How to Burn Without Getting Singed

What You'll Need to Start the Burning Process

PC with recordable CD drive. You have a number of options. The drive can be a CD-R/RW, or a DVD-ROM and CD-RW combo. You can also use an older CD-R drive. Furthermore, you can use a DVD-RW or DVD+RW drive, which support recordable CD media.

Recordable CD media (discs): CD-R or CD-RW format.

CD burning software: Most recordable CD drives come with the software you need to burn a CD.

On the following pages, you'll find instructions for Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum--one of the most commonly used software packages in this category. I've also included specific steps for Ahead Software's Nero 5 Burning ROM 5.5, another popular program.

How to Burn Data Onto a CD

If you don't back up your data, you should. It's easy and can save you a lot of pain later if your PC eats a file or if you accidentally drop your hard drive out the window. Because CD-Rs and CD-RWs hold only a maximum 700MB of data, I'd recommend putting your documents on one CD, and other kinds of things, say your e-mail archives, on another. You shouldn't need to back up your various applications, because you should have the original CD-ROMs for those already. These directions apply for CD-R discs and may differ slightly for CD-RW discs.

Before you begin, quit all other applications. The burning process is processor-intensive, particularly when you write at fast speeds. For the best results, reboot your PC before your CD-burning session, and make sure all but your essential apps are closed. Leave your antivirus protection loaded, but exit RealPlayer, for example. You should get more reliable (and faster) burns.

In the following steps, I instruct you to create an image file, which requires more steps but will help you avoid creating coasters (see definition on the previous page). However, creating an image file isn't always necessary: If you have a really fast PC, with a 1-GHz processor and 256MB of memory, for example, you could skip the image-creation step and burn directly to the disc.

If you have a slower computer with less than 128MB of memory, you may also want to burn at a slower speed, such as 4X--especially if you're copying directly from a disc in a CD-ROM drive. It will take longer, but the slower speed makes it less likely that you'll ruin a disc.