Creating CD-ROM ISO Image - the cowboy way

I've been investigating installation of Xen for work, in the process I thought it would be useful to rather than run around with the WinXp installation disk to create an ISO image of it for installation purposes.

The utility 'dd' suits the bill, you have to first interface directly with the device driver so the cd cannot be mounted. If the cd is mounted, I'd first recommend finding the device driver reference by issuing the mount command:

$ mount
. . .
/dev/scd0 on /media/cdrom0 . . . ..
$ umount /media/cdrom0

As you can see, this was an external cdrom on /dev/scd0.

Next, issue the appropriate dd command:

$ dd if=/dev/scd0 of=WinXpProInstall.iso

The arguments if=/dev/scd0 tells dd to read from the device in raw format, of=WinXpInstall.iso specifies the output file.

You'll be left with an exact image of what resides on the cd, use at your leisure.