I don't recall if the patched game installs any copy protection drivers (don't think so). When I got a DVD-RW drive a few years ago I tested it by zipping the DD folder and burning it to DVD-R (with a few other things tossed in). Now if I need to uninstall the game to free up space, or whatever, I can reinstall simply by unzipping it.
In any case, there have not been any problems reported with the copy protection used in DD, so if anything was installed it shouldn't hurt to leave it until you finish the game and uninstall DD.
