It is easy to copy DVDs. What is more, thanks to special DVD burning software, now you can copy even system files to DVD. For many people it is still not clear how you can achieve this under Windows XP. If you are among them, here are some tips, which will help you.

After putting the DVD into the DVD drive (some older computers may have only a CD reader, so it won�t function!), we can copy the files we want from the DVD to the respected folder by clicking the very common copy/paste command. This will copy a lot of files onto your computer, and you can look for the ones with the bigger sizes to see the actual movie you wanted to � the rest are supporting files.
After you have copied the contents of the DVD onto your hard drive, you need a DVD ripper program. DVD ripper programs can convert formats such as VCD to DVD, rlv to mp3, mp4, VLC, etc. DVD rippers can be free and paid but even the paid programs often offer a free trial version, which you can use for some time and see if it works for you.

The first step in copying a DVD to a hard disk is to check the hard disk for enough space to allow the files to be copied. For example if the DVD has a size of 8 GB, the hard disk must have a little more, say 10 GB. Only then can we copy those files to the hard disk, as a little extra space is needed by the operating system for buffering the files when copying. The important thing to note is never to run any other program when Windows is doing the copying process, as it interfere and may not allow the data to be copied correctly. Due to this, the copied data may become corrupt. So whenever copying a DVD to hard disk always closes all the unnecessary programs.

Today rewritable DVDs are easily accessible. The good thing about rewritable DVDs is that you can use them many times � you record the data and when you don�t need it any more, you delete it and record the same DVD again. Rewritable DVDs are especially suitable for backups because you can replace the files you don�t need any more. Using rewritable DVDs is not different from using normal DVDs. The only difference is that rewritable DVDs are just a little slower.

In addition to copying files from a DVD to the hard disk, we can do just the opposite � copy files from a hard disk to a DVD. This is done in order to create a backup. As we all know, hard disks crash, viruses attach them, and so on, so having a backup of our important files is very wise. If you want to burn data to a DVD, you need DVD burning software. Two good DVD burning programs are Nero (its latest version is 7) and Roxio. Both Nero and Roxio are for Windows. Generally DVD burning programs are user friendly and you can copy a hard drive to a DVD and vice versa using them under Windows.