Copy CD to DVD
CDs are beginning to show their age. With a storage capacity comparable to the smallest of USB flash drives (which can be bought for under $10), they're quickly becoming used primarily for audio CDs. Nevertheless, you may have dozens of data CDs with hundreds of files that you made as backups several years ago. You might have video files split up among several different CDs that you want to combine. Learning how to copy CD to DVD can allow you to combine all of your backups, files, songs or videos onto just a few discs, and instead of having to search through dozens of different CDs to find that 1 file you need you can just use 1 or 2 DVDs.
Steps
- Copy your files from your CD onto your computer. You can do this by putting your CD in your disc drive, opening up "My Computer," selecting your disc drive and dragging everything from your CD into a folder on your desktop (or another preferred location). Repeat this with all of your CDs that you want to replace with DVDs.
- Make sure that you organize your files well by perhaps making a different folder for each CD. This will make it easier to avoid burning repeated material to your DVD.
- If you want to backup a game install disc or audio files, you may need to rip the CD to your hard drive. Often it's not enough to simply copy the files (because the disc may be copy protected). To do this, download a CD ripping program (like CloneDVD or any number of free ones). If you have an audio CD any media program can rip the files to your computer. To backup a game you need to rip an image to your computer, usually in the form of an .iso file. An .iso file is simply an image of the CD and can be mounted on a virtual CD drive or copied to another disc to make an exact clone of the original.
- Put a blank DVD into your DVD-writer. Make sure that you have the correct type of DVD (DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R or DVD-RW) because not all DVD writers will write to all DVDs.
- Open up your DVD burning software (like Nero, Roxio, Alcohol, or any other) and select "Burn New CD" (or DVD, they're the same). A window will come up directing you to select what type of DVD you want to burn. Unless you're backing up movies, select "data." In the next window you will need to select what files you want to put on it. After you have finished selecting your files it will tell you if you've selected too many and you may need to redo this step.
- Click "Burn CD/DVD."
Tips
- Typical CDs hold about 700 megabytes. A typical DVD holds 4.7 gigabytes (roughly 7 times the space of a CD).
- Most modern CD or DVD burning software allows you to burn to either. You probably don't need to search for exclusively "DVD burning" software.
Things You'll Need
- DVD writing drive
- CD/DVD burning software
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