Create an ISO Image from a CD or DVD
Turning a physical disc into an ISO file — often searched for as “CD to ISO” — is the safest way to preserve it. Optical discs scratch, fade and eventually fail, but an ISO image is a bit-for-bit file you can back up, store on a hard drive or NAS, and burn back to a fresh disc whenever you need it. InfraRecorder 0.53 can do both halves of that job: it saves data and audio tracks from a disc to files, including the .iso format, and it can burn an ISO back to blank media later. This guide covers creating the image, choosing the right options, and checking the result.
You will need InfraRecorder installed — version 0.53 is available from the download page — plus enough free hard-drive space for the image: up to about 700 MB for a CD and up to 4.7 GB (or 8.5 GB for dual-layer) for a DVD. InfraRecorder is free software under GPL v3, written for Windows 2000 through Windows 7. It is not officially supported on Windows 10 or 11, though many users run it there; the compatibility notes in InfraRecorder on Windows 11 are worth a quick read first, because read-back problems on newer systems can affect imaging as well as burning.
Before You Start: Clean and Check the Disc
Imaging copies what the drive can read — it cannot invent data from a badly damaged disc. Hold the source disc up to the light and check for scratches, fingerprints and cloudy patches. Wipe it gently from the centre outward with a soft, clean cloth; never wipe in circles, because a circular scratch runs along the data track and is harder for error correction to handle than a radial mark. A disc that still plays or installs correctly will almost always image cleanly. If the source is an audio CD rather than a data disc, the steps below still apply for saving tracks, but also read the dedicated guide to ripping a CD to MP3, which covers per-track formats such as WAV, WMA and OGG.
Step by Step: Saving a Disc as an ISO File
- Insert the source disc. Place the CD or DVD you want to preserve in your optical drive and wait for the drive to settle. Close any autoplay window that appears.
- Open InfraRecorder. Start the program. Its device scan checks the SCSI/IDE bus and lists the drives it finds, along with the disc you just inserted.
- Open the copy/read options. From the welcome screen choose the copy action, or use the menu: Actions > Copy Disc. In the copy dialog you can choose whether the copy goes directly to another disc or to a disc image on your hard drive.
- Choose the image destination. Select the option to copy to a disc image rather than on the fly to a second drive, and set the image format to ISO. If you are asked for a read drive, make sure it is the drive containing your source disc.
- Pick a file name and folder. Give the image a clear name — the disc title plus the date works well, for example
family-photos-2011.iso— and save it in a folder with enough free space. Avoid saving to the same removable media you are imaging from. - Start the read. Confirm the dialog and let InfraRecorder read the disc sector by sector. A full DVD can take several minutes. The progress display shows any read retries; a disc in good condition should read through without a long stall.
- Wait for completion. When the read finishes, InfraRecorder reports success and the ISO file is complete on disk. Do not cancel part-way and reuse a partial file — a truncated image looks plausible in Explorer but is missing its end sectors.
- Check the image size. In Windows Explorer, compare the ISO size with the used capacity of the original disc. They should be very close. A dramatically smaller file suggests the read stopped early or only one session was captured.
- Test the image. The surest test is to burn the image to a blank disc later using the burn image function, or to mount/open the ISO with a tool you trust and confirm the files are all listed. Keep at least one backup copy of valuable images on a second device.
Data Discs, Audio Discs and Multisession Discs
For a normal data CD or DVD — files, installers, photo archives — a single ISO captures the whole disc, including its file system (ISO 9660, Joliet or UDF, as used by the original). Audio CDs are different: they hold raw audio tracks rather than a file system, so InfraRecorder saves audio tracks to audio files such as .wav, .wma, .ogg or .mp3, or to an .iso where the track-saving workflow offers it. If your goal is music files for a media player, per-track ripping is the better route; if your goal is an exact backup you can reburn as an identical audio CD, keep the track files together with a note of the original track order.
Watch out for multisession discs — discs that were written in more than one sitting, common with home backups from the 2000s. InfraRecorder can import session data from multisession discs, and when imaging one, make sure the final session is the one being read, because earlier sessions may hide files that were later replaced or deleted. Our guide to multisession discs explains how sessions work and what to check before you archive one.
If Reading Fails or Stalls
Long stalls and retries point to a disc the drive is struggling to read, not necessarily a hopeless one. Try the disc in a different drive if you have one — drives vary noticeably in how well they handle marginal media. Clean the disc again, and let a retry run rather than cancelling quickly, because error correction can take time on a weak sector. If one disc consistently fails while others image fine, the media itself is degrading; copy what you can and prioritise imaging the rest of that collection soon, because disc rot does not reverse.
What to Do With the Image Afterwards
An ISO you never test is only a hope, so verify valuable images as described above, then store two copies on different devices. When you need the physical disc again, follow the companion guide to burning an ISO file to CD or DVD, which covers write speeds and verification. And if you simply need a second physical copy right away, copying a disc directly — on the fly or via an image — may suit you better than archiving first.