I’ve never ripped CDs or DVDs before for any reason and am curious how this works since I have some stuff I wanna see about backing up but am nervous about ruining the disc. I’ve tried looking this up, but every time I do, I obviously am searching for the wrong thing because I have never found the info I’m looking for.
A CD/DVD is a read only digital information carrier. It holds files which you copy when you rip the DD/DVD. The data is stored as indents in the surface marking untuched surface as 0 and indents as 1 (or the other way around).
The only way to damage CD/DVD data is physical, scratching the surface (changing the path of the laser light needed to read the data) or breaking the disc (making it unusable in the drive).