Create ISO dump from CD/DVD

Visually with K3b

K3b is a CD/DVD creator for Linux (optimized for KDE). It is the best disc burn tool, also for Ubuntu.

You can get the ISO dump with these steps:

1. Insert CD/DVD and select Copy CD...


2. Select Only create image in the Options tab.


3. Write the image name in the Image tab.

These steps will just read the CD into the specified ISO image.

From the Command Line

On Linux systems you don't need any additional software for creating an .iso file from your CD or DVD.

# cat /dev/cdrom1 > mydisc.iso   # if you know your cdrom device
cat /dev/`ls -l /dev | grep "^b.*cdrom.*" | awk '{print $9}'` > mydisc.iso
# You'll get an Input/output error, just ignore it.

You can use this .iso file in virtual machines or for burning copies.

Problem:

Only the first session of a multi-session disc will be stored. So this solution doesn't work with this kind of discs.

Therefore, you should use AcetoneISO, which can extract multi-sessions discs, and mount any kind of disc images. Read more about this tool in this separate post.

Have a look at this post to see how you can mount such .iso files as regular folder on your system.