Make an ISO image of a cdrom?

Xeratul · 08-18-2012, 06:41 AM

Hi,

I would like to image a cdrom.

I have tried:

Code:

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=image-au.iso

I am a bit surprised that it does not work. Permissions and /dev/sr0 are working. How to make an iso file surely?

thanks

business_kid · 08-18-2012, 07:07 AM

use mkisofs, and standard burning programs (wodim, k3b) or growisofs.

David the H. · 08-18-2012, 07:46 AM

What exactly do you mean by "does not work"? I just test-copied a cdrom with dd and it performed just fine.

And is there anything special about the input disc you used? Could it be corrupt or have copy protection systems in place or something? Or does it happen with all discs?

RockDoctor · 08-18-2012, 12:02 PM

Looks like businesskid is explaining how to make an iso image from a filesystem. The dd command has always worked well for me (except when I've run out of space on the partition into which I was trying to copy the cd)

rknichols · 08-18-2012, 12:07 PM

The intended output file name "image-au.iso" suggests that the source is an audio CD. Those do not contain a normal filesystem and indeed cannot be read by dd. CD ripping tools are needed to extract the audio tracks.

brianL · 08-18-2012, 12:09 PM

I keep .isos in ~/ISOs, for use in VirtualBox, and this has always worked for me:

Code:

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=~/ISOs/xpp.iso

For XP Pro, for example. Maybe include the path to the .iso?

frieza · 08-18-2012, 12:10 PM

it would be helpful if you posted any relevant error messages generated by the failed attempt as well as the output of

Code:

ls -lac /dev/sr0

as well as where you are trying to store the file (naturally you must have write permissions to the folder you are trying to place the iso image)

simply saying 'it doesn't work' could be any of a potentially infinite number of possibilities, impossible to tell what the issue is without more information

jefro · 08-18-2012, 06:43 PM

Could the cd be protected by some scheme?

jschiwal · 08-18-2012, 07:51 PM

An audio CD doesn't have a file system on it. Gaps between tracks are used to seperate one audio track from the next. A data CD uses a file system and the /dev/sr0 device accesses it.

Another program good at imaging data CDs is ddrescue. It will retry copying the last block if the is a problem and reduce the block size dynamically. If parts can not be read, they will be filled with zeros. An error at the beginning might still allow later data to be read.

jefro · 08-18-2012, 08:36 PM

I never assumed it was an audio cd.

jschiwal · 08-19-2012, 10:00 AM

I missed that myself until the post pointing it out.

jefro · 08-19-2012, 11:05 AM

I don't think we will ever know what the OP has.

David the H. · 08-19-2012, 11:15 AM

The OP specifically says "cdrom" several times. The only, rather vague, clue that he might be using audio cds is in the example filename. At this point we still don't know what he's really working with.

Note that images of audio cds can be created, although they won't be iso9660 files, but generally some kind of bin/cue style file pair. k3b, for example, can be used to create a binary image and a separate toc file for it (I believe it uses readom/readcd as the background tool for this).