Try ImgBurn and see if it works. Another free one is CDBurnerXP. There's also Burnaware Free.

If you're willing to use Linux, then any imaging tool can do it, even the basic CLI tool 'dd'.

- Alex

ajacocks wrote on 2025-08-27, 14:57:

If you're willing to use Linux, then any imaging tool can do it, even the basic CLI tool 'dd'.

I have no problem using any OS, I have them all 😜
With that in mind, would something like Windows' Win32 Disk Imager work? I didn't think of using something like that on a CD.

bizzybody wrote on 2025-08-26, 23:51:

Try ImgBurn and see if it works. Another free one is CDBurnerXP. There's also Burnaware Free.

When I tried both ImgBurn and CDBurnerXP they both gave me the info as the Windows partition and not the Mac partition, so I didn't even try making an image. They don't seem to recognize other sessions/tracks.

Nero Burning ROM and the Virtual Recorder?
It can "burn" (copy) a whole CD/DVD into an NRG file.
That way, all the individual sessions remain intact, I think.
Most virtual CD/DVD-ROM drives have NRG read support.

About "free". Nero (lite version) was often bundled free of charge with CD writers.
I've used to use 5.5, 6 and 7 on Windows XP.
Which used to be the best OS for ripping anything, I think. 😉

ajacocks wrote on 2025-08-27, 14:57:

If you're willing to use Linux, then any imaging tool can do it, even the basic CLI tool 'dd'.

- Alex

I approach it that way too, the main limitation is that this will only grab the first track (so games with CD Audio tracks need a more sophisticated imaging). Also, if the ISO9660 image was padded during the CD mastering process, the track will be slightly larger due to zero padding than the ISO9660 indicates. This doesn't hurt anything, but it does mean the sha256 won't match unless you chop that padding off, e.g. if you're trying to figure out exactly which variant of Win95 OSR2 you've got on CD.

Imgburn works great with multi-track CDs, but it only makes a CUE+BIN pair.

To get CUE+ISO+WAV (everything in it's own track), I use TurboRip.

dd is not a great option, because it only copies the first track and it will fail if the disc is damaged or have some kind of protection... if I you need a ISO image of a single track disc, I'd better use ddrescue. It won't stop after encountering bad sectors and sometimes, using multiple passes and/or multiple drives, will get a good image.

I've had good luck with ImageBurn.

When I built the "DVD Robot" http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/dvdload/index.htm
I played around with "DiscImageCreator" https://github.com/saramibreak/DiscImageCreator
which looked good. I've since given away that system, and don't recall if that's what I actually
used, but I do recall that I used a command-line tool (which could be invoked by the robot
software) and it worked well reading over 1000 discs.

DaveDDS wrote on 2025-08-29, 15:01:

I've had good luck with ImageBurn. […]
Show full quote

I've had good luck with ImageBurn.

When I built the "DVD Robot" http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/dvdload/index.htm
I played around with "DiscImageCreator" https://github.com/saramibreak/DiscImageCreator
which looked good. I've since given away that system, and don't recall if that's what I actually
used, but I do recall that I used a command-line tool (which could be invoked by the robot
software) and it worked well reading over 1000 discs.

That can rip a GD-ROM in an ordinary PC drive?

bizzybody wrote on 2025-08-29, 22:00:

... That can rip a GD-ROM in an ordinary PC drive?

No idea... I dug into the DVD-Robot code a bit more, and it turns out I didn't end up using an imager....
(but I did look at it while deciding how to proceed, and it seemed(s) promising)

A friend of mine ran an IT company and had amassed some 1500 DVDs of data files - he wanted all the files available
on a massive hard drive so he could search them etc... I ended up writing my own code to create a subdirectory on the hard
drive for every DVD as it was read by the robot, and copy the entire content of the DVD as file trees within that directory.