How to copy a bootable disc?

[liangyitao]

I want to use mkisofs and GNOME CD creator (a GUI tool in Fedora 10) to copy a bootable disc. Since the disc is bootable, I thought I just need to make a ISO of it. So I used the command below:

mkisofs -o backup.iso -J -R -A -V -v /media/RISING

Here the "/media/RISING" is my CD-Rom. This command execute successfully. Then I burnt the "backup.iso" to a CD-R. But the new created disc is unbootable.

There are many solutions on the Internet to make a bootable ISO. They all need to specify a boot image to the command "mkisofs". But if the disc itself is bootable, do I need to specify a boot image, too? If not, how to copy a bootable disc? Thanks!

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
Why don't you just use Gnome cd creator to do all that for you? Just select the option to copy disc, if it's bootable then the cd you create should be bootable too.

[liangyitao]

Ohhh! Really! Thanks! It seems that I've "invent" a silly question, hoho.

[waterhead]

You can also us the terminal command dd to copy a CD. In this case you would use dd to make an image file, then burn the image to a CD using your favorite application (K3b).

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/cdcopy.iso

You need to specify the output folder and name, as this is just an example.