Still, it’s worth a shot for accessing those files over the network without copying them to a drive or making an ISO file first. However, this won’t work with all types of discs - software discs that use copy protection won’t function this way, for example. Mac OS X provides a “remote disc sharing” feature, while it’s possible to share discs over the network on Windows, too. It’s also possible to access a disc drive over the network by sharing it as a network share. If you have a computer with a disc drive on the same network as your computer without a disc drive, you can share that disc drive over the network. You’ll probably want to encode those videos to another format, creating a smaller file so they won’t take as much space on your internal drive, too. These videos can be ripped using a variety of programs, but you’ll need to ensure your program of choice has a way to bypass that obnoxious copy-protection. This only applies to commercial video discs, of course - if you’ve burned home videos to a DVD or Blu-ray disc, it’s easy to rip them because there’s no copy-protection.

DVDs are much easier to rip using a wide variety of programs while Blu-ray discs can only be ripped using a few programs. RELATED: How to Rip Blu-Ray Discs With MakeMKV and HandbrakeĭVDs and Blu-ray movies are harder to rip to digital video files thanks to their copyright protection. Once you’re done, move those digital music files to the computer without the disc drive - or upload them to a free music-streaming service like Google Play Music so you can stream them from anywhere. Ripping CDs is fairly simple, and you can use iTunes or a more advanced program like EAC to do it. You can rip your audio CDs to create digital music files in MP3, AAC, FLAC, or another format and listen to those rather than rely on the physical discs themselves. Once you have an ISO file, you can unplug your external disc drive or move it to another computer without a disc drive. You can then use them as if they were inserted in your computer. Since Windows 8, Windows has allowed you to “mount” ISOs (and IMG files) as virtual discs by double-clicking them.

Once you install it, you can insert a disc, right-click it, and select “Create image from CD/DVD.” This will create an ISO file. There are many tools you can use to create ISO files on Windows, including InfraRecorder.

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