Introduction

There are many commercial CD/DVD writer programs that you can use which offer a lot of features for creating data and audio CDs and DVDs. This tutorial uses a simple free program called DeepBurner Free.

CD/DVD writer drives are able to "burn" discs so that you can create your own data, music or video discs, especially useful for backing up large amounts of data.

There are two main categories of writeable discs you can buy: Recordable discs such as CD-R or DVD-R or DVD+R are discs that can only be written once, whereas Re-Writeable discs such as CD-RW or DVD-RW or DVD+RW can be written over many times.

Install DeepBurner

Download the DeepBurner Free program from www.deepburner.com.

Double-click the file you downloaded to run the install program. During setup, use the Next button to move through the options screens.

Select your language and agree to the License Agreement. Leave the destination folder as it is, and select the Full setup.

Leave the program group as DeepBurner, and wait for the program to install. If you want to, you can read the Read Me file which contains some information about the program. When ready, click Finish.

Getting Started

Insert the recordable or re-writeable CD or DVD you want to burn into your drive.

The program can be started by double-clicking the DeepBurner desktop shortcut, or by clicking on the Start menu then All Programs > DeepBurner > DeepBurner.

First you will need to choose whether you want to burn a Data CD/DVD or an Audio CD.

A Data disc can contain any kind of file and is useful for storing and backing up your PC files. An audio CD is like an album you buy from a shop; it stores music files as audio tracks and can be played in a CD player or on your PC.

Data Disc

To burn a disc of data files, select Create data CD/DVD and click Next.

The New Project window will appear and you will be given the option of creating a multisession disc. If you choose this option, it means you can burn more files to the same disc at another time, if not you will have to start from the beginning and burn all the files again.

Now on your desktop, double-click the My Documents icon or open a new window, and locate the files you want to burn.

Click and drag the files from the window into the DeepBurner box below where it says Name, Size and Description.

You can continue adding the files you want to burn to this list, but keep an eye on the bar below which shows how much space your files will use up on the disc. An average CD allows a total of around 650MB - 700MB and an average DVD is around 4.7GB.

When you are finished, click the Burn disc icon from the menu on the left, then click the Burn button to begin writing your files to the CD/DVD.

To ensure burning is successful, it is best not to run other programs and to leave your PC alone until it has finished.

Time Remaining shows how long before the burning is finished. When it is done, the disc will be ejected.

When the message 'Burn completed successfully. Please insert next disc' appears, click Cancel and then close DeepBurner. Click No if asked to Save Changes.

Audio Disc

If you want to burn a CD-R disc of music tracks, select Audio CD as Project Type.

Click and drag song files such as MP3s into the box in DeepBurner, as with data files.

With Audio CDs you can rearrange the files into the order you want them to play on the CD. Click to select a particular track and use the arrow buttons above to move the file up or down the list.

When finished, click the Burn Disk icon and click the Burn button.

DeepBurner will now convert your song files into audio tracks and then start writing them to the CD.

Erase Re-Writeable Disc

On the Burn disc window, the Erase button allows you to wipe a RW disc so it is blank ready for burning.

Use Quick erase unless you have previously stored private data on the disc, in which case it may be better to use Full erase to completely remove any trace of the previous data.