How -to : Burn a CD or DVD

No don't throw them in the fireplace or put them in the microwave! It's only a figure of speech(sort of). Ok that much aside what I'd like to show is how someone may make a copy or save something on a CD or DVD. Perhaps you have one and have no clue on how to use it. I hope to give a basic guide on how to burn a CD or DVD and what's required to so. So here we go....

What do I need?

1. CD Writer or DVD writer
2. A CD or DVD writer software
3. Blank media(either CD or DVD)

Most PC's today are sold today with at least CD writer or DVD writer already installed. Although XP and presumably Vista comes with this capability I'll be using my burning software that came with my burner by Nero. This one in particular is Nero Express Essentials 7.For blank media you can either choose a CD-R or CD-RW(rewritable) or DVD-R, DVD-RW etc. Now that we assembled our necessary items here we go....

Burn Baby,Burn!



Step 1. Open your software - Many times your software will either give you and option of doing it manually or by what is called a "wizard" which kind of speeds you through the process. Nero gives us the choices of copying either data, audio, music/video, and etc. For the demo we are choosing data CD.








Step 2. Choosing items to copy - Here Nero gives us a window to insert our data we wish to copy. It even gives us a bar at the bottom to tell us how much we can fill the CD. A CD can hold roughly 700mb(Megabytes). A DVD holds roughly 4.7 GB(Gigabytes). To add files to out list we first click the "Add" button on the right hand side which will open another window. Here we can pick and choose what we'd like to copy. You can either select an item and click "add" or drag'n'drop it over to the window. To drag it over to the window you just click and hold onto an item and drag it over to where you want it and let go of the button.


Step 3. Final Settings - When we've filled our disc up we go onto the next step. Click "Next" and we go to the final settings page. Here we get to choose the drive we wish to use. If you only have one drive you don't have to worry as your CD/DVD Writer will be chosen as default. If you have more than one drive you may have to set it to the correct one. Here we can also name your disc also and choose how many copies we wish to make. Here we have an option to "Verify Data after burning" This basicly double checks the copy after it's burned. This I believe checks for errors. I skip this a lot because it does add some time to the process but if your in no hurry it can't hurt anything. Also has "Allow files to be added later(multisession)". I've never actually tried this but apparently this gives you the choice of adding more files at a later date should you have room on the disc.


Step 4. Burn the disc - When we are happy with our choices we select the "Burn" button on the right hand corner. If your disc isn't already in place usually your disc player will open and you'll be prompted to insert blank disc. Now it will start the actual copying process. Here we have a progress bar and a window above explain what's happening. This is a good time to take a coffee or bathroom break. This process can take several minutes depending on your machine capabilities,how much data involved or CD vs. DVD. On my machine it takes about five to six minutes to burn a full CD and a DVD perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. When it's finished usually the disc will eject automatically when done.




No you won't need oven mitts to take out your disc. Take your disc out and a good idea is to label it as soon as possible before you put it down it gets mixed up with others. A good tip might be to label it before hand. Another tip is to always handle your disc by the edge's as not to scratch them up. Well I hope you learned something today as we went over what we needed to burn a CD/DVD and how to do a basic disc copy. Thank you for actually reading this far down. I appreciate your time and hope you'll come back for more. Have a great day!