when you have a large collection of CDs that you want to rip. They're also helpful when the media player that you use doesn’t come with a built-in CD ripper. Dedicated audio CD extraction programs typically have more features than the ones that are built into popular media players such as Windows Media Player.
![Rip Cd Windows 10 Rip Cd Windows 10](https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/win10sr-notification.jpg)
Exact Audio Copy
What We Like
Tests CD drive for accuracy and reliability.
Add song lyrics.
Feature-rich in CD ripping options.
What We Don't Like
Website to download program is annoying.
Not a native Windows 10 app.
Enter email address to get song and album information.
EAC—Exact Audio Copy—is valued for its accuracy. The free Windows program reads every CD sector at least two times to verify the correct data is copied. Then it compares the copy to the original CD until at least eight of 16 tries produce identical results. Troublesome sections of the CD, such as scratched areas, are read repeatedly up to 80 times.
EAC's accuracy comes at the cost of speed, but if accuracy is important to you, a minute or more extra time isn't a problem. EAC isn't the most user-friendly of the CD ripping software programs and it doesn't apply its own codec. EAC also doesn't pull the album metadata from the database until you tell it to do so.
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Despite these shortcomings, free EAC is probably the best and most powerful ripping tool available.
FreeRIP 3 Basic Edition
What We Like
Automatically fills out track and album information.
Rips music to 5 different audio formats.
Rips CDs quickly.
What We Don't Like
Search feature doesn't work.
Interface looks a bit dated.
FreeRIP 3 has a well-designed interface that is intuitive to use. This free CD ripper can extract the audio from your music CDs to MP3, WMA, WAV, Vorbis and FLAC formats. The program supports CDDB query, which is used to automatically fill in the information for your digital audio files. FreeRIP 3 can also be used as an audio format converter and a tagger. When you're converting from one audio format to another, you can either add files manually or drag and drop them using your mouse. If you’re looking for a free CD ripper, converter, and tagger, then FreeRIP is a solid choice.
foobar2000
![Windows Windows](https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/EX-CD-AUDIO-CONVERTER-FREE.jpg)
What We Like
Available for Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and as a portable app.
Interface is customizable.
Looks up album information from 2 databases.
What We Don't Like
Default layout too simplistic.
No tutorial to show advanced features.
Foobar2000 is a free advanced audio player for Windows. Although primarily a player, its audio component supports secure ripping of audio CDs. The software supports a wide range of audio formats including MP3, MP4, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, and WAV.
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FairStairs CD Ripper
What We Like
Query music databases for album information.
Help files have great explanations of the interface.
Adjust sound sampling rates.
What We Don't Like
Interface lacks some features.
Software looks a bit dated.
FairStairs CD Ripper is a donationware Windows program that is powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats. The interface is user-friendly and includes ID3 tag support. It supports multiple CD/DVD drivers and includes audio playback controls. FairStairs CD Ripper supports normalization when ripping.