The task of archiving all my CD-ROM software seemed incredibly daunting. I kept putting it off and putting it off; "oh, I don't know where to get a CD copier", "oh, the software I downloaded is on another computer right now", "oh, I can't connect to the internet on Windows 7 anymore". Then, of course, the searches were getting me nowhere; all I got were years-old Reddit posts with 15 conflicting views and no clear answer or, if I was lucky, a forum post from the turn of the last decade where the only response was "nvm i got it". One website swore by a particular program, another website claimed that program was nothing but malware, yet another website insisted that the reason why people were getting malware from site 1's program was they'd clicked the wrong download button instead of being smart enough to click the tiny link at the very bottom of the page that said "Real download link here", that sort of thing. However, all of this hinged on one important thing: I was looking for a CD copier that was compatible with Windows.
The market share historically enjoyed by Microsoft Windows has made it the platform to make malware for, mostly because Apple computers have always been too expensive and Linux is traditionally used by people who know what Windows malware looks like from a code level. Meanwhile, everyone's grandma, mom, and sister has a Windows PC, so that's who they go after. I can't tell you how many viruses I accidentally installed as a kid, thinking I could get a cool desktop toy, or how much adware I installed when I was trying to get a mouse cursor that looked like the Enterprise-D, and let's not even bring up the time I signed up for a sketchy Sims fansite's email newsletter and installed some Malaysian guy's malware right onto the family computer. TWICE.
Therefore, if Windows was the problem, then Linux was the solution. I switched my internet computer over to Linux Mint Xfce full-time, overwriting the installation of Windows 10 that came with the computer, and so I tried a different permutation of my search: "how to make an iso of a cd on linux mint".
Why have I been writing as though I'm getting paid by the word? Because the solution is so simple, there wouldn't be much of an entry without all that filler material.
Basically, Linux Mint is capable of creating ISO copies of CD-ROM discs natively; as in, you don't need to risk a security breach trying out 5 different programs to find out that they can't do it anyway. Linux Mint just does it.
By going to the Disks program, you can open partition and formatting options for all drives currently connected to the computer. In the case of a CD- or DVD-ROM (not sure about Blu-Ray, but probably), you can dump a copy of the disc in the drive to an ISO file. All you need to do is select the "CD/DVD Drive" and then click the trigram/meatballs icon and choose "Create Disc Image...", then choose a folder to save the ISO in and let Linux take its course. No muss, no fuss, easy as proverbial spongecake.
In my particular use-case, I have a lot of old EA games and some Microsoft-published software that use Safedisc copy protection. The crux of the anti-copy mechanism (apart from having an easily-corruptible confederate in the System32 folder) was the 500 or so intentionally scrambled sectors on the leading edge of the disc. While this was enough to befuddle at least some of the CD copiers of the time, it does nothing on Mint except throw an error message at the end, saying "Well, I did it, but there's all this data at the beginning that got lost. I'm sorry I failed you, and would you like me to delete the ISO file?" No, that's perfectly all right, Mint— those sectors were intentionally scrambled by 2 money-hungry corporations. What it does instead is simply fill the sectors with noughts, which is good enough for SECDRV.SYS to verify that the contents of the disc have not been illictly copied.
Why dump CD-ROM to ISO in the first place? Well, I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've been playing The Sims Complete Collection off the original install disc all this time. I know, I know, not practising what I preach and all that. But the fact is, Disc 1 was starting to look a little worse for the wear and, if something happened to it, the whole structure would fall apart and I would need to risk connecting to the internet to bootstrap The Sims 1 Starter Pack. Doubly embarrassing because I own the original Sims Complete Collection set, triply embarrassing because I talked so much about the importance of archiving data and then I go and let something as stupid as disc rot set in on the most important CD-ROM in my entire collection!
One interesting thing I noticed about the data surfaces of all the discs I've copied today: these are decades-old discs and yet they were still in pristine condition! No clouding, no discolouration, nothing to indicate that they were breaking down from the cycle of entropy. However, while I was ripping my DVD collection to MKV a couple of years back, I noticed distinct breakdown in the data surfaces of nearly all the DVDs that I added to my collection recently. Discs as new as 2019 were already blooming so badly that they'll be totally unreadable in a couple more years. I was lucky to get to my DVDs when I did, whereas I could have taken my time with my CD-ROMs. I suspect they would still be readable in 50 years, while my DVDs are on track to be drink coasters by 2026. What changed? All of a sudden, companies realised they could make more money by selling the same product to people many different times. This was even before everyone had their own $25-per-month streaming service. Since company policy at nearly every store ever to sell home video has always been to refuse returns on opened boxes, ViacomCBS was trying to get me to spend another $34.99 on a second copy of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Series 1. Of course, anymore they just want me to subscribe to their stank-ass streaming service, which I will not do under any circumstances at all.