I have an old video camera that recorded to mini-tapes. I would then burn the tapes to DVDs. I would like to back-up these DVDs to ensure I have copies of them.
What format should I use to archive my home video DVDs? (e.g. ISO, IMG, etc) Is there an online tutorial you can point me to?
I would use a freeware tool like CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn to simply create ISO files from the drive. There are other tools as well, but you don't need to spend money. See here for a list of freeware ISO creation software.
There is no real alternative to creating an ISO anyway. If you were to copy the single files from the disk you'd have a harder time getting them restored and the risk of single file errors is much higher. If you have one single ISO file you can give it a proper name and just archive it away.
After you've created the ISO files, I'd run a file verification tool to create checksums of the DVD ISOs and keep them with the ISO files. That way you can make sure the files are intact when you backup them somewhere else or transfer them (as part of your backup schedule), before restoring them to a DVD.
