How to Copy DVD to External Hard Drive?

Why backup DVD to external hard drive?

For DVD collectors, you will often come the needs to copy DVD disc to external hard drive due to the following reasons:
– DVD disc can easily get damaged or scratched, ripping DVD into digital format to store on external hard drive can help you to get a safe and permanent backup of your precious DVD movies.
– External hard drive usually offers huge storage capacity, if you have a lot of DVD disc for backup, external hard drive can be a good choice for you to store all your DVD movies.
– Compared with disc media, digital files can be easily sorted and classified, you can plug the external hard drive on your computer or TV to browse through any of your favorite movies to watch without flipping through you whole DVD disc collection.

How to backup DVD to external hard drive?

Difficulty to copy DVD to external hard drive

It won’t be difficult for you to rip home-made DVD disc into external hard drive. However, it would be another store if your DVD movies are purchased ones to complicated copy protection and region code. To freely copy the data on the DVD disc, you will first need to bypass that encryption with a specific DVD ripper software – Pavtube ByteCopy.

Tips: Now it’s worth noting that it’s illegal to rip copy protected DVDs, but the MPAA probably won’t be suing you unless you sell or distribute the ripped DVDs. As long as you keep them to yourself, you shouldn’t have to worry about any legal issues.

Backup DVD to external hard drive in different ways

Once you get the limitation to make a DVD copy to external hard drive with above listed DVD Ripper software, the next important issue that you need to take into consideration is which ways or format you choose to backup DVD to external hard drive. The external hard drive itself has no specific requirements on the digital file formats storing on it, you will have to make a format choice according to your own needs such as your further usage of the video. Following are some of the good choice we recommend you to backup DVD to external hard drive with Pavtube ByteCopy.
– 1:1 full disc copy of DVD: fast speed, preserve original DVD quality and structure, produce big file size, convenient for future DVD burning
– Main movie copy of DVD: copy DVD without unwanted extras such as ads, tidbits, comments, trailers, etc will ensure you a much faster DVD copying speed with a smaller digital size. In addition, the output VOB files can be conveniently viewed on free VOB player software such as VLC, KMPlayer, RealPlayer, GOM Player, etc.
– Rip DVD to plain digital video: rip DVD to MP4/MOV, AVI, WMV, MKV, ASF, H.264, H.265.
– Lossless multi-track MKV copy: save DVD to a losslesss multi-track MKV format with all your desired wanted audio tracks, subtitle languages and chapter markers.
– Rip DVD to devices/programs: convert DVD to specially optimized video for viewing on iPhone, iPad, Android phone/tablet, Windows phone/tablet, etc.

Here, we highly recommend you to use MP4 as the output format when ripping DVD to external hard drive with comparatively perfect quality, small file size, and wide compatibility.

Pavtube ByteCopy is very simple to use, no matter experienced user or fresh could handle it very well. In addition, it also keeps constant update with perfect support for the disc encryption used on many recently released DVD disc. What’s more, the program supports to produce high quality results, you can’t find any difference between the converted video and original DVD disc.

For Mac users, please download Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac to complete the same copying process on macOS Sierra or macOS High Sierra.

How to Copy or Backup DVD to External Hard Drive?

Step 1: Load DVD disc.

Download, install and run this DVD ripper.  Inser the DVD disc into your computer’s optical DVD drive, then you can load the DVD disc by clicking “File” > “Load from disc”. Or load DVD Folder by clicking “File” > “Load from folder” or load DVD IFO/ISO image by clicking “File” > “Load IFO/ISO”.

Step 2: Choose output file format.

There are many different ways or output formats you can choose to backup DVD to external hard drive.

Full disc copy of DVD movie

On the top tool bar of the main interface, use the  option to make an entire disc copy of original Blu-ray/DVD structure without changing anything.

Main movie copy

From “Format” bar drop-down list, select “Copy” > “Direct” Copy, you can then copy the selected movie file in its original format without quality loss. When directly copy a DVD video, you will get .vob as output.

DVD to lossless multi-track MKV

To preserve all your wanted audio tracks and subtitles streams in the source movie, you can use the program to rip Blu-ray/DVD to ” Lossless/encoded multi-track MKV(*.mkv)” under “Multi-track Video” category.

Tips: You can also choose to convert DVD to Multi-track MP4 or MOV formats with all your desired audio tracks.

Output DVD to H.264 HD format

Step 3: Begin the conversion process.

After all setting is completed, hit the “Convert” button at the right bottom of the main interface to begin the conversion process from DVD to external hard drive with your desired file formats copying process.

When the conversion is finished, click “Open Output Folder” icon on the main interface to open the folder with generated files. Then feel free to move the converted files to external hard drive for either storage or conveniently playback on computer, smartphone, tablets, TVs, game consoles, etc.