used to have free software that let me rip DVDs – and encrypted ones onto my HDD ….. anyone know what it might have been , ive since reformatted many times and lost it !

backing up my DVD collection onto my laptop to save me carrying a stack of DVDs into equitorial guinea(which will likely get confiscated) for my *looking like* 4 month stint in country

imgburn, then Daemon Tools to create a virtual DVD-ROM drive to mount your DVD image onto.

good skills – not the way i used to do it – used to get an AVI or MPEG4 of the main file on the DVD but that way works !

I was assuming you just want PC-portable versions of your DVDs. .iso does take up a fair bit of space on the HDD though… If you want to rip to mpeg, then I reckon you'll have to pay (or, perish the thought, p2p) for some kind of program.

DVD43 + Handbrake. Or quicker but taking up more HD space, DVD43+makemkv.

Makemkv. Quick and free, does the decrypting as well and easy to throw away all the junk special features to save space.

dvd decrypter + handbrake here

cheers guys – will get on that asap !