How to Backup Program CD/DVDs

I've accumulated a collection of commercial program disks (including programs like Win 7, Adobe Acrobat, M$ Office, various hardware driver disks, a fonts disk, etc.) that I need to backup so I can store the originals in a safe deposit box at my credit union. What I would prefer to be able to do is copy, rip, whatever, from the original disk to a folder on my computer in a form that would allow me to install programs directly from the file(s) on my computer without having to burn them to another disk. In the past, I've tried just copying the contents of the disk to a folder on my computer but the results didn't always work.

Any suggestions?

fireberd said:

I've been able to just copy disks to a folder on my PC and install from there on most. A couple, I was able to access the actual program's installation utility rather than the program that ran from the disk drive to install. There were a couple that insisted on trying to access the CD drive...

That's pretty much been my experience in the past.

I saw something somewhere about a virtual CD drive. ?

kado897 said:

This is the one I use. It will mount an ISO file as if it was a CD or DVD. SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive.

You can create the ISO from the CD with ImgBurn. The Official ImgBurn Website

I tried out Virtual CloneDrive and it does exactly what I want. After seeing reports that Imageburn was being bundled with crapware, I tried CDBurnerXP to make the ISOs; that also works well.

Thanks (I'd rep you but the scales are missing)!