How to Rip Your Own PS1 Discs for ePSXe (The Legal Route)

ByAdmin

Every emulator guide on this site assumes games you ripped yourself from discs you own. This is that process, end to end: what you need, which format to choose, and the mistakes that produce black screens and broken disc swaps.

What you need

  • Your original PS1 discs.
  • A PC with an optical drive. Most modern laptops lack one; an external USB CD/DVD drive is the standard fix (affiliate link — see disclosure).
  • Ripping software. ImgBurn (Windows, free) is the long-standing tool for PS1 discs; the steps below are tool-agnostic.

The process

  1. Insert the disc and create an image in BIN/CUE format. The CUE sheet is not optional decoration — it describes the disc’s tracks, and multi-track games (with CD audio) misbehave or boot to black without it.
  2. Rip at a modest read speed; scratched discs fare better slowly, and a failed rip redone beats a corrupted one kept.
  3. Verify the rip by loading it in ePSXe (setup guide): File > Run ISO, point at the .cue (or the .bin), and play past the first save point.
  4. Store the master rip safely; everything downstream (CHD conversion, copying to phone or handheld) derives from it.

Format choices, honestly

  • BIN/CUE — the archival master. Keeps every track exactly; costs the most space (a full CD is up to ~700 MB).
  • ISO — fine for single-track games; loses the track structure multi-track titles need.
  • CHD — the working copy for 2026: one compressed file per disc, lossless, supported by ePSXe v2.0.18 on Windows and improved in Android v2.0.19. Convert from your BIN/CUE master with our CHD guide and keep the master as backup.
  • PBP — the PSP-era container; ePSXe reads it (including >2 GB packs since 2.0.5) but it is rarely the best choice today.

Multi-disc games

Rip every disc of a set the same way, from the same release, into one folder, named consistently (Game (Disc 1), Game (Disc 2)…). Disc swapping in ePSXe assumes a matched set — the details and fixes are in the disc swap guide.

Why not just download ISOs?

Because they are not yours to download: a PS1 game’s copyright does not expire because the disc is old, and download sites offer no provenance for what their files contain. Owning the disc and ripping it is the route every guide here is built on — and if your collection is thin, original discs remain cheap second-hand (buying guide covers the console side too).

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