Ripping The Content Of A DVD To A .ISO Image File

I have just spent the last 2 days trying to figure out a way to rip the content of my DVD and save it into the ISO image file format (a file with a .ISO extension) so that I could mount this file as a 'DVD' under Oracle VM Virtualbox. I thought this would be an easy process but it did not turn out to be so.

After various attempts, I ended up using a freeware by MiniDVDSoft called Free DVD ISO Maker that allows me to easily extract directly from the DVD and save the content into a file in the .ISO format. Virtualbox mounted the .ISO file successfully, just like a real physical DVD. Wonderful little software. And it works beautifully without any problems.

Below is a description of my other (failed) attempts. It is just for my reference and also to others who may be interested.

My Other (Failed) Attempts

My first attempt was with Nero. Nero only extracts CDs and DVDs into its own propriety image file format which has a .NRG file extension. Virtualbox does not like this .NRG file. I tried mounting them in Virtualbox and failed.

I then realized that Nero creates a temporary .ISO image file when I do a DVD copy with an identical source and destination drive (E: in my case, see picture above). When Nero prompted me to insert a blank DVD - Nero should have completely ripped the DVD by this time - I quickly copied the TempImage.ISO image file in Windows Explorer to another file with a different file name before Nero deletes it. Unfortunately, Virtualbox failed to recognized this file as being in the .ISO format despite the .ISO file extension. I wonder why?

I then thought of ripping with Nero into the .NRG format and then converting this file into the .ISO format with MagicISO. And this too, unfortunately, did not work. The freely available MagicISO that I downloaded is crippled. It can only extract and convert 300MB. I just wished that this was clearly stated in the MagicISO website before I started downloading this software. What a waste of bandwidth.

I also tried the Windows version of nrgtoiso to do this conversion. The .NRG file got converted alright but Virtualbox does not like the .ISO file.