If you’re like me, you’ve amassed a serious collection of physical media over the years. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I touched most of it, but it’s still on my shelves taking up valuable real estate that would be better served if used for something else. Recently, I finally got around to ripping my physical media onto an external hard drive, and I really couldn’t be happier. All of my films are available with a few clicks, and better still, I don’t have to get off the couch to find what I’m looking for.
Here’s how I did it.
1. Open HandBrake. If you don’t have it, HandBrake is an Open Source tool you can download for free, here.
2. Choose the file you want to rip by pressing the file icon on the left upon startup. If this is a DVD or other piece of physical media, you’ll select the DVD drive, and its contents.
3. Press the Browse button and choose the destination to save the stored file. For the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to use an external drive, but you can choose to store it on your HDD (or SSD), a thumb drive, or even in the cloud.
4. Click Save after making the selection.
5. Press Start Encode at the top to begin ripping the DVD.
