Copying movies to an Ext. Hard Drive

Getting a new laptop with a DVD+/-RW drive. I will also be purchasing an external HD. Is there any ways to copy movies from the drive onto the Ext Hard Drive (or internal HD for that matter)? I am talking about movies I download from the internet or DVD's that I have purchased? Thank you as I am new to this type of technology.

the program your using to burn the dvds should have a destination to put the files in .... just browse to the external and save it in there

Use DVD decryptor to turn the movies into ISO files then play them in VSC media player.