.IMG file

[ribac]

I heard that some people says to back up final DVD as .IMG If you plan to make more copies.Is that true??What is the adventage??
If It's not true how do you guy backup your finalhome DVD's??

[mats.hogberg]

Creating the image takes time (ripping the original). Thus, preferrably only done once. Writing the image is pretty fast. And you'll get identical copies. And it doesn't matter if your original gets scratched or otherwise damaged.

/Mats

[spectroelectro]

Backing up your DVDs by either making multiple copies or saving them as ISO or GI or IMG files is always a good idea, and makes sense. One of the moderators of this forum, Lord Smurf, always creates 3 duplicates when buring any DVD. This is simple common sense, since a DVD can be destroying by something as simple as dropping it on a hard surface.

However, there's no advantage to backing up an IMG file as opposed to an ISO file. An IMG file is a physical copy of the DVD's data (a GI is a modified IMG file designed to work within a 1-gigabyte filesize limit to accomodate older OS's) whereas an ISO is a logical copy of the DVD's data.

The difference is not subtle. If you save your DVD as an ISO, you can use programs like ISOBuster to edit important parts of the DVD like the menu, etc. In short, you can go in and edit the structure of the DVD if you have an ISO backup. If you have an IMG backup file, however, all you can do is burn it, so it's not as useful as an ISO backup.

However, the simple fact remains that if you have an undamaged DVD with uncorrupted data on its, you can always quickly and easily generate either a GI or an ISO file from it. The better DVD burning apps, e.g., RecordNow, lets you take any DVD and save it into either ISO or GI format. So an undamaged directly playable video DVD-R is no meaningfully different from an ISO or a GI data backup insofar as you can effortlessly convert from one to the other (to get an ISO or GI data backup, use RecordNow and choose SAVE IMAGE; to get a playable video DVD from an ISO or GI data backup, use RecordNow and choose BURN IMAGE).

So it's really six of one and half a dozen of the other. The important thing is to make multiple backups of important DVDs and never use cheapie junk media.