How to Use Roxio to Back Up a Computer

Roxio's Easy Media Creator not only lets you burn compact discs of your favorite music, but you also can create data discs in CD-R (writeable-once), CD-RW (read/write–writeable multiple times) or DVD formats. Any of these formats will let you save your important files with Roxio's Direct CD function; each has its advantages and disadvantages. Read on to learn how to use Roxio to back up a computer.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Formatting the Disc

1. Insert a blank disc into the recording drive. Be sure that the drive supports the kind of disc you wish to record to; DVD-recording drives usually can burn compact discs, but CD-recording drives cannot burn DVDs.
2. Select the drive into which you inserted the disc from the "Select CD" drop-down list box.
3. Click "Format CD" to display the Format dialog box.
4. Type a name in the "Label" field to identify your disc. The label may consist of up to 11 characters, but may not include a forward slash, backward slash, colon, semicolon, asterisk, question mark, double quote, less-than sign, greater-than sign, pipe (vertical line), plus sign, equal sign, period, comma or brackets.
5. Select "Enable Compression" if you wish to compress the data to take up less space on the disc. To read a compressed disc, the computer must have either Direct CD or the UDF Reader installed. The UDF Reader is automatically written to a compressed disc; you will be prompted to install it if the computer does not have it.
6. Choose the format type you want to use. To format a blank CD-RW, you may choose "Fast Format," which lets you write to the disc during formatting, or "Full Format," which prevents you from writing to the disc before formatting is complete. Not all drives support Fast Format. To reformat a previously formatted CD-RW, you may choose "Full Format," which erases the previous data, or Quick Format, which renders the previous data inaccessible. To format a blank DVD-RW or DVD+RW disc, you must use the "Full Format" option, while to reformat a previously formatted disc, you may use either "Full Format" or "Quick Format." No formatting options are available for a CD-R disc.
7. Begin the formatting process by clicking "Start Format." A progress bar will appear to monitor how far along the process is. Click "OK" when the CD Ready dialog box appears.

Copying the Data

8. Copy the data from the hard drive to the disc by dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer, using the "Save As" command from a program and specifying the drive letter of the disc drive, right-clicking and using the "Send To" option from the pop-up menu, or using MS-DOS commands from a DOS window.
9. Eject the disc. If you copied to a CD-R disc, choose one of the formatting options: "Leave As Is" (cannot be read by non-recording drives), "Close to UDF" (can be read by any computer with a UDF Reader) or "Close to Read on Any Computer." CD-RW discs may be read only by drives with that recording capability. DVD discs can be read only in DVD drives that support their format.
10. Label the disc using an indelible soft-point felt-tip pen. Do not use a sharp pointed or ball-point pen to label the disc, as it will bend the disc surface and deform the tracks on the bottom side.

Tips & Warnings

• Use the "Options" dialog to customize Direct CD to your preferences. You can choose whether or not to display messages telling you when the disc is ready or has been ejected, as well as make certain formatting options automatic if you regularly format only one kind of disc.
• Be sure to set the recording speed during formatting to no greater than the disc is capable of to avoid writing errors. Sometimes, you may wish to record at a slower speed than the disc is capable of to guarantee the disc will be formatted correctly.
• Consult the user's guide or online help for information about adding more data to the disc later.
• Many disc drives have the capability to read and write both CDs and DVDs; others can only read DVDs but can read and write CDs. Many laptop disc drives are of this nature.

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