3 Simple Ways to Copy a DVD to USB Flash Drive

Want to copy a DVD to USB flash drive then you can easily watch your favorite movie with your family on vacation/traveling? If so, here are 3 simple ways for you.

David Jordan
6 min readAug 18, 2020

USB is the best device where you can store all your favorite data and you can easily bring with you while you traveling or going for vacations. If you have some favorite movies on DVD disc, you can consider copying the movies on DVD to USB flash drive and bring the USB device with you while you are away from home. On the other hand, transferring the data from DVD to USB is a great idea for backup your favorite movies. If you’re looking for ways on how to copy a DVD to a USB flash drive, then you can refer to the three simple ways introduced in this article.

Why We Need to Copy DVD to USB?

Watching DVD movies with family and friends at home in systems like a DVD player or computer is fun. It is very difficult to carry a DVD player if you are planning a vacation. Meanwhile, there are other occasions in which your source DVD discs might get lost or broken. In such conditions, copying DVD to USB drive would be of great help. And below are some situations that you may need a USB drive rather than a DVD disc.

1. Save DVD content onto USB drive for storage. Make a backup of DVD movie collections with large capacity USB drives.
2. Computer has no DVD drive or DVD drive is broken or damaged. You need USB drive to play back DVD movies or install operating system.
3. Play DVD movies via USB drive on TV, Tablet, DVD player, and other home appliances as long as you connect your USB drive. More convenient.
4. Transfer DVD movies via USB, especially DVD movie folder and ISO image files. From one computer to another with absence of DVD drive.

3 Methods to Copy DVD to USB Drive with Ease

Method 1: Copy DVD to USB Flash Drive Directly (Not Recommended)

The USB flash drive is a very convenient way to store all the important information. This driver comes in very compact size so the user can easily transfer their important files from one computer to another. The users can easily carry these drives in key chains, bags and every year their storage capacity is getting grown day by day. These USB flash drives are the best way to transport data from place to place, and keep data ready in hand.

You can copy DVD to USB directly via your computer with several simple steps.

Step 1. First insert the DVD you want to copy from into your PC, prepare your DVD as ISO files or DVD Folder so that they can be copy-and-paste easily.

Step 2. Plug your USB in the same computer and make sure it can be recognized by your PC, if not, connect the USB by a USB drive. Your USB should have enough space to copy all your DVD content.

Step 3. Open your DVD and select all files in your disc, or choose the ISO file or DVD Folder directly, then simply right click and choose Copy from the options. Next, move to your USB disk and Paste what you have copied.

However, there are still many problems of copying DVD to USB directly. Firstly, it’s easy to lose data during your copy-and-paste process. While copying a data from DVD to USB Flash drive, there are many cases that you don’t get full data, because of the corrupted files. Sometimes, during the process of the copy, there is a chance that your PC gets shut off or you accidentally click on the cancel icon, it can lead to the data loss situation. Secondly, you cannot copy the protected DVDs successfully, those DVDs are password protected and can’t be accessed by the third party. Other unknown problems may also cause your DVD to USB direct copy failed.

Method 2: Copy DVD to USB Flash Drive With the 3rd-party DVD Copy Software

Due to the problems of losing data and copyright protection, copying DVD to USB via your PC may be the easiest way but not the best way to make a DVD to USB copy. The most recommended way of how to copy a DVD to a flash drive and USB is copy it via the professional 3-rd party.

On choosing a right DVD to USB tool, various things should be taken into consideration, including: copy speed, output quality, price, disc protection removal, etc. Taking all these into consideration, you can also adopt the EaseFab DVD Ripper to help you copy the whole content or just the main movie from the (protected/unprotected) physical DVD discs to the USB flash drive.

EaseFab DVD Ripper offers enough freedom for all DVD movie lovers like you to back up your favorite DVD movies in a personalized way. Two different copy modes: Title Mode and Full Disc Mode are provided to let you copy the exact movie part you want within ~5 minutes. Just the selected your wanted one.

Free Download EaseFab Video Converter For Win 7 or later
Free Download EaseFab Video Converter For Mac OS X 10.15

(For Mac OS 10.9–10.14? Click here ↓)

Method 3: Digitizing DVDs for Copying to USB Flash Drive (Highly Recommeded)

Still, there’s another way to help you copy DVD to USB drive for backup or transfer. That is to make use of DVD ripping software, which helps you rip DVD to video in various formats and then enables you to transfer the converted DVD movies to USD easily. To do this, you can use the above metioned EaseFab DVD Ripper. It owns 350+ profiles for converting DVD to MP4/AVI/MOV for playback on devices easily and is built with powerful decryption technology for (DVD region code, UOPs, CSS encryption, Disney’s fake etc.) copy protected ISO images and encrypted movie DVDs, even those Disney DVD movies with X-project DRM. Follow the detailed steps below to convert DVD to digital formats for copying to USB flash drive.

Step 1: Launch the program and click Load DVD: Load DVD Folder, Load ISO Files or Load IFO files to import the DVD movies you want to rip.

Step 2: Basically the “Common Video” > “MP4 Video” is an universal format for almost all multimedia devices. Of course, you can choose MKV, HEVC, WMV, MOV, AVI, etc. according to your needs. You can also could choose MP4 format that specifies to your device.

Step 3: Click the big “Convert” to start converting DVD to USB Flash Drive as AVI, MP4, FLV, WMV, MOV, etc.. After conversion, you can click “Open” to find the converted files.

FAQs on Copying DVD to USB

1. Are there any other DVD to USB services available?

For those who don’t want to install a third-party program, there are online services to help. Search on Google, there are a lot of options. Take the first DVD to USB transfer as an example, it can save DVD videos on a USB stick in MP4 format. You can either buy the USB from it or use your own USB. It takes $15 to convert a DVD, which is expensive. And you will have to wait for the shipping. Other services are similar and most of them charge you per DVD.

2. How many GB is a DVD movie?

Movies of up to 2 hours at DVD quality are usually 4.7GB. However, DVD movies longer than 120 minutes come in 8.5GB DVD-9.

3. What USB flash drive capacity do you need to save your DVD collections?

It depends on how many DVDs you want to transfer to the USB and what settings you choose. If you simply need to make digital copies of your DVD collections to USB drives with exact same quality & data, you may convert DVD to ISO image, which will be as large as the DVD movie. Then you may need a USB stick with a larger capacity. If you convert DVD to MP4, a DVD can be shrinked to 1~2GBs. EaseFab DVD Ripper is able to reduce 80% of the original DVD size. That means, a 4.7GB DVD can be ripped to a movie at ~700MB. A 256GB flash drive at about $35 is can store 300+ DVD movies.

--

--