W IN DO W S X P
B AC K ING U P D AT A T O C D
EX A MP L E Q U E ST IO N S:
Why should I backup my files?
Backing up your files is very important. In case a crucial windows file gets corrupted and
windows cannot load up successfully, it is good to have a copy of your important files on
a CD or some other type of media.
- Using Windows XP to burn CDs
o Step 1: Insert a blank CD into your CD drive. (Note: To determine if your CD
drive is in fact capable of writing to a CD, simply look on the front of the CD tray
where the eject button is located. If you see that it says “Compact Disc
Rewriteable” then you will be able write files to CD.)
o Step 2: Wait for the windows autorun feature to tell you a blank CD has been
inserted. The box will appear in the middle of the screen after a few moments.
The box will say “Windows can perform the same action each time you insert a
disk or connect a device with this kind of file” and then you should see “Blank
CD” (if this does not say “Blank CD”, and instead says something else, your CD
may not be blank)
o Step 3: Next you will see “What do you want Windows to do?”. The first option
that you should see is “Open writable CD folder”. Select this option by clicking on
it once with the left mouse button, and then click [OK] (Note: if you wish to have
Windows open a writable folder each time you insert a blank CD automatically,
check the box just above the [OK] button that reads “Always do the selected
action.”) If the windows autorun feature does not seem to work for you, simply
right click on the folder, select “Send To” and then select “CD-RW Drive”
o Step 4: After having selected the “Open a writeable folder” option, the box will go
away and you will notice a new window appears. The top of this window, in the
title bar, should read “CD Drive”, and the contents of the folder should be empty.
(Note: The easiest thing to do here, is to create a new folder on your desktop
(you can do this by right clicking on your desktop and selecting “New” and then
“Folder”) and compile everything that you want to burn inside it, by simply
dragging and dropping into the folder, the files you wish to write to the CD. This
makes it easier because you can right click on the folder on your desktop where
everything is compiled and select “Properties”. On the dialogue box that then
comes up you will see a line with the size of that entire folder, for example, it may
read “Size: 64.2 MB (67,394,622 bytes)”. This should be rounded up to about 65
megabytes just to be safe. When burning a CD you want to be sure to keep the
size just under the total size of the blank CD. Check on the blank CD or on the
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BACKING UP DATA TO CD (USING WINDOWS XP) CONT.
packaging to see what size your blank CD is. Most are 650 MB or 700 MB. So
when compiling the data you want to burn in the folder you create on your
desktop, periodically right click on the folder and select “Properties” to check the
size to ensure you haven‟t gone over the available size on the CD.)
o Step 5: Once you have everything compiled in the folder you created on your
desktop, be sure to right click on it and select “Properties” and check to ensure
the size is less than 650 MB or less than 700 MB depending on the capacity of
the CD you are planning to write to. Once this is checked, you can simply drag
the contents of the created folder on your desktop into the “CD Drive” folder that
we opened from Step 3. Once everything copies to the “CD Drive” folder you will
notice on the left hand side of the window the “CD Writing Tasks” box, which
contains the option to “Write these files to CD”. If you have made sure that the
size of the data will fit on your CD click on “Write these files to CD”
o Step 6: After you click “Write these files to CD” the CD Writing Wizard will
appear. You will see the option to enter a “CD Name:” if you wish. For example,
Data CD 1. After you name the CD, click [Next]. The CD Writing Wizard will then
ask if you want to burn an Audio CD if the contained data has any MP3 files. The
question asked is “Which format do you want to use?” Here we want to check the
box that reads “Make a data CD (for computers and some CD Players)”. You will
always want to burn a data CD unless you know you want to burn an audio CD to
play in a CD player. After checking the box, click [Next]. The next question is “Do
you want to create a HighMAT-compatible CD?” We want to leave this option
alone, so just simply click “Next”.
o Step 7: After clicking next, the data will be burned to the CD. When the burn
process is completed, the CD writing wizard should say “You have successfully
written your files to the CD. If you wish to burn the exact same files to another
CD, check the box „Yes, write these files to another CD‟” and hit [Next].
Otherwise simply click finish and you are done.
o Step 8: Now that the writing process is complete, the temporary files will be
deleted, and you can close the “CD Drive” window. (Note: if you created a folder
on your desktop to compile your files in, you may delete it now, you can do this
by right clicking on the folder and selecting “Delete”)
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