How to burn, copy, and backup a CD, DVD, or HD DVD for free

Posted on August 8, 2007 at 8:24 pm

As a technology enthusiast, I often get asked how can someone easily burn or copy CDs, DVDs, or HD DVD’s for free. Most people have heard of software like Roxio, Sonic, or Nero, but none of them are free and they are usually so bloated with extras that your computer actually starts to run a lot slower after you install them! Luckily, I spend lots of time trying to find free tools and utilities that do the same thing, but without all the crap.

One really easy to use, full-featured, and non-resource intensive program that I use to burn CDs and DVDs is ImgBurn. ImgBurn has several “modes” that makes it very user-friendly: Read, Build, Write, Verify, and Discovery.

In Read mode, you can put a disc into your CD/DVD drive and copy the disk to an image file on your computer. This is a great way to backup any software cds that you might have laying around, like your Windows Operating System CD, Microsoft Office CDs, or other important software. If you ever lose those discs, it’s not a big deal because you can simply use ImgBurn in Write mode to burn the image back to a new CD/DVD. The great thing about ImgBurn is that it even supports HD DVD’s!

As you can see from the graphic, I’m currently in Read mode. You can change modes by clicking on Mode from the top menu. I placed a DVD movie into my drive and ImgBurn automatically chooses the destination based on which drive has the most free hard drive space and the file type, in this case ISO. To begin copying, click on the image of the CD with the green arrow at the bottom.

Once you have the image file saved on your computer, you can burn as many copies of it as you like by going to Write mode. Here you choose the image file, whether you want to verify after burning, and the number of copies. Some of the advanced features are the fact that ImgBurn supports Unicode file and folder names, so you will have no problems with international character sets or long file names.

ImgBurn also supports a number of image formats other than ISO that it can burn including BIN, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, MDS, NRG, and PDI. ImgBurn also supports dual layer DVDs jobs.

So you might be wondering now “Well I can convert my cd and dvds into images for backup and I can burn images, but what if I simply want to burn some files off my computer?” That’s when you would go to Build mode. Build mode lets you simply choose files and folders off your computer to be written to disc. In order to add files or folders, use the little button below the green + sign. Pop in a CD or DVD and click on the convert image at the bottom left.

ImgBurn also has a lot of advanced options for those who wish to more than the basics, but otherwise it’s ready to use right out of the box. It runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (including all the 64-bit versions).

Convenient, light-weight and easy to use, so check it out if you’re sick of Roxio, Sonic and Nero always crashing or eating up resources.

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