In Windows operating systems, starting with the 7th version, it became possible to burn files to CDs without the help of third-party programs such as Nero. Now it's possible to make it inline Windows tools. Exactly how we will talk in this article.
Preparing files for recording
First you need to insert the disc into the DVD drive. Windows should define the given disk as blank, or rewritable.
Start burning a disc
In the window that appears, you need to click "Burn files to disk", after which you will be prompted to select the option to use the disk after burning. You can also specify a disk name. Select the required option and click "Next".
Selecting the Type of Recordable Disc
Then a window will open in which you need to drag the files that you want to burn to this disk. You can also just copy and paste them here.
Moving files to disk
After adding files to write about this, a corresponding message will appear with the text "There are files waiting to be written to disk."
Writing or deleting prepared files
Now it remains only to write these files. To do this, at the top left, click the "Burn to CD" button.
The second way to write prepared files
The same operation is available by right-clicking the DVD drive icon in the "My Computer" local drive window and selecting "Burn to disc" in the window that opens.
Specifying Recording Options
A final window will appear before recording, where you can change the name of the disk, as well as specify the recording speed.
How to delete files waiting to be written to disk?
If you suddenly change your mind about writing the prepared files to disk and you are periodically worried about the message about these files, then in order to remove it, you need to delete the files for recording.
To do this, go to the disk through the drive icon in the local disk window "My Computer" and delete files marked "Files prepared for writing to disk" with the "Delete" button.
Technological progress is pushing laser CDs out of circulation, just as it happened with floppy disks earlier. DVDs are emergency bootable media. All sorts of databases are recorded (and sold) on CDs to this day. They also store photo and video archives of users. But due to the decline in popularity, some users do not even know how to burn files from a computer to disk if they need, for example, to submit a thesis in this form.
There are several types of such disks, which have different sizes:
- CD-R(W) volume - 650-800 MB;
- mini-disk has a capacity of 110-230 MB;
- DVD-R(W) varies considerably, from 1.3 GB (MiniDisc) to 4.7 GB (Standard);
- double-sided DVD - over 9 GB;
- BD-R (W) - a Blu-Ray disc - boasts a volume of tens of gigabytes, it records movies in UltraHD formats (4k / 8k resolution).
Formats for transferring files to CDs
With the advent of Windows Vista, it became possible to dump files onto a disk, like on a flash drive - instead of the ISO / Mastered recording format, in which files were written and deleted in one session, a new generation of the CDFS file system was implemented - the UDF / LFS format (“live file system” ), which allows copying files arbitrarily and one by one, both on floppy disks, PC disks and external drives (including flash drives and memory cards). The "live file system" was later added to regular Windows XP SP3 fixes.
This gave a second life to rewritable discs - their only drawback is that the capacity of a disc in UDF format is 10-15% less compared to a disc recorded in the classic ISO format. Theoretically, it is even possible to defragment files on an LFS CD.
With a recordable disc (Recordable) this will not work: by first writing to it in LFS format and then deleting unnecessary files, you will spoil the part of the CD / DVD-R disk space occupied by previously recorded files. Use the Mastered format.
Burning a CD as a USB Flash Drive
The standard Windows toolkit is the familiar CD burning wizard built into Explorer. Third party applications are mainly Nero and Ashampoo software package, Roxio and Power2Go applications.
To burn files from a computer to a CD, you need:
- "Writing" CD / DVD / BD-ROM - on a regular one, you can only view the contents of already recorded discs;
- in fact, the disk itself, on which you will write the necessary files and folders.
Do the following:
1. Insert the desired disc into the appropriate CD drive. Windows will prompt you for further action, prompting you to choose one of the options: burn a music / video disc (for conventional players) or a data disc (for PC and special players).
2. Select the "Burn files to disc" option, in this case "Burn files to disc".
3. Select the already familiar option "Use disk as USB media" (if you have an RW CD). As noted earlier, for R-discs, it is better to choose the ISO format. Click "Next". The disk will be erased in LFS format.
Important! Operating systems MS-DOS, MacOS, Linux, Android x86 and many others have not yet "learned" how to work with LFS disks. At the moment, this is only the prerogative of Windows.
4. Open the newly formatted disk and copy the necessary files and folders using the "Copy" / "Paste" commands of the context menu.
5. To delete files from the disk, use the "Delete" command or the delete key on your keyboard.
Attention! The system folder "Recycle Bin" does not create a buffer on the CD for deleted files - they will be immediately erased from the disk itself and from the PC drive.
Burning a disc in the ISO file system
The CD Burner works in standard mode, familiar from the late 90s. To burn a disc in Mastered format, do the following:
1. Select the files and give the command: right-click - "Send" - "to CD". Writing files to a CD does not imply their immediate copying - first, a preliminary copy is made to the temporary system folder "CD", and the copies of the files are marked as "Files prepared for writing to an optical disc".
2. Wait for the OS to notify you to burn the files to the CD. The CD burning wizard will start, where you need to select the already familiar option to use "With a CD / DVD player".
3. Select the disc burning speed (Windows will not allow it to be exceeded if the CD manufacturing technology provides for a certain one indicated on the disc itself, for example, 1x-24x). Assign a name to the disk.
Attention! Attempts to exceed the recording technology class (instead of the specified speed of 16x, for example, run the disc at 24x) with the help of third-party applications are guaranteed to damage the disc - this can be guessed from the significant darkening of its mirror surface, which is not typical for recording at its standard speed. Also, the Windows wizard will report that the disk is unsuitable for further rewriting if its number of cycles is exceeded, for example, 150, there are critically deep scratches, or the metal layer on which the data is written is suddenly swollen - in this case, the write operation will be canceled.
4. Click the "Next" button. The burning wizard will proceed to transfer the files and folders to the CD. In this case, the drive control is blocked (in particular, the hardware eject button) for the duration of the recording - canceling the recording "halfway" is dangerous and often leads to irreversible damage to the disc.
5. When finished burning the disc, click the Finish button in the Windows Wizard.
Features of DVD and Blu-Ray Burning
DVDs are attractive because of the much higher amount of information that can be recorded on them - compared to CDs. Please note that:
- On a CD-RW drive, you will not write data to a DVD-R(W) disc - the bandwidth/resolution of a CD-RW laser head is not designed for the density at which data is written to DVD media. The same can be said about Blu-Ray drives. However, the DVD rewriter freely "writes" / reads CD media - thanks to the backward compatibility of data packaging technologies on CDs.
- You need to check if both DVD+/-RW formats are supported on your DVD burner. The "plus" DVD recording format provides for stopping the recording of a disc (and resuming it at any time) if the set of recorded files has not changed, which cannot be said about the "minus" one. This difference is absent for CD-media - the latter does not support stopping the recording of data, you must complete it if you do not want to lose a good, still working CD.
Important! Before you start recording, make sure that your PC with a DVD-RW recorder is connected to an uninterruptible power supply, or the battery is not dead on a laptop - a sudden power outage while burning a disc will damage the disc. The second case also applies to a Windows-based tablet to which a USB-DVD drive is connected, which, in turn, can also be powered separately.
How to Burn a Disc Image to CD/DVD Media
The first use of burning images to disk that comes to mind is, of course, burning (multi) bootable (installation) DVD media with one or more ISO images (assemblies, versions) of the Windows system.
In second place is the integrity of user archives with the original structure of (sub)folders, which are undesirable to change. A variation of this is the information on the computer (server) of the enterprise, which is many times greater than the value of the PC itself.
To burn an image file, do the following:
Attention! When it comes to burning a Windows image, a disk with drivers, archive media with your collection of applications, or your favorite games, it makes sense to use the “Check disk after burning” option: if errors are found, you should replace the disk or reduce the rewriting speed using third-party applications, for example, the same UltraISO program.
Despite the occasional mention of third-party applications for burning files from a PC to CDs, the standard Windows software tool covers the user's needs for burning any data to any CD. There shouldn't be any incidents, unless the disk itself is fairly "worn out".
In this lesson, we will learn how to write files and folders from a computer to an empty disk. We will also talk about what discs are, and how they differ from each other.
In the previous lessons, we learned how to copy files and folders. Using copying, you can write files to a computer, to a USB flash drive, rewrite from a phone or camera. But not on disk. If we try to write something to an empty disk in this way, it will still remain empty.
For proper recording of discs, you need to use special programs. The most famous of them is called Nero, but, unfortunately, it is paid. There are also free options- CDBurnerXP, BurnAware and others. They are no worse, but you need to find such a program on the Internet, download it to your computer, then install it correctly and learn how to use it.
All these gestures make sense if the user needs to write information to disks frequently. But there is another, simpler way - without any programs.
It's good because it's versatile. That is, in this way you can write files and folders with files to an empty disk without additional programs and settings, on almost any computer.
Among the shortcomings, it should be noted that on computers with Windows XP, this method can only be written to a CD - it is impossible to burn to DVD.
What are discs
Discs come in CDs and DVDs. Many people think that only movies are recorded on DVD, and everything else is on CD - music, documents, photos. Actually, it is not. They differ only in size.
A DVD contains four or even eight times more information than a CD. That is, if one film is placed on a CD, and even then it is not in very good quality, then four films and even more can be recorded on a DVD disc. Music, photos, documents, and other files and folders can be burned to either CD or DVD.
There are also R and RW discs. The difference between them is that information can be written to R only once, while RW can be written many times. Recorded, used, and then erased and recorded something else.
Well, and, to everything else, disks can be conditionally divided into "full" and "empty". That is, those on which something is already recorded (movies, music, etc.) and those on which there is nothing.
Burning discs
First you need to know which Windows version installed on the computer. To do this, open "Start", right-click on the inscription "Computer" (My Computer) and in the list that opens, click on the item "Properties".
A window will open in which it will be written which system is installed.
Burning discs in Windows XP
Select the files and folders you want to burn to a blank CD:
Open the drive on your computer. To do this, open "My Computer":
Right-click on an empty space and click on Paste.
The files and folders you copied will be pasted onto the disc. But that doesn't mean they signed up for it. To do this, you need to right-click on an empty space and select "Burn files to CD" from the list.
The CD Burner window will open. You can type a name for the disc in the CD Name field, but this is optional. Click the "Next" button and wait.
When the disc is written (the green bar fills up and disappears), a new window will open in which you need to click the "Finish" button.
Even if such a window does not appear, the disc is still written.
Most likely, he will move out of the computer. Thus, the computer reports that the recording was successful, and the disc can already be used.
How to clean up a disk in Windows XP
You can only clean a disk if it is reusable. To do this, it must be written RW. If the letter R is written on the disk, then it cannot be erased from it, it is disposable.
Insert the RW disk into the drive.
Open it on your computer. To do this, open "My Computer":
And open the CD / DVD drive in it:
Then right-click on an empty space (on a white field) and select "Erase this CD-RW" from the list.
A new window will open. Click on the "Next" button and wait until all information is erased. When this happens, a Done button will appear. Click on it. Everything, the disk is clean and you can write something to it again.
Burning Windows 7 discs
Select the files and folders you want to burn to disk:
Copy them, that is, right-click on any of the selected files (folders) and in the list that appears, click on the "Copy" item.
Insert a blank disc into the drive.
Open "Computer" (Start - Computer).
Open the CD/DVD drive. To do this, double-click on it with the left mouse button.
A small window will appear. You need to select the type of disc you are going to burn. Two types are offered - "Like USB flash drive" and "With CD/DVD player".
The first option is more convenient and modern: you will get a disk that is very similar to a USB flash drive - you can write files and folders by ordinary copying, and erase from it by simple deletion. But such discs may not open on some computers.
The second option - "With a CD / DVD player" - is classic, that is, the same as in Windows XP. It is suitable if you want to record music and plan to listen to it not only on a computer, but also on players (for example, in a car). This option is less convenient, but more reliable - a disc recorded in this mode will open on any computer.
Click on the type that suits you. Then click on the "Next" button.
If you have chosen Like a USB flash drive, you will be warned that you will have to wait while the disc is ready to be burned. By the way, sometimes you have to wait a long time - more than ten minutes. Click the "Yes" button.
When everything is ready, the window will disappear and a new small window will appear, in which the computer will "offer" to open a folder to view files.
But even if such a window does not appear, it's okay, just open "Computer" again and open the "CD / DVD drive".
An empty folder will open. Right-click on an empty space and click on "Paste".
After some time, the previously copied files and folders will be added. That's it, the disc burning was successful!
If you have chosen the type With CD/DVD player, a blank disc will open. Right-click on an empty space and click on Paste.
The files and folders you copied will be pasted onto the disc. But this does not mean that they have already signed up for it. In order for this to happen, you need to right-click on an empty space and select "Burn to disk" from the list.
A new window will appear. You can type a name for the disc in it, but this is optional. Click "Next".
Now we have to wait. When the disc is written (the green bar fills up and disappears), a new window will open in which you need to click the "Finish" button.
But even if such a window does not appear, the disc is still recorded.
It will most likely pop up on its own. Thus, the computer "tells" us that the recording was successful, and the disk can already be used.
How to erase a Windows 7 drive
We can erase from a disk only if it is reusable and is called RW. If the letter R is written on it, then the disk is disposable and cannot be erased from it.
Insert the disc into the drive and open it on your computer (Start - Computer - CD / DVD drive).
Try deleting the file or folder. To do this, right-click on the file (folder). A list will open. See if there is a "Delete" item in it. If there is, then delete the information through this item.
And if there is no such inscription, then right-click on an empty space (white field) and select "Erase disk" (or an item with a similar name) from the list.
In this lesson, we will learn how to burn files and folders from a computer to a blank CD. We will also talk about what discs are, and how they differ from each other.
In the previous lessons, we learned how to copy files and folders. Using copying, you can write files to a computer, to a USB flash drive, to a floppy disk, but not to a disk. If we try to write files or folders to an empty disk in this way, it will still remain empty.
In order to write to blank disk any information (music, photo, movie), it is better to use a special program for burning discs. The most popular recording software is Nero. Check if there is such a program on your computer. To do this, click on the "Start" button and point to "All Programs" (or "Programs"). A list will appear. See if there is an item "Nero" in this list.
If you have such an item, it means that you are a happy owner of the Nero program and can use this program to burn information on any discs - both CD and DVD. You can learn how to do this in the lesson "Nero Express, Burning DVDs".
And in this lesson we will learn how to write to discs in a different way - without any burning programs. This method is good because it is universal. That is, in this way you can write information to an empty disk without additional programs and settings, on almost any computer. But, alas, this method has one serious drawback - on some computers, or rather on computers with Windows XP, this method can only be written to a CD. This means that you most likely will not be able to burn anything to a DVD using these instructions.
In order to learn how to burn to both CD and DVD discs, a special disc burning program (Nero or similar) must be installed. There are two lessons on this topic on the Neumeka.ru website - "Nero Express, burning DVD discs" and "Free disc burning program" (for those who do not have Nero).
What are discs
Discs are CD And DVD. Many people think that only movies are recorded on DVD discs, and everything else is recorded on CD - music, documents, photos. Actually, it is not. CDs and DVDs differ only in size.
A DVD contains four or even eight times more information than a CD. That is, if one film is placed on a CD, and even then it is not in very good quality, then four films and even more can be recorded on a DVD disc. Music, photos, documents, and other files and folders can be burned to either CD or DVD.
There are also discs R And RW. The difference between them is that information can be written to R only once. And you can write to RW disk many times. Recorded, used, and then erased and recorded something else.
Well, and, to everything else, disks can be conditionally divided into "full" and "empty". That is, those on which something is already recorded (movies, music, etc.) and those on which there is nothing.
How to burn to disc
There are several ways to write to disk. In this article, we will look at the easiest and most versatile way.
But first you need to find out which version of Windows is installed on your computer. To do this, open "Start", right-click on the inscription "My Computer" (Computer) and in the list that opens, click on the item "Properties".
A window will open in which it will be written which operating system is installed on the computer.
Instruction
Select the files and folders you want to burn to a blank CD:
Right-click on an empty space and click on Paste.
The files and folders you copied will be pasted onto the disc. But this does not mean that they have already been written to disk. In order to write these files and folders to an empty disk, you need to right-click on an empty space and select the item from the list .
A window will open "CD Burner". You can type a name for the disc in the CD Name field, but this is optional. Click the button "Further" and wait.
When the disc is written (the green bar will fill up and disappear), a new window will open in which you need to press the button "Ready".
Even if such a window does not appear, the disc is still written.
Most likely, the burned disc will pop out of the computer by itself. Thus, the computer "tells" us that the recording was successful, and the disk can already be used.
How to erase a disk
Let me remind you that we can erase from a disk only if it is reusable. Reusable discs are called RW. If the disk says that it is R (which means one-time), then we cannot erase it from it. Let me also remind you that in this way we can only erase a CD.
How to clean a CD (Windows XP)
Instruction
Insert a disc into the drive.
Open the drive on your computer. To do this, open "My Computer":
And open the CD / DVD drive in it:
Then right-click on an empty space (on a white field) and select "Erase this CD-RW" from the list.
A new window will open. Click on the "Next" button. Wait until all information from the disk is erased. When this happens, a Done button will appear. Click on it. That's it, the disk is clean, and you can write something to it again.
Burning discs Windows 7 (Vista)
Instruction
If you do not know how to select and copy, study the lesson "Copying files and folders". These skills will also come in handy when writing to disk.
This guide is for Windows 7. If your Windows computer Vista, there may be some differences. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that computers with Windows 7 and Windows Vista "can" write information both to CD and DVD.
Select the files and folders you want to write to an empty drive:
Copy them, that is, right-click on any of the selected files (folders) and in the list that appears, click on the "Copy" item.
Insert a blank disc into the drive.
Open "Computer" (Start - Computer).
Open the CD/DVD drive. To do this, double-click on it with the left mouse button.
A small window will appear. You need to select the type of disc you are going to burn. There are two types of disc available - "Like USB flash drive" and "With CD/DVD player".
The first option is more convenient and modern: you will get a disk that is very similar to a USB flash drive - you can write files and folders by ordinary copying, and erase from the disk by simple deletion. But such discs may not open on some computers.
The second option - "With a CD / DVD player" - is classic, that is, the same as in Windows XP. It is suitable if you want to burn music to a disc that you plan to listen to not only on a computer, but also on players (for example, on a music center or in a car). This option is less convenient, but more reliable - a disc recorded in this mode will open on any computer.
Click on the disc type that suits you. Then click on the "Next" button.
If you have chosen the type Like a USB flash drive, you will be warned that you will have to wait while the disc is ready to be burned. By the way, sometimes you have to wait a long time - more than ten minutes. Click the "Yes" button.
Today, optical discs are gradually fading into the background, giving way to flash cards and the Internet. But, despite this, they still enjoy a certain popularity and lie on the shelves of many users. However, very few users know all the nuances of writing data to disk. Especially when you consider that the procedure here directly depends on the type of data being written. In this article, we will talk about all the ways to burn files from a computer to a disk.
As you may have noticed, there is more than one type of optical disc. Moreover, their names are not just a set of symbols, but quite specific designations.
The very first type of disc that you can find on store shelves is CD. These discs can store data from 120 to 800 megabytes and come in three types: ROM, R and RW. The contents of CD-ROM discs are written at the factories and you cannot interact with the data stored on them in any way. On CD-R discs, the user himself writes everything he needs, but only once, such discs cannot be rewritten. Well CD-RW discs You can overwrite as many times as you need.
Next come the DVDs. They already have quite a few different types. For starters, DVD discs also come in ROM, R, and RW types (which means the same as for CDs). There are also two generations of DVD discs, which can be distinguished by the “+” and “-” signs in the title. Discs with a “+” in their name (such as DVD+R) are better because they are compatible with all drives. Also in the name of DVD discs there may be numbers that indicate the number of layers for recording. The larger the number, the more layers and the greater the amount of memory on the disk (from 4.7 to 17 gigabytes).
Another type of disc is HD-DVD. They are about twice the size of conventional DVD discs. They have two types: R and RW.
Well, the last type is BD (or Blu-ray). They have the largest volume (from 25 to 50 gigabytes). They also come in two varieties: R and RE.R is a one-time disk, and an RE disk can be rewritten many times.
Also keep in mind that not all drives can handle any of the drives. The drive can only handle discs of its generation and older. For example, a DVD drive can handle DVDs and CDs, while a Blu-ray drive can handle all types of discs.
In addition, not all drives have a recording function. You need to specify this separately for each drive model.
First, let's look at the procedure for writing files for further use and transfer to other devices. This instruction is suitable for most files. This is done very simply.
- First, insert the disc into the drive.
- Wait a bit and a menu will appear in front of you; if this does not happen, then you will have to start the disc manually through “My Computer”.
- Here, select the option “Burnfilestodisc” or “Burn files to disk” (depending on the version of the operating system).
- Then you will need to check one of the options and click "Next".
In total, there will be two options for how to burn files from a computer to a disk: “As a USB flash drive” and “With a CD / DVD player”. We will talk about their features below.
Burning a disc as a flash drive
If you choose the “As USB Flash Drive” option, you can burn files to a disc and then freely delete them, edit them, and add new ones. Of course, it only makes sense to use this option if you are using a reusable disk with an RW or RE extension.
But this option also has a downside. After you burn the disc, it will only work with Windows-based computers.
Writing files this way is very easy. First you need to wait for the formatting to finish. After that, you will need to transfer all the files to the disk, just as you would with a USB flash drive. For those who have not done this before, there are two ways: just hold down the file with the mouse and drag it to the disk, or select the files you need, hold down the “Ctrl + C” combination, and then open the disk and press “Ctrl + V”.
After the files are written, you can interact with them as you like, delete, edit, etc. One has only to take into account one nuance, files deleted from the disk do not end up in the recycle bin.
Burning a disc with a CD/DVD player
If you select the option “With CD/DVD player”, then you can use the disc on any PC and other devices in the future. However, the recording process here is a little more complicated.
After that, you can remove your disk from the drive and use it however you want.
Create a boot disk
Using the instructions above, you can burn any type of file. However, if you want to burn a hard disk image to install an operating system, you have to proceed in a completely different way.
This must be done using special software. There are quite a few programs for this purpose, but as an example, we will consider UltraISO. Here it is done like this:
- Open the program.
- In the lower left part of the window, specify the path to the image or files for installing the OS.
- After that, mark them a little to the right, using the “Ctrl” and “Shift” keys.
- Then click on the “Add” button (the folder with the blue arrow), which is located on the bottom panel.
- On the top panel, open the "Boot" tab.
- In the menu that appears, select "Burn Hard Disk Image...".
- In the new window, in the "Disk Drive" line, select the name of your disk, leave the rest of the items unchanged.
- Click on the "Record" button.
- In the window that appears, click on the “Yes” button.
After that, wait for the recording to finish, and the boot disk will be ready.
How to dump files to disk: video
Now you know how to burn files from your computer to disk. In most cases, you can do without the help of third-party software. However, you can always use the programs for regular file transfers as well.
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