I was attempting to create a distro iso from cdrom using dd to a partition in shell, and that was the error message I got. Using google on this issue most error messages contained more troubleshooting information than this, but "dd: /dev/hdc: input/output error" was all I received. My guess is it's cdrom drive (it's a very old laptop), as I was trying this method of install because the normal method always ran into an error at the install, so I was trying to take the cdrom out of the equation, seems it wants to stay there. So anyway, any advise? Is my hypothesis correct? If so is there a way around this issue? Maybe still using dd?

Or a bad cd.

I checked the files through the distro installer.

Please post the exact syntax you are using to copy the CD. The dd command is a byte for byte copy and a scratch could cause an error. You can use the option conv=noerror to skip errors.