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Get Blu-ray Copy (Win) for free

This simple utility can back up your Blu-ray discs to your hard drive or blank media. It's free, no strings attached.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read
Blu-ray Copy for Windows has a simple, straightforward interface.
Blu-ray Copy for Windows has a simple, straightforward interface. Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Despite recent advances in streaming media, when it comes to watching movies, you still can't beat Blu-ray.

Indeed, it's precisely because of Blu-ray's unsurpassed picture and sound quality, to say nothing of its copious extras, that many movie lovers still prefer to own their favorite films on those shiny silver platters.

Shiny, expensive silver platters. I kind of feel like now that I've bought and paid for a Blu-ray of "Despicable Me," I should be able to make a backup copy -- just in case the original gets scratched. And what if I want to transfer it to my PC for archival or media-center purposes? Surely there's some way to do that?

There is: Blu-ray Master's Blu-ray Copy, a free copy/backup utility for Windows. If you have a BD-ROM drive in your PC, this gives you everything you need to make backup copies of your Blu-ray discs.

True to its name, Blu-ray Copy can duplicate your movies to either blank Blu-ray media or your hard drive. The Full Disc mode provides a complete 1:1 copy, while Main Movie copies only the movie, without all the extras. (The latter option might prove helpful if you're building a media-center library on your PC and want to keep each movie's footprint to a minimum.)

I just created a hard-drive copy of "Chicago" (the one musical I actually kind of enjoy), and although the software put an extremely heavy load on the CPU during the 30 minutes or so of copying, it worked. I'm watching it right now via VLC Media Player.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but if you're looking for a fast, simple solution for archiving your Blu-ray media, Blu-ray Copy is definitely worth a look. It's free for life, no strings attached.

Have you found a better program for copying movies? Tell me about it in the comments!