Making or burning ISO images

I was given a burned CD from a friend and decided to make an ISO image of that particular CD. Currently I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 and decided to use the Linux-command: dd

But to my surprise; IT WOULDN'T WORK!!! I have always used that command to make an ISO image, so now I had to figure out why this is not working, and how I could make it work.

I couldn't even mount the cd-rom. So after some investigating I found that there was an error with this CD. The mount -command told me it can't read superblock. So there is something wrong with the CD.

Making the ISO

After some checking I found out that instead of using dd I would be better off using the readom -command. Here's the simplicity of using it:

readom dev=/dev/sr0 f=cdimage.iso

(Use the man -command for more specifics.)

Burning the ISO

At this stage I would be better off using the wodim -command like this:

wodim dev=/dev/sr0 -v -eject cdimage.iso

(Read the man-page for more details. For overburning we could add -sao -overburn.)


Or use the cdrecord -command:

cdrecord dev=/dev/sr0 -v -eject cdimage.iso

(Run cdrecord --help for more options.)

I must admit that I'm still not sure if writing the ISO will work, because when I tried burning with overwrite on a 700MB disc (like the "original" disc), the burning failed because there was not enough free space on the disc.
The ISO image is appr. 835 MB while the total of the files on this 700 MB disc is appr. 801 MB. So I will try to buy myself some 800 MB discs, and test the burning of the CD to them.

Problem
Even though I could create an iso image I couldn't mount this image due to the problems with the superblock. Mounting and unmounting of ISO images will be another post in the future if I get more problems with it, and are able to resolve the issue. I know there are ways to correct the superblock of the disc. But for now I'm good.