Back Up! - A Guide to Burning CD's
By: Jamie Rousselle

It's probably happened to you or someone you know before and if it hasn't, one day it will. It can start with a small, strange noise coming from your hard drive or happen in a flash with your computer just crashing. One day, you will lose everything on your computer and it may be un-recoverable.

A few months ago, my new laptop, only 6 months old, began making a strange clicking noise. Slowly, more and more things started to happen. Programs developed strange little glitches, the fan started running really loudly and finally, my CD burner stopped working. By the time I realized I needed to start backing things up because my hard drive was going bad, it was too late. I had hundreds of photos, scrapbook elements, kits I had made and digital layouts stored on my hard drive and I had no back-up copies. I was determined not to lose these things so I painstakingly transferred everything - 256 mb at a time with a small external jump drive, to another computer. I managed to save almost everything before I had to change the hard drive, but I learned a very important lesson from all this. The first thing I did was to create back-up CD's of everything that I never wanted to lose.

Burning CD's is a very simple project, even for the most technically-challenged individual out there. The first step is to make sure your CD-ROM drive is actually capable of burning CD's. Sometimes there will be a label that will say something like "rewrittable" or CD-RW, something similar to that. If you don't see a label, check to see if your computer came with burning software. Some of the popular titles that typically come with new computers are Roxio Easy CD Creator or Nero Burning ROM. Your program may be a variation of one of these two, but they basically all work the same. If you know how to drag and drop files between folders, you'll be able to create a back-up CD.

When burning CD's, there's usually a few options for the type of CD you can create. For example, if you chose to burn a music CD, when browsing files, you will only be able to add MP3's to your "project." For backing up your scrapbooking supplies and photos, you'll want to create a "data" CD. This will allow you to put all types of files on one CD.

Once you locate your CD burning software and open it, it may have a built in wizard which can help you easily create a CD. Both programs I am familiar with - Roxio and Nero - each have a wizard that makes CD burning very simple. If you don't' have a wizard, don't worry - I'll take you through step by step.

Depending on your program, it should open up looking similar to a Windows folder with little files in different locations. One "window" should have all the folders that are on your computer. You may have to go in and manually find the folder you are trying to back up. Once you find the folder, all you do is click on the files you want to put on a CD, drag them to the empty space that represents your blank CD and drop them there. You can drag whole folders or you can drag individual files. There should be some type of graph that indicates how full the CD is. Just keep an eye on the bar to see when you can't fit any more on the CD.

Once you have your CD full of all the files, there should be one, obvious button to press to actually "burn" the CD. It may be a round red button or a little flame or some other type of graphic. Most of the time you can place your mouse above the different buttons and it will tell you what they are for. Just do this until you find the "burn" option.

When clicked on, the program may prompt you to insert a CD or may prompt you to chose other options. Generally, you can just leave all the options where they are. They will default to the most commonly used options. Insert a blank CD into your CD drive and continue the burning process. When the CD is complete, sometimes it will eject automatically, but you should get some kind of message stating that its complete.

That's all there is to it! Make sure to label your CD's as soon as you take them out of the computer. I like to use permanent markers to label mine with a general title such as "DSP Christmas Kits" and the date. I also have a list typed up in Word that details everything that I have on each CD. You can also print up your own labels or use simple address labels.

The first time you sit down to back up all of your files, it will probably take quite a while. Once you do it the first time, however, you can generally back up once a month or so after that, and you'll only have to back up the new information. Although its a long process, you'll definitely be thankful that you did it the next time you start to hear a strange noise coming from your computer.