Thread: How to Archiving DVDs to harddrives

I have many DVDs of programs that I have either recorded myself or have converted over from VHS tapes I own. With DVD heavy now but Blu-Ray on the horizon, what is the best way to back up and archive my DVDs to a hard drive? Is it best for me to simply save the DVD as an ISO image file or should I save the DVD in a directory structure with the individual files, VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS folder, etc? I realize I can bust the ISO later into the component parts, but why do something in two steps when I can do it as one? I want to give myself as much flexibility to convert whatever I have now in the current format over to what the next format will be. Thanks in advance for the responses.

For convenience, copy the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS to a hard drive you could then play it with VLC immediately should the need arise. If you use Nero as your burning software, when you burn DVD’s it already provides you the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders, so it's as easy as drag and drop. (Not sure about other burning software).