External DVD/CD drive

This is a long post.

It identifies what doesn’t work.

But to save your wading thru the weeds, here’s what did work, thanks to @vasileios’s guidance. (His full posts are detailed below.)

  1. To rip DVD:
  • The app you want is handbrake.
    Use the Software Manager, or
    sudo apt install handbrake
  1. To rip CD:
  • sudo apt install asunder
  • Then find it on your menu or dashboard. It’s an app dedicated to audio CD ripping. :slight_smile:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Original post; the long story:

I just added an external DVD/CD drive (Dell DW316) to my laptop (Dell e7440, Mint/Cinnamon).

Goal:
Copy files from a CD to an external SSD.

Problem:
I haven’t figured out how to copy the files to the SSD.

What I know so far:

VLC Player sees the CD, but struggles to play it. I just closed the program.

Rhythmbox sees and plays the tracks, but cannot copy the files


.
.

Disks sees the drive:

dell dw316, 01
.
.

Files doesn’t acknowledge the disc as a folder:

dell dw316, 02
.
.

Driver Manager doesn’t think the drive needs any drivers:

dell dw316, 03
.
.
Terminal doesn’t see the drive, which is odd, given that both Files and Disks do see it.
.
dell dw316, 05
.
.
Disks’ Mount Options:
.
dell dw316, 06

Questions:
In order to mount the drive, I tried using both Disks and ldmtool (per @vasileios earlier post), with no success so far.

  1. How can I permanently mount the drive? (I saw several suggestions online; prefer guidance from y’all here.)

  2. If I permanently mount the drive, what happens when I start the computer when the DVD drive is NOT attached?

Thanks.

Hey @nwarren!
Audio CDs and Data CDs have a different file system setup, which is why you cannot simply copy tracks out of an audio one, but can do so with actual files. Also, you can’t issue specific mount commands on a CD, as it’s - by default - considered removable. Unlike USBs and drives that follow the device=storage, CD/DVD/BluRays are “device<>storage” (unequal) and each disk gets a different ID.

What you are looking for is a CD ripper. In this scenario, the app you want is handbrake.

I hope this helps!

Thanks, @vasileios . I’ll give it a go.

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Hi @vasileios. Best I can tell, HandBrake works great to convert video formats (DVDs).

Can you recommend a program that will allow me to copy CD tracks from the physical CD, over to an SSD?

Thanks!

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That one is easy.

sudo apt install asunder

Then find it on your menu or dashboard. It’s an app dedicated to audio CD ripping. :slight_smile:

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Yayyyy! Thank you again!

It worked like a champ!!

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It’s my pleasure, @nwarren! Enjoy!