I rarely use discs nowadays. I think the last disc I actually used was the Windows 7 installation DVD, and that's because I didn't have a USB drive handy.
However, I have a bunch of old games on discs and they all work (beautifully) on my modern Windows 10 PC. I have more than enough storage, and I'm not going to have a disc drive forever, so why not rip them?
But, uh oh, half the software is commercial, a quarter is old & incompatible, and my few favourites are now ridden with adware. And I'm not looking to burn new discs.
So, what do I do?
On Linux, it's as easy as piping one device into a file. On Windows, it's a little trickier but still super-simple. You just need a physical HANDLE, buffering and a way to make the user stop it because interfacing with disc drives in Windows is still horribly unstable.
That's why I made this tiny utility.
You can now download a build right on GitHub.
- Download the latest release (in your system's architecture)
- Drop it in
C:\Program Files\Isotope\isotope.exe
- Run the
register.reg
file - Right-click your disc drive & pick "Rip with Isotope..." to convert it to an ISO
You can also just run isotope.exe
; no installation necessary.
- There's no installer. (But it's also self-contained)
- Ripping is done on a logical level, reading the same disc partition you see in
Computer
. Meaning we'll only rip "the first" if the disc:- Has more partitions;
- Cheats Windows by showing a smaller partition and transparently reads the rest (e.g.: DRM);
- Also has a Mac paritition you wish to rip.