Is it possible to load everything on my hard drive and be able to play without having the game disc in the drive?
I want to avoid scratching the disc when inserting/removing from the drive.

The EULA allows a copy of the Oblivion disk for archival purposes. I've done it with Nero, and it plays. With MW, you can pull the disk after the game starts, but I've never tried that with OB.

I guess I could copy the disc to preserve the original, but I would rather not have to use the disc at all.
With my 600 gig drive I have lots of room to load the entire contents of the game disc.

You already have loaded the entire contents of the disc onto your drive when you installed the game. The disc check exists strictly for DRM purposes. No files are actually kept on the disc after installation save the keys the SecuROM checks for.

Damn DRM :swear:
Arcanum has a patch that lets you play without the disc

*SNIP*