How do I put files on a CD?

CDs hold a great deal more information (700MB) than your school-issued thumb drive (64MB), and DVDs hold more still (a whopping 4.7GB!). This is a nice option for backing up the entire contents of your computer. To do this, you'll have to have a burner in your computer. A CD burner can only burn (write information to) CDs, while a DVD burner can burn both. You can either use your CD writing program of choice (such as Nero, Roxio, or Toast), or you can use the CD burning capabilities of your operating system.

PC (Windows XP) | Macintosh (OS X)

Using Windows to burn a CD

If you're just looking to transfer data files, such as text documents, pictures, or music in a non-playable format, Windows has a simple and very fast way of burning CDs. Pop a blank CD into your burner.

Occasionally you'll get this window. If you don't, open up My Computer and click on the appropriate drive. You'll get a window labeled something like "CD Drive (F:)" that has no files in it. Now open up My Computer again and navigate to where you have the files you're trying to burn. For this example, we're using pictures from a recent trip to Disneyland. Click and drag the appropriate files to the first window. If you decide you don't want to put something on your CD, delete it. This won't delete the file from your hard drive, since the files in the CD window are only temporary copies until you've burned them.

Before you burn the CD, you'll want to check the total size of your files. If it's not a rewritable CD (one that you can add content to later), you'll want to get the most use out of it, and the CD won't burn properly if you've got too much stuff. To check on the size, highlight all the files together and right-click. A little menu should pop up; click Properties.

This will tell you the total size of your files. It's "Size on disk" you're worried about; here that size is 5.80MB. Remember, a CD can hold up to 700MB, and we have several pretty much uncompressed pictures here taking up less than ten percent of that, so you can save quite a lot of pictures to CD. Click Ok when you're done here.

Once you're satisfied with what you've got, click Write these files to CD on the left side of the window. The friendly CD writing wizard will pop up. Pick a descriptive name for your CD, so you can easily tell what's on it whan you stick it in your computer. Click Next when you're ready.

You'll get a green status bar as the CD writes. When it's done, it will eject itself. If you're going to make multiple copies of this CD, check the box next to Yes, write these files to another CD. If not, just click Finish. Grab your nearest marker and label the CD so you don't forget what it is.

Using Mac OS X to burn a CD

Simply insert a blank CD into your CD drive, and the following dialog should appear.

Selecting the option to open Finder will allow you to add files to the CD to burn. You should add full copies of the files - do not just create aliases, or that is all that will be burned! You will know if you have added aliases because they will have small black arrow overlays on the bottom of the icon. You can also check the size of the content on the CD in the bottom of the finder window to make sure it matches up.

Once you have added the files, click on the radioactive icon in the left pane next to the CD name, and a dialog will appear to give you more options for burning your CD.

You can name your CD, and this will be the volume name. You can also select a speed to burn your CD at. Higher speeds burn faster, but are more likely to cause errors when burning. If you find that many of your CDs don't work properly, try reducing the burning speed in the future.