Reading to an image versus copy and paste?

[dbminter]

Let's say I have a data DVD.  It's just data, not a movie DVD that needs decrypting before VIDEO_TS can be copied.  Which is faster?  Copying and pasting the root directory containing the contents to my HD or reading the disc to an image file in ImgBurn?

 

 

If I had to make a guess, I'd say the image reading would take slightly longer.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

For the amount of data, yeah you'd be right in thinking there's less to read if you just do copy+paste and therefore it shouldn't take as long.

 

In reality though, depending on the number of files on the disc, you have the overhead of actually 'finding' the files on the disc (parsing the file system) and the files aren't always in the perfect order for copy+paste so you get a bit of random accessing and that can slow it down a lot.