"Ripping" h: Oh Basement DVD-guru-guys

I am going to be taking a long trip and wish to watch some DVD's on my laptop. Rather than bring a stack of DVD's (and risk losing/scratching them) along with the DVD-rom constantly spinning, I'd rather put a few on the hard drive and watch them from there.

Any suggestions? I've been told DVD shrink, but not sure what to output the files as.

Looking for efficiency (fast way) as well as disk space efficiency.

Thanks